Highland Railway Small Ben

HR Small Ben from a Phil Giles kit with much additional detail and remedial work

 I hope that the captioned photos below along with the accompanying notes will be of assistance to modellers undertaking construction of the Phil Giles kit for the HR Small Ben. It is a difficult kit and many of the parts need remedial work, other parts simply don't exist, you'll have to make them but at least you'll develop some scratch building skills along the way. All the photos can be enlarged by clicking on them so you can really examine the detail. Some of the parts I made for the engine are available as castings and are listed on my website.

Crew for a HR Small Ben

Crew R12 and R13 in action on the footplate of the Ben

The cab of a Small Ben is a very cramped and busy place and the crew are designed to fit this particular engine, though of course they'll probably fit many more besides. The "Phil Giles" etches provide only a basic engine and tender shape and most of the detail seen here, such as the tender doors, fall plate and inside splashers are scratch built. The majority of the castings used in the construction are lost wax brass castings from LGM.

HR Drummond Small Ben 

The fall-plate was later removed and added to the engine.

The tender flares were a real problem as the etches wrongly had them stepped inwards. I removed them from the tender sides and soldered them back on so they formed a step outwards. The coal rails needed a good deal of work too as they were etched flat. I scratch built a tool box then made a mould and cast a pair for the tender top, here you can see the master pattern made up from metal sheet and Milliput.

Note the HR style couplings

Vaccum pipe modified from a LGM casting

There's a lot going on underneath the tender.

  

Leaf springs behind the rear drivers are prominent features of a Ben

Stephenson's inside  motion in position

Steam valves on top of boiler are from LGM with modifications.

Rods from the steam valves and whistle lead into the cab

An early stage of construction

Mashima M1833 with ABC Gearbox



Guard irons attach to the front bogie frames.



The shape of the frames was corrected to accord with the drawing