"60163, Tornado's First Train"

What a mental week! Unfortunately university work, and my training have got in the way of any modelling or layout planning, but I did take time off from my busy schedule to see Tornado and travel behind her on her first public train.

Here's the link to my photographs:

She's alive!

Goodbye for now, I will make some sort of proper, modelling update to the blog this week - probably tomorrow!

"North by Great Northern...Part 3"

Here's another pictorial update from the Copley Hill Works.

There will be a layout plan update this week, I am putting the finishing touches to the second layout plan as I type this.

Laters!

"North by Great Northern...Part 2"

Another pictorial update:

Copley Hill Works

The tender is now a very nice shade of British Railways Expressenger Blue...

Here's hoping I can do a little more layout planning next, now that I'm waiting on some major components.

"North by Great Northern!"

I thought I'd give a pictorial update, and a link to the work in progress:

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15467&start=100#p445554

Great Northern is suddenly taking shape...

"Great Northern"

It's rather a brute of a machine, isn't it?

Seen here: http://www.lner.info/locos/A/a1_1.shtml. This database is a mine of information for anyone modelling the LNER and I highly reccomend it.

The lone A1/1 was an Edward Thompson rebuild of Sir Nigel Gresley's prototype pacific - Great Northern, which was to form the testbed for the Peppercorn A1 pacific. Suffice to say, not many locomotives have formed the prototype and test bed for two classes. A controversial rebuild, even today arguments break out over the locomotive's looks and even a question of should it have existed at all...

I was rather surprised to find in my research, how many times the unloved 60113, Great Northern, visited 56C. It was enough times, both in photographs (I have found no less than six photographs of the A1/1 at Copley Hill over a period of five years), that I decided - now that the Clan model is almost complete - to try to build another locomotive for the intended layout.

And why not? I love unusual machines, (RMwebbers will no doubt know of my passion for Brush Traction's Falcon... and, euh, be tired of my obssession with it, mind), and anything that adds interest to the shed scene will be well worth the effort.

However, after the agonising time put into a second hand Nu-Cast A2/1 kit (and failing so miserably to build it, that it's been sent away to be sorted out!), and the misery of failure, I decided on this occasion to kitbash, rather than kit build.

I've kitbashed one locomotive already: a Trix A2 became a "Trixby" A2 (that's a Trix A2 body on a Hornby Railroad Flying Scotsman chassis), which turned out okay - as 60525 A.H Peppercorn. I'm doing a similar conversion here, except I fully intend to modify the cylinders and valve gear to appear more Thompson-esque.



I have a plan - the components are coming together - and I really, really want to build this A1/1. It's almost as if it'll convince myself that I can actually model - and well enough to finally get on and do some proper, soldering kitbuilding, instead of kitbashing.

So next time, hopefully, I'll have some pics up of the work in progress...

Until next time.

"Layout Plan Mark 1"

So here it is! Copley Hill Mark 1. Okay, it's not to scale, it hasn't got the sizes down (it's 9ft by 20ft the size I have to build it in, by the way), and it makes little or no sense that a train heading for the north east would suddenly about turn and go south west...and then north east again! but I have a plan, it involves using the carriage works as a suitable fiddle yard and storage facility (and hopefully, changeover facility too), and the yard itself is where all the action will be - locomotives moving back and forth, the turntable turning pacifics, tank engines shunting in the sidings...

Yes, it's a very rough draft. It is, however, a start, and I intend to gather as much advice and thoughts on it as possible amongst friends before the next draft.

Until next time - goodnight!

"Clan from a Brit"

Seen here: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=25238&start=125

And here: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15467&start=75

I've been working on this locomotive for several weeks, in anticipation of this competition started by the forum RMweb. I decided that my model was going to portray 72009 Clan Stewart as I have a thing unusal locomotives, and especially the "underdogs" (I am a Charlton fan you know!)

72009 is one of the "Clan" class of standard designs built by British Railways in the 1950s. Only ten were built, and 72009 is of course, the tenth locomotive in the class. There is a project on to recreate the class - 72010, Hengist, and I have decided to donate a little money to the project. I did donate to Tornado's A1 Trust, after all...

Be that as it may, what does this have to do with Copley Hill? Well, it adds to my locomotive stock an unusal locomotive that could "appear" on a passenger or goods working of some form. In other words, I saw a class of locomotive I wanted for the layout - I had to work for it, admittedly, but it has come out the other side looking not too bad.

There's still a few details to do - and of course, I haven't forgot my post for tomorrow, some layout planning - but I'm so pleased with my first attempt at a kit, I think another is in order.

71000 Duke of Gloucester anyone?