Yankee Tank Completed.

HR Yankee Tank, Drummond II livery

Highland Railway 4-4-0T Yankee Tank complete except for the crew who are still gestating on my desk and in a very unfinished state as yet. Most of the bright work was masked off before I air brushed the engine with Precision Paints P727 HR Dark Green (1885-1912) though I added a little gloss to the "Dull" finish of the paint and darkened it slightly with a touch of black. The black of the chimney, smokebox and footplate is Revell SM301 a semi-matt black, which I sprayed on after appropriate masking up. There was a good deal of cleaning up, scraping off and painting by hand to do before the engine looked smart. Transfers are methfix from Guilplates as are the number and builder's plates. The little red lamp on the smokebox front came from Laurie Griffin, unfortunately he doesn't produce a dual aspect one for the roof, however I'm working on this myself. The jauntily posed workman with his shovel is one of my own "Heroes of the Footplate" figures.

HR54 in Drummond II livery c.1914



 

HR 54 began life as HR14 in 1893 and was one of the later batch of three engines of this class, built entirely to HR specifications. The engine acquired the name "Portressie" in 1901, after that branch of the HR on which she worked in her early days. In 1900 the engine was renumbered HR54 becoming ultimately 15017 in LMS days and in who's ownership she lasted in service until 1927. My model depicts the engine in Drummond II livery, clean and well kept by her crew, in the days before the First World War.

HR54 Cab Interior

The cab detail is to some extent conjectural or an informed reconstruction. The cab seems from the outside to be very generously proportioned, however when you subtract the coal space at the rear and the overscale side tanks the space for the crew to work in diminishes alarmingly. The side tanks are wider inside the cab than outside because of the need to house the rear driving wheels, the backhead takes up more of the space and so does the reversing lever; because of the constricted space my choice of pose for the crew is restricted too, a fireman in shovelling mode just wouldn't fit. I'm having to design a slim-line crew. I can't help feeling that the tops of the inner side tanks are rather bare, this of course reflects the lack of information on the Yankee Tank's interior. When compared to the busy cab of my Coal Tank (see below), an engine of similar vintage to the Yankee Tank, the latter's cab is Spartan indeed.

Lochgorm at CD0GG

Lochgorm in the scenic section at CD0GG

Lochgorm ran at Carlisle on Saturday on the CD0GG club layout with a short train of HR stock, a fish truck, a covered van and a guards van. And very well she did too, not only by her smooth performance on the layout but also, with the help of the crew that Pete designed especially for her, winning the annual model competition.

Lochgorm Tank Painted

HR57 Lochgorm Tank 0-6-0T

I completed the construction of this scratch built Lochgorm Tank engine in time to have a picture of her included in Vol.7 No.108 of the HR Journal for early 2014. It was not until later in that year that I realised that the transfers that I had hoped to have printed for the name "Lochgorm" were not going to materialise, the quotes I had from transfer printers were sky-high and interest in the job was marginal to say the least so reluctantly I abandoned the idea and turned to Dave Studley, a painter of some repute whom I'd heard was good with lettering.

The Highland Railway water slide transfer sheet supplied by Guilplates was Dave's starting point. The lettering on the sheet provided the initial "L", which is slightly larger than the rest of the name, along with the letters "G" "H" and "R". The numerals on the sheet supplied the "0"s  which left only the final "M" annoyingly missing. Dave contrived this from an "M" from Guilplates' LBSCR transfer sheet, some subtle work with a fine brush was necessary on this letter to persuade it to adopt the uniformity of the rest. I think you'll agree that the lettering works well.

The crew were painted by myself and are figures from my own "Heroes of the Footplate" range, they are designed specifically for this loco though I'm sure they'd fit nicely in the cab of many another engine.

        



HR57 Stroudley Lochgorm Tank

 

On Saturday HR57 will be taking to the rails in finished form for the first time on the Carlisle Club's layout, I hope to have some photos of her in action at CD0GG with a train next week. 





HR 53 Strathpeffer Tank 0-4-4T

HR 53 0-4-4-T Chassis motorised

I think it's important to have a locomotive project under way to maintain readers' interest in this Blog and in pursuance of this idea I've made a start on a new HR locomotive project. This is that little Strathpeffer 0-4-4 Tank, built in Jones' time as loco superintendent of the HR. In original form and numbered HR13 until 12/1899 the engine ran as a saddle tank, her rebuilding in 1901 as a side tank much improved her appearance and this is the condition in which I intend to model her.

I have a pair of HR number plates which I commissioned from Guilplates as well as their transfers for the name "Lybster" with which she ran in later HR days in plain Drummond II livery; though I must admit the engine probably looked her best when the LMS painted her in their red passenger livery as 15050... I'm much tempted by this.

This is a scratch building project of course as there is no kit available and I doubt whether there ever will be a kit for a pre-grouping class which only ever had one member! I've been collecting parts and fittings for some time and have a chimney and dome, which are not available commercially, which have been turned by pals with a lathe at the Carlisle Club, more of this later. The gearbox is an ABC Mini Gooch with a Mashima 1824 motor and an MSC Models flywheel. The wheels are Slaters' and the machined coupling rods are from Premier Productions. The chassis runs smoothly so I intend to cut out the main components of the superstructure next from 0.4 nickel silver sheet.

For reference I have a reasonable selection of photos of the engine from Am Baille and a drawing from Peter Tatlow's "A History of Highland Locomotives".

Steam Roller Wagons

Aveling Porter steam roller on NE 20T MAC-L

Initially I was uneasy about mounting such a mighty machine as this on a 4-wheeled truck as I thought  it overpowered the wagon and I had no evidence that rollers were in fact carried on these. I knew that the GWR had four bogie well wagons to carry their own departmental rollers, these were dia. F-2 steam roller wagons of which a kit is available from Scorpio Models. I thought it would be a better idea to put the roller on one of these.

Meanwhile, however, I noted in "LNWR Wagons Supplement No.1" that the LNWR built a 20ton Agricultural Engine Trolley (diagram 78) about 1910 that was designed "to cope with the increasing size of traction engines and so forth", presumably this encompassed steam rollers. This ill-documented wagon was a 4-wheel low-loader with sloping ramps down to a 15ft long flat bed, rather a longer load space than the MAC-L that I had built, so ample to take a roller. I began to think that perhaps steam rollers were indeed carried on 4-wheel wagons after all.

Then...a breakthrough! My Internet searches came up with the photo below, from the NRM collections, of a steam roller being unloaded from a 4-wheel low-loader at Derby Station in 1906. So I know that I'm right to mount a roller on the similar 4-wheel NE Mac-L as pictured above... I can sleep easy now!

Steam Roller at Derby Station 1906

The above photo is copyright National Railway Museum and SSPL and is from the collection "Derby photos"  Here's a link to this that you'll like...

http://www.nrm.org.uk/ourcollection/photo?group=Derby&objid=1997-7397_DY_11517

LNWR Chopper Tank revisited.

 

LNWR Chopper Tank from an ABS kit with additions and improvements.
 

I had the superstructure of this engine painted by Conrad Cooper of Criccieth who also expertly added the boiler bands and LNWR lining. I asked him not to work on the cab interior as this was a job, along with painting the crew, that I wanted to do myself. This is a time consuming process and relies on hand painting methods rather than air brushing and lining techniques, I thought it more my line than his.

2-4-0T Chopper Tank

I hand painted everything below the footplate myself, paying particular attention to the firebox for which I used colours from photos of other engines then brought it to life with a good deal of dry brush work. I applied matt black to the smokebox wrapper and front then scrubbed this with an old brush to relieve the lifeless effect of dull matt paint. I dry brushed some metallic gunmetal onto edges and rails though when I saw the effect of this in better lighting conditions I thought I'd overdone it, so I'm in the process of removing some of this.

Chopper Tank cab interior

The HMRS publication "LNWR Liveries"suggests using two parts indian red to one part ivory black to reproduce the colour of the cab interior above the splashers. I found that a touch of black was enough to produced an acceptable effect, the HMRS recipe being too dark. Cab detail is from the ABS kit with some additions though I suspect it is not the full story, the pipe on the right hand side of the boiler does not enter the cab; if it did I know it would have given rise to a good deal more pipework. (see the coal tank cab below). Those wooden plinths beside the fire door for the crew to stand on are topped with real planking. The works inside the cab were lightly dry brushed with metallic paint then scrubbed with an old brush to achieve a metallic sheen which I think works well in the cab. The brass pressure gauge on the spectacle plate, which is a white metal casting, was first given a coat of metallic paint well darkened with black, this was then given the slightest of touches of rather brighter brass paint just on top where it catches the light and then varnished...it doesn't look as good as a real brass gauge though, even after all that fiddling about. I'm not convinced that brass, silver and steel paint, even the so called "metallic" paints, however skilfully they're applied are successfull in representing these metals. It's a much better option to obtain a real brass gauge or a brass hand wheel than to attempt to paint a white metal one to look like brass. Note that the window surrounds are real brass!

Crew from the Heroes of the Footplate range.

You can just make out part of the wood block floor that characterised many LNWR engines between the splashers in this picture, The fireman is resting his shovel on its rear edge, beyond the floor is of steel plate. The crew, of about 1900, are from my own Heroes of the Footplate range (Refs: R1 & R2) and are designed specifically for a small tank engine. They are posed to maximise the space available in a cramped cab, the space being additionally restricted by over scale wheels and the resultant narrow gap between the splashers.

Note that painted figures are available from Heroes of the Footplate, prices on request.

LNWR Coal Tank cab interior

Cab of an LNWR Coal Tank c. 1891 based on a drawing in Pete Skellon's recent book on the LNWR Coal Tanks. This is work in progress and more pictures of the engine will feature in future Blog postings.



 

A Steam Roller

Duncan Models' Aveling and Porter 15Ton Steam Roller

I'm in the process of building this steam roller from a Duncan Models kit. When I bought it I intended it as a load for the 20Ton MAC-L featured in my previous blog posting; however it does seem rather large for the wagon, it only just fits on, so at the moment I'm really not sure if this is the wagon for the job.

I noted in the current Gazette that Scorpio Models list an F2 Steam Roller Wagon, a low-loader bogie affair, which may be better suited to transport this hefty piece of machinery. The white metal model complete weighs 400g ; wheelbase is 75mm ; overall length 125mm. It builds well straight from the box, I've soldered most of it together with ultra-low melt solder and made a few minor additions and improvements, I look forward to painting it... and perhaps getting some nameplates made.

Possibly an oversize load?