My loco collection

A famous model with cast iron provenance, the North Eastern Railway Tennant 2-4-0 no. 1477, was expertly scratch built and painted (circa late 1950’s) by no less than the pioneer of O gauge finescale modelling, the great Bernard Miller. With hand painted lettering and numerals in the fully lined NER passenger green livery. Built with very fine quality cast wheels and a John Hart RM (short) type motor no. 862. She collects power from the tender wheels and from plunger pick-ups on the loco. A belt and braces job and there is nothing wrong with that. This model was built for the famous layout of Stanley Norris and featured in the Model Railway News magazine of February 1960. Also featured in the Railway Modeller magazine of January 1971 when on a visit to Wally Mayhew’s Stanley to Stratford St. Andrew layout.

On Bernard’s passing in 1980 she was obtained by Arthur Dewar and is shown on Arthur’s layout in Jack Ray’s book ‘Model Railways and their builders’ published by Atlantic Press. She also featured in the Gauge O Guild Gazette on Arthur’s layout (see page 338 of the link at the bottom of this page). On Arthur’s death she passed onto Wally West and as part of his collection she has now found her way into my collection.

When obtained, her paintwork had deteriorated with age, the black paint on the outside frames in particular had become unstable and had worn away completely in places. Fortunately, most of the green areas have survived well. I have now had Bernard’s paint restored by the museum conservator John Cockcroft, who has managed to preserve the hand painted numbers and lettering. I must say that he has made a superb job of it. A powerful loco, I have had her pulling eight coaches with ease. A good load for a 2-4-0.

https://www.gaugeoguild.com/secured/gazette_archive/Vol11-10//offline/download.pdf

LNER Gresley A3 class 4-6-2 no. 2752 Spion Kop. This fabulous model was built from the Martin Finney kit by Graham Varlev, with Slaters wheels, a Portescap RG7 motor and gears unit. Current collection is by the American method, which collects power from one rail via the loco wheels and the other rail by the tender wheels. The drawbar is insulated as it has to be. All loco driving and tender wheels are compensated in true Martin Finney fashion. Paintwork is by Larry Goddard and he has signed his name, together with the builder’s name on the underside of the running plate to give absolute provenance. She runs as quietly and as smoothly as she looks. Regular viewers of these pages might realise that the Gresley A3 class is up there as one of my favourite locomotive classes, whether in LNER green, BR blue, BR green, single chimney, double chimney, smoke deflectors, they always look good to me. A true Gresley masterpiece.

BR Standard 9F class 2-10-0 no. 92060. A Lee Marsh Tyne Dock 9F, bought second hand, very skilfully weathered by Lee Marsh himself. Ultimate detail. DC/DCC control with sound and smoke.

GWR Churchward Scott class 4-4-2 no. 188 Rob Roy. A superb model of a very rarely modelled prototype. Built from the Scorpio Models kit, with AGH (Alan Harris) wheels, and an ABC motor and gears unit, by Norman Vickers. This model was bought from auction some months ago, as number 190 Waverley, https://www.gaugeoguild.com/gallery/gallery_display.aspx having been originally painted by the builder. But in my opinion the paint at that time didn’t compare with the quality of the build, partly due to very average quality paint repairs, probably by the previous Australian owner. So I made the difficult decision to strip down the model and strip the original paint, to be superbly repainted with a different identity, by Warren Haywood. I think the quality of the painting now well compares with the quality of the build. The Scott class Atlantics were built to allow Mr Churchward to compare their performance with the Saint class 4-6-0’s. They were all rebuilt to the 4-6-0 wheel arrangement at Swindon in 1912 to become part of the very successful Saint class.