The Dog’s B…. Bone

At long last I’ve managed to find five minutes to post the pictures of my single cab class 58. It is still in need of a fair amount of cleaning up and weathering, but hopefully it gives the basic idea.

BR promotional model

As the donor loco had a really poor body I bought a replacement and used the poor one for the new end bits.

End preparation

Here the second cab has been hacked off and plasticard has been added in preparation of the new end.

A section of the old body was cut to length, black plasticard added to form a bulkhead, and then end detail was needed.

Buffer beam removed from old cab

For this I used the end of the original cab, cut out, a section taken out of the middle to make it thinner, and then stuck back together again.

New end

Lining up

It fits!

The only other thing that was needed was to modify the running plate to cover the gap where the cab was.

Running plate modification

 

A final reassembly and the model starts to look the part. I still need to refit the handrails and add a few other detail parts but I’m pretty pleased how well it captures BR’s “might have been”.

Light rail and Brio

Once again I must apologise for the recent break in transmission. Work reached an all time epic level and I have had no time for modelling let alone blogging about it.

On the work front I have been discussing what the north of England might see next for rolling stock, preparing to carry out a global market survey, and soothing the fevered brow of some banking types who are thinking of putting some cash towards a light rail system in a little village called Sydney. This has necessitated 2 trips, and I am writing this on the way out on the second of these trips (currently at 36,792 feet, 7,357 miles from Sydney, -45 deg C outside, travelling at 569mph, just clearing the coast of Oman having stopped at Dubai).

On a modelling front I have no intention to do a light rail system but one of the interesting things about the Sydney system is that it will have no catenary in the “historic” section from Wynyard to Town Hall. This is excellent news for the modeller who now has an excuse not to put the string up (in fact the Dubai light rail due to open this year will be the first totally wire free system using Alstom’s third rail APS, but I digress).

Dubai APS LRV

I have many connections with The Sydney light rail system as I helped write a report that said a) it’s quite tired, b) you (the government) shouldn’t pay too much to buy it back, and c) shut the monorail it’s even more tired (in fact it’s very like the first word in this c section but the vowel changed).

A scene from the past – light rail and monorail at Paddy’s Market before the monorail was dismantled

(My next post – Part 2 of the rail research unit –  will include more about the monorail)

Oh and the Brio? Well I’ve been building many layouts for my son. I now generally do my best work before I leave the house in the morning. It’s his birthday on Thursday and I’ve bought him the Forth Bridge. No, really, look!