Tim's Models

Monday, 22 August 2011

0-16.5 Locomotives and Stock

With a renewed interest in modeling in 2008 I decided to build a 7mm scale narrow gauge locomotive. I'd always been interested in Welsh Narrow Gauge and hankered after a model of a Quarry Hunslet. Unfortunately there weren't any kits available so I took it upon myself to scratch build the locomotive to approximate dimensions. To be honest I wasn't sure where to start and whether it would sustain my interest so I thought I'd have ago at building a scratch built body on RTR 00 Chassis. I did toy with the idea of 009 but it seemed a little too expensive at the time and far too small to begin with. So I purchased a Hornby 0-4-0 Pug off ebay and began the build.

The Hornby Pug body suited the Quarry Hunslet shape just about, so I thought I would just need to modify the cab, chimney and buffers. In the end I built a new body from plasticard and altered the rods to look more convincing. Although not to scale I was happy with progress and began a small collection of scratch built locomotives on the Hornby 0-4-0 chassis.

The beginning no2 Quarry Hunslet, Scratch built body on a Hornby Pug Chassis

Industrial 0-4-0 now finished and painted Royal Blue

Tram locomotive and Industrial 0-4-0 scratch built on Traing chassis

Five more Hunslets for the now abandoned Dinorwic Quarry Line

'Percy' and 'Bill' modified to form two industrial tanks (later 'Percy' painted apple green and

'Bill' painted brunswick green) pictures to follow.

Scratch built Laxey Mines Locomotive 'Bee'

The real thing Laxey Mines Railway 'Ant'

'Bear' with 'Bee'

The second modified Hornby 0-4-0

The Quarry Hunslet

'Bear' Scratchbuilt body on a Bachmann Chassis (missing / stolen)

The project to build one Quarry Hunslet spiraled into a collection of locomotives and stock. Although many of these have been sold the project proved useful in honing my skills scratch building, painting and weathering. This is just a small amount of the 0-16.5 stock I built over 2 years and will probably be the last. Part of it's appeal was the scale but with minimum space and with a growing dissatisfaction of free lance design I decide to drop 7mm scale on 00 track altogether. I have kept a few items of stock but when compared with the 09 models I am making now they look very crude in comparison.

What has been interesting while revisiting these old models is the developments in skills I've made which have only come about through mistakes and perseverance. I think there is no better locomotive than the Hornby 0-4-0 to begin the journey into Narrow Gauge modeling.

Saturday, 20 August 2011

Come Midnight Monday

I think this was aired in 1985 or 86 in England and shown as a series every week. Originally made in Australia in 1982 and filmed at the Puffing Billy Railway, The children's TV program tells the story of four youngsters who fight plans to close a country railway, scrap the veteren steam engine and build a new highway. The program really captured my imagination as a child and may explain why I have an odd taste in Knit ware.

Most of the series can be found on Youtube

and won a Penguin Award for Best Children's Drama in 1982-83.

Sunday, 31 July 2011

The Titfield Thunderbolt

This was the second film as a child that really caught my imagination for steam. The original VHS is very worn from being overplayed but I have since found it available on DVD.

About 2 years ago I began building a model of the train before its tragic accident in the film. The locomotive is a modified Airfix 0-4-2, followed by a Cooper Craft cattle wagon, scratch built tram car (unfinished) and a modified brake van. At some point I must finish the coach which still needs the bar and interior fitting.

The later train used in the film is perhaps a little difficult to model, although 'Lion' is available from Southern Finecast. I have seen them go on ebay for £80 but that's a little out of my price range. 'Lion' was damaged in the film after the coupling incident and never repaired. It has recently been put on display at the new Liverpool Museum.

The Film

Plot

The residents of the rural village of Titfield rely on the railway branch line to commute to work and transport their produce to market. So they are shocked when the government announces that the line is to be closed. Particularly hard hit is railway enthusiast Vicar Sam Weech (George Relph); he comes up with the idea to run it locally. He and Squire Gordon Chesterford (John Gregson) persuade wealthy Walter Valentine (Stanley Holloway) to provide the financial backing by telling him they can legally operate a bar while the train is running – he will not have to wait all morning for the local pub to open.

The branch line supporters are bitterly opposed by bus operators Alec Pearce (Ewan Roberts) and Vernon Crump (Jack MacGowran), but, with the help of the town clerk George Blakeworth (Naunton Wayne), the supporters persuade the Ministry of Transport to grant them a month's trial period, with an inspection at the end of the trial. Retired railwayman Dan Taylor (Hugh Griffith) joins the venture.

On the maiden run, Crump and Pearce try to block a crossing, first with their lorry and then with a passing steam roller operated by Harry Hawkins (Sid James), but the steam locomotive (GWR 1401) is too powerful and pushes them off the track. The next day, Crump and Pearce persuade an irate Hawkins to shoot holes in the water tower, but the passengers form a bucket brigade and refill the engine from a nearby stream using buckets from the nearby farm. Crump appears to admit defeat and proposes a merger, but is turned down.

The night before the inspection, Hawkins, Crump and Pearce use the steamroller to tow the unguarded engine and coach down the gradient. The runaway engine runs off the track where the three men have removed a rail. However, with the assistance of Blakeworth, Weech raids the local museum for the antique, but still-working "Thunderbolt" locomotive. They also commandeer Dan Taylor's home (an old railway carriage body), which is hastily strapped to a flat wagon, and they are back in business.

When Valentine and Taylor are arrested after drunkenly trying to "borrow" another engine (driving it off the line and along the road through Mallingford), Weech is left without a fireman. Fortunately, the vicar's friend and fellow railway devotee, Ollie Matthews (Godfrey Tearle), the Bishop of Welchester, is visiting and is hurriedly drafted in to assist. They also have to improvise a means of connecting the engine to the rest of the train.

When the weak coupling fails during a braking test, Thunderbolt carries on by itself. However, several villagers manage to push the carriage to meet up again with the Thunderbolt, with the Ministry inspector (John Rudling) none the wiser. Joan Hampton (Gabrielle Brune) has to promise to marry Hawkins to get him to lend them the chain from his roller's steering mechanism to replace the broken coupling.

The train carries on to Mallingford past crowds of cheering people, and finally reaches its destination nearly ten minutes late. The villagers worry that this will prove their downfall, but it turns out that if they had been just a bit faster, they would have exceeded the speed limit for light railways. Instead, the line passes inspection, clearing the way for the Light Railway Order to be granted.

Friday, 29 July 2011

Oh Mr Porter

The first railway film I saw as a child and the favourite of my great uncle Ron's, 'Oh M.Porter!' I recently purchased this on DVD and found it as funny as I remember but felt so sorry for poor little 'Gladstone'.

'Gladstone' originally named 'Northiam' was a sister locomotive to the one shown below ex works. Sadly both locomotives were scrapped in 1941 but the line on which they both originally worked still exists today as the K&ESR.

Image from Colonel Stephens Museum website

More information can be found about this locomotive and the Colonel Stephens empire at this wonderful website

http://www.hfstephens-museum.org.uk/locomotives/new-locomotives.html

The Film

Plot

William Porter (Will Hay) is an inept railway worker who - due to family connections - is given the job of stationmaster at a remote and ramshackle rural Northern Irish railway station in the (fictitious) town of Buggleskelly, situated on the border with the then Irish Free State.

After taking the ferry from England to Northern Ireland, Porter is aghast when he discovers how isolated the station is. It is situated out in the countryside, two miles cross-country from the nearest bus stop. To make matters worse, local legend has it that the ghost of One-Eyed Joe the Miller haunts the line and, as a result, no-one will go near the station after dark.

Porter's co-workers at the station are the elderly deputy stationmaster, Harbottle (Moore Marriott), and an overweight, insolent young porter, Albert (Graham Moffatt), who make a living by stealing goods in transit and swapping railway tickets for food. They welcome Porter to his new job by regaling him with tales of the deaths and disappearances of previous stationmasters - each apparently the victim of the curse of One-Eyed Joe.

From the beginning it is obvious that the station is run very unprofessionally. Porter is woken up by a cow sticking its head through the room he is sleeping in, for instance (the cow has been lost in transit and is being milked by Harbottle), and the team's breakfast consists of bacon made from a litter of piglets which the railway are supposed to be looking after for a local farmer.

Determined to shake things up (particularly after he is forced to deal with the irate farmer when he comes to collect his pigs), Stationmaster Porter tries to renovate the station in several ways, most sensibly by painting the entire station, but also by less conventional means - including stopping the passing express and organising an excursion to Connemara.

Porter attempts to drum up business amongst the local people in the pub by offering tickets to this excursion, but due to arguments about where the excursion should go a fight breaks out. Porter crawls to safety in the landlord's rooms next door, where he meets a one-eyed man who introduces himself as Joe and offers to buy all of the tickets for an away game that the village football team, the Buggleskelly Wednesday, are playing the following day.

Unbeknown to Porter, however, he has really agreed to transport a group of criminals who are involved in running guns to the Irish Free State. The 'football' train leaves at six a.m. the following morning, rather than the scheduled ten a.m., at the insistence of Joe and although Porter questions some of the odd packages being loaded onto the train, he accepts Joe's claim that these are in fact goalpostsfor the game.

The train disappears as the smugglers divert it down a disused branch line near the border, and with everybody claiming that Porter has lost his mind (there is no such team as Buggleskelly Wednesday, and Harbottle points out that the local team wouldn't leave without him as he is their centre forward). Apparently this misunderstanding causes Porter to lose his job, as no one has seen the train. Then after his co-workers talk about a tunnel on a nearby disused branch line, Porter decides to head off to track down the errant engine (in hopes of getting his job back).

The trio find the missing train inside a derelict railway tunnel, underneath a supposedly haunted windmill. They investigate and are briefly captured by the gun runners, but escape and climb progressively higher up the windmill until eventually they are trapped at the top.

Using the windmill sails, they contrive to get down where they hatch a plan to capture the gun runners. Coupling the carriages containing the criminals and their guns to their own engine, Gladstone, they carry them away from the border at full speed, burning everything from Harbottle's underwear to the remnants of a fence they smash through in order to keep up steam. To keep the criminals quiet, Albert climbs on top of the carriage and hits anyone who sticks their head out with a large shovel.

Porter writes a note explaining the situation and places it in Harbottle's empty 'medicine' bottle. When they pass a large station, he throws the bottle through the window of the stationmaster's office, alerting the authorities to their plight. The entire railway goes into action, with lines being closed and other trains re-routed so that Gladstone can finally crash into a siding where the waiting police force arrest the gun runners.

After a short-lived celebration, in which Harbottle points out that Gladstone is ninety years old and Porter claims it is good for another ninety, the engine explodes after its hectic journey, and Porter, Harbottle and Albert lower their hats in respect.

Wednesday, 27 July 2011

GWR Tender Locomotives Part 1

A selection of the ongoing project to build every class of GWR locomotive. Some where along the line I ended up with 4 Lima Kings in a job lot, 2 of which were rebuilt as standard and the 3rd became the odd looking 1930's streamlined locomotive. The 47xx in the last photograph uses one of the King boilers, two Mainline 43xx chassis and body, plus a Hornby tender. It's quite a Frankenstein but prototypical of the latest new build announced last month by Didcot.

Some of the locomotives pictured have been photographed before lining, handrails and painting.