I'm sure many of you have a favourite locomotive type that as modellers you keep coming back to, or collect perhaps a little bit too much?
Having spent all weekend on a Z gauge painting and lining marathon on some models of these I thought I might share with you my own long standing relationship with the Southern Railway's Merchant Navies and West Country class 4-6-2s.
As a Yorkshire lad born and bred we lived nowhere near the home ground of these machines that principally worked the lines south of London from Kent all the way to Cornwall so I never got to see many until we went of a family camping holiday to the New Forest in 1965 . My mother's famous words to my dad " I hope there are no railways involved this time?" were followed by a trail of steam coming out of a cutting behind the camp site!
rebuilt Merchant Navy 35017 'Belgian marine'
Now in the U.K these two classes of locos have always been well represented in model form. Triang, later Triang-Hornby, made them in both 00 gauge and TT way back in the 1960s and Kitmaster (absorbed by Airfix) did an injected moulded 00 construction kit at a very reasonable price. Wrenn models, who carried on making the original Hornby Dublo metal loco models, introduced new tooling of a rebuilt Bulleid Pacific. Grafar and Dapol have both produced N scale versions.
Airfix kits were everywhere back in those days. Most newsagents and every model shop used to stock them and the Bulleid Pacific kit represented Battle of Britain class 'Biggin Hill' So one of my first ever kitbashing projects as a youngster was to motorise one with a old Triang Princess class 4-6-2 chassis. To represent the BFB wheels you had to go to a guy called Albert Goodall who did etched BFB overlays to glue onto the front of the wheels to hide the spokes. He also did the nameplates as well. For those British members of this forum who will remember this I had to send a Postal order for the right amount. Back in those days, long before credit cards or paypal it was a sort of prepaid cheque issued by the local post office, Another time, long gone!
It ran for years and is seen her in the company of some 00 locos I built afterwards. Some kitbashed Triang but mainly white metal kits. How crude these look compared to modern 00
In a rare shot of my bedroom ( Yes really) when as a teenager I still lived with the folks is the wall of British 00, American H0 and to the left the start of my ascent into 0 gauge. on the bench is a Rivarossi IHB 0-8-0 kit under construction and on the shelves you can see two of the motorised 00 Airfix Spamcans complete with nameplates.
I never got around to doing one in 0 but jump forward a few years and I scratchbuilt 34074 46 Squadron in gauge 1.
to be continued
Kev
Having spent all weekend on a Z gauge painting and lining marathon on some models of these I thought I might share with you my own long standing relationship with the Southern Railway's Merchant Navies and West Country class 4-6-2s.
As a Yorkshire lad born and bred we lived nowhere near the home ground of these machines that principally worked the lines south of London from Kent all the way to Cornwall so I never got to see many until we went of a family camping holiday to the New Forest in 1965 . My mother's famous words to my dad " I hope there are no railways involved this time?" were followed by a trail of steam coming out of a cutting behind the camp site!
rebuilt Merchant Navy 35017 'Belgian marine'
Now in the U.K these two classes of locos have always been well represented in model form. Triang, later Triang-Hornby, made them in both 00 gauge and TT way back in the 1960s and Kitmaster (absorbed by Airfix) did an injected moulded 00 construction kit at a very reasonable price. Wrenn models, who carried on making the original Hornby Dublo metal loco models, introduced new tooling of a rebuilt Bulleid Pacific. Grafar and Dapol have both produced N scale versions.
Airfix kits were everywhere back in those days. Most newsagents and every model shop used to stock them and the Bulleid Pacific kit represented Battle of Britain class 'Biggin Hill' So one of my first ever kitbashing projects as a youngster was to motorise one with a old Triang Princess class 4-6-2 chassis. To represent the BFB wheels you had to go to a guy called Albert Goodall who did etched BFB overlays to glue onto the front of the wheels to hide the spokes. He also did the nameplates as well. For those British members of this forum who will remember this I had to send a Postal order for the right amount. Back in those days, long before credit cards or paypal it was a sort of prepaid cheque issued by the local post office, Another time, long gone!
It ran for years and is seen her in the company of some 00 locos I built afterwards. Some kitbashed Triang but mainly white metal kits. How crude these look compared to modern 00
In a rare shot of my bedroom ( Yes really) when as a teenager I still lived with the folks is the wall of British 00, American H0 and to the left the start of my ascent into 0 gauge. on the bench is a Rivarossi IHB 0-8-0 kit under construction and on the shelves you can see two of the motorised 00 Airfix Spamcans complete with nameplates.
I never got around to doing one in 0 but jump forward a few years and I scratchbuilt 34074 46 Squadron in gauge 1.
to be continued
Kev