Southern Railway N15 class 4-6-0 no. E736 Excalibur. This model has been expertly built from scratch in brass by a person unknown. It has a Leakey motor and gears and uses the American method of power collection. Purchased from a Vectis auction in an unfinished and unpainted (tender primed) condition. After building, the model had been left to gather dust for many years. I have now stripped the tender of primer, replaced a Maunsell type chimney with this Urie type, coarse scale handrail knobs and handrail, rebuilt the cab and tender floors and generally completely overhauled the body and the motion to give a sound and powerful working model. Now painted in Robert Uries London & South Western Railway olive green by John Cockcroft. In my opinion he has the shade of green spot on. I asked him to match the colour of the jacket of D.L.Bradley’s book “LSWR Locomotives The Urie Classes” and he has done exactly what I asked.
LNER Gresley A3 class no. 2744 Grand Parade. I have recently acquired this lovely model from auction. It has been built and painted to a professional standard from the DJH kit. Judging from certain details, it could have been produced by one of the DJH factory team of builders themselves, although no certificates came with it as provenance. I am normally not a fan of DJH factory built LNER green models as I think their usual colour is too bright, https://www.djhmodelloco.co.uk/prodpage.asp?productid=3423 but this model is an exception as the colour is to my eyes very good for Doncaster green. Perhaps one built before they changed to the brighter green? Or perhaps produced by another very capable builder and painter? Powered by a motor with a delrin drive gearbox via plunger pickups. A modification to the bogie springing is all I have needed to make to enable it to travel around the Poachers test track without de-railing. This kit has been around a number of years now and I have built two others, Salmon Trout in LNER green and The White Knight in BR green. The kit is excellent and builds into a very proto-typical looking model. Fairly easy to build as well. You just need to shake the box of bits and they all fall into place. Just a shame that whoever the painter was, he originally made it no. 4480 Enterprise (very likely an example of the tail wagging the dog, or in this case the client wagging the painter). That loco was never a left hand drive loco whilst in LNER days. Carefully we have changed the cabside and buffer beam numbers to 2744 and the nameplates to Grand Parade, the name and number of one of the locos built at Doncaster in 1928 as left hand drive. As Peter Coster writes in Irwell Press’s fabulous “The Book of the A3 Pacifics” there were of course two Grand Parades, the first was destroyed in the Castlecary accident in 1937. This model depicts the second one, built in 1938 to replace the wrecked original loco. Mr. Coster writes that they “differ only in the boiler number and tender number” failing to spot that the second Grand Parade had steps behind the front buffer beam and the first did not.
GCR class 8B 4-4-2 Atlantic no. 264. This model of a Jersey Lily has just been built by myself on commission from the Gladiator kit. The build was started on the 8th January 2019 and finished on the 24th May. Four and a half months and around 115 build hours. No major problems were encountered with building this kit, although to allow easier painting of the splasher tops, the boiler unit has been made to be removable. It has a non-working representation of the inside motion from the Laurie Griffin kit, an ABC motor and gear unit and the American method of power collection. Also many of the original white metal parts in the loco kit have been replaced with finely detailed parts of lost wax brass. Final testing was made at the Poachers test track on Sunday 19th May where it performed well with a seven coach train. She was handed over to Warren Haywood at Doncaster show for painting into fully lined Great Central green and crimson livery and Warren handed the finished model to a proud owner at Telford. Good going, less than 8 months from an unstarted kit of parts in a box to a beautiful working model locomotive, expertly painted in a complicated livery. A good team effort if I do say so myself.
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