This 4mm scale loco was puchased at Netley Marsh steam fair for 25 pence!, it was a badly damaged Airfix kit. Only one smoke deflector, one axle missing from leading bogie and various small parts missing with a lot of scratch damage on one side. It has been stripped and partially rebuilt with a bit more strengthening added to the loco frames & damaged sections of boiler & tender.
The plastic leading bogie axle has been removed, New axles made from Brass rod, with four "N"gauge(2mm scale) `driving wheels' of the correct diameter used as Fine 4mm scale bogie wheels, this gives a more correct finer tyre width, wheel thickness & the wheel flanges look much more acceptable even without chemical blacking or painting, but they will be blacked anyway as I think it compliments such industrial models making for a better overall appearance. There still remains a lot to be done on this model, including lowering of the cabside windows, repositioning of leading bogie and removal of the wide chimney* refitting & detailing as one of the original 1930 build, with no smoke deflectors etc. Large diameter chimneys were fitted to `modified' schools V class which had Lemaitre blastpipe fitted and alterations to the valve ports & timing by O.V. Bulleid who succeeded R.E.L. Maunsell as the Southern's Chief Mechanical Engineer in 1938. `early build' locomotives also had smoke deflectors added when serviced / overhaul. For this particular model I'm sticking to Maunsel's plans published in the May 1930 edition of Railway Engineer held at the NRM.
I recieved plans for the original 1930 `first ten' Schools Class locos from the National Railway Museum in York and will be modifying the model accordingly. The NRM is well worth a visit and have a vast collection of plans diagrams & information available in their library. (The NRM website is listed on the LINKS page)
The Schools class 4-4-0 locomotive is openly regarded as R.E.L. Maunsell's masterpiece. The U.K.s best 4-4-0 express passenger steam engine, initially introduced into traffic in 1930. With a tractive effort of 25,130Lbs at the drawbar in a loco designed for the 8 foot 6 & a half inch width restrictions on the S.R.'s busy Eastern section, The line from Tonbridge to Hastings having numerous narrow tunnels due to poor original construction & re-lining repairs narrowing the planned tunnel measurements. It's normal boiler pressure was 220Lbs/sq in. and total weight in working order was slightly under 110 tons[see Note 1 below] There are 3 surviving "Schools" class locos in preservation.
4mm scale Southern Railways type 3 Bo-Bo diesel electric locomotive. This one was also bought at Netley Marsh steam fair (at a cost of eight pounds sterling) It is a LIMA "OO" model of D6524 which was in B.R. blue livery with yellow ends (The real D6524 was originally green but was repainted by B.R. to their standard Blue diagrams)
The loco has been completely stripped, cleaned & rebuilt, and can be seen here during conversion back to its original 1960 green & white livery, as D6520. It has only had one coat of primer and one coat of green undecoat so far. I have cut out the circular roof mounted fan grill, thinned the roof round the edge of the hole to a `closer to scale' thickness and fixed a small circle of fine gauze, the gauze has been painted matt black with a little rust brown for good measure and fixed into the body with a Cyanoacrylate `superglue'
This model has been sent off to a young railway modeller to give him something to run on his first layout as he was losing interest in trains due poor quality `New' model locomotives failing to run and unacceptable service from the manufacturer with subsequent replacement locos also failing miserably.
The Type 3 Diesel-Electric locomotive was introduced in 1960 for passenger and miscellaneous duties on the Southern Region. A Bo-Bo type loco with 750 r.p.m. 1,550 horse-power Sulzer engine and electric transmisssion with Crompton-Parkinson traction motors, built by the Birmingham Carriage and Wagon Co. It weighs in at 73.5 tons* with a tractive effort of 45,000 Lb at the drawbar. The Type 3s were all allocated to the Southern Region, and could be found in Kent, Sussex, Wessex, and Surrey on the lines of the former South Eastern and Chatham Railway [see Note 2 below] & London Brighton and South Coast Railway systems. A few were allocated to the Western section and in the summer months could be seen working passenger trains between Waterloo, Southampton, and Bournemouth. They would not be on passenger workings in the winter as they were not fitted with steam heating boilers, So if your layout is set in winter the type 3 Bo-Bo would be used on various non-passenger duties, or all your passengers could be modelled wearing heavy coats ;-)
[Note 1]
Tons. Weight measured in English `Imperial' tons.
[Note 2]
South Eastern and Chatham Railway. In 1899, the `South Eastern Railway' and the `London, Chatham & Dover Railway' formed a joint working committee under the new title of `South Eastern and Chatham Railway'.
Not all of my models are built from prototypes, some are built to perform a particular function that is usefull but not normally a `visible' part of railway modelling. Things like rail cleaning vehicles which speed up the cleaning of mainlines on larger layouts, electrical test vehicles which are designed to alert the operator of any areas of poor current pickup, and check polarity, AC & DC track voltages etc.
