HR 27 Small Goods, Jones Rebuild of 1891...finished

Nothing was easy constructing my Small Goods engine and the same was true when I came to paint it; my choice of paint, Precision P727 Dark Green 1905-1912, which suits the unlined Drummond II livery is now permanently deleted, only P725 Light Green remains in stock. I had a small tin of this fortunately and I experimented by using it as the base colour. I added matt black and by a process of trial and error found that simply adding black and nothing else made a credible match for the lost 727. You can judge yourselves from the pictures displayed here the degree of my success. I have no infallible recipe for the colour, making it was a haphazard business and dependent on continued supplies of 725.

Despite keeping my precious mix in a tightly lidded jar, to my dismay it dried up to a jelly overnight before I'd painted the cab interior. So I embarked on a further experiment using Revell semi-matt Dark Green 363 as a base. I added a good deal of matt black and rather less yellow (15) which produced a credible colour for the cab. I think success depends on the base colour being as near as possible to the colour you're aiming to mix. 

The cab interior is based on the drawing in Peter Tatlow's "Highland Locomotives" (p.57), showing the interior of a Loch Class engine of 1896. I think the cab of the Jones rebuild of the Small Goods was probably much the same as that of a Jones designed Loch. The backhead owes much to a Lochgorm Kits etched sheet; brass castings are mainly sourced from Laurie Griffin and 62C Models, revised to fit this particular cab. The oil can and grating visible in the center are my own white metal castings. 

The dark green base colour, mixed from my own recipe (above), was applied with a Badger Anthem 155 airbrush. The contrasting areas of black were brush painted using Humbrol matt black to which a touch of talc was added; when dry these areas were buffed with a soft toothbrush to produce a sheen. Transfers on the buffer beam and rear of the tender are methfix type from a rather depleted Guilplates sheet of Highland Locomotive transfers which are sadly no longer available. The number and maker's plates were etched to order by Light Railway Stores. 

 

The driver and fireman are my own sculpture though now available from Chris Smith at Invertrain Models in his "Heroes of the Footplate" range. The figures are designed with contrasting poses which maximise the restricted space available in the cab and by avoiding standing shoulder-to-shoulder they allow a good view of the interior and of the backhead details. 

The 4 ton capacity tender is identified by 9" Highland numerals. Design of these early tenders owed a debt to those of the LNWR, the coal had to be shoveled from floor level, a back breaking task.

 The tablet catching apparatus has a handle which goes into the cab between the side sheet and the stanchion. The fall-plate is shaped to clear the sand-boxes and allow the engine to negotiate curves on a club layout and also masks the un-prototypical, though most effective way, the engine hooks to the tender.

HR27 Small Goods-Making a Start.

 

HR27 Coupling and connecting rods have limited clearance due to the outer skirt/valence.

I have made a start, as you can see in the above photo, on a Small Goods or "18 Class" engine, No. 27 in fact, in the form that it was rebuilt by Jones in 1891. This will be built without the aid of a kit; there is no kit for this engine though an etched sheet was used as an aid to build the tender, which is the subject of an earlier blog posting of 7/10/21 entitled "A tender in search of a loco". I will rely as usual on Laurie Griffin's castings to complete the model. 

The initial difficulty I came up against was fixing the position of the slide-bars on the frames, so that the connecting rods ran freely, and ensuring that these parts, along with the coupling rods were slim enough to fit inside the deep outer valence or skirt. This was achieved by a process of trial and error and by gradually slimming down and reducing the parts to fit with files; there is not much room. The wheels require little side play as the wheel-base is only 15ft and this helps matters.

My reference drawings, from Peter Tatlow's "Highland Locomotives" show that there is space to fit an M1833 motor and flywheel inside the body shell, which should make for a powerful little locomotive. I have modified the drawing on pg. 20 to include the changes made by Jones when he rebuilt the class.   

Fitting the motor is the next step, then weight will be added in the ash-pan between the wheels and springing will be arranged for the front axle to make a viable mechanism.