Horsetan

Thanks for this. E-mail sent. Fingers crossed......

Father Jack: "They lie in wait like wolves, the smell of blood in their nostrils. Waiting, interminably waiting, and then..."

Slightly OT, but when I saw 461 appear in a film (it may have been Michael Collins), there was something quite weird about the way it moved. It may have been the quality of the track, or possibly the camera itself but as it came towards the camera, it actually appeared to bounce on its springs with every revolution of the driving wheels. I've never seen anything quite like that before or since!

Careful now.

Looks like SSM or Worsley, then. Can't wait to see the look on Des's face when you approach him with "a proposition".....!

Does he have a website?

I think Des said a while ago that he was looking at designing kits for the D17 and D19 4-4-0s in the years ahead, but had no plans for any other steam classes. Half the problem with trying to design any locomotive kit is - in the absence of a preserved example - whether the original GA drawings, etc. are still available and accessible.

The really good thing is that you can build this kit as a number of sub-assemblies before you try to fit everything together. It may not have been Terry MacDermott's original intention when he designed it all those years ago, but it's certainly turning out that way! There is room for improvement, though. Cab interior next, I think. Question: if anyone has any photos of no.171 with its boiler "off the frames" (has it ever been lifted in preservation?), I'll pump your arms off if there are views of the inside motion!

Interesting. Is your proposal RTR or are you going to be putting subtle pressure on SSM to design a kit? Chassis for 461 would - on the face of it - be simple; no visible valve gear, but plenty of space between the frames (in 21mm) to have working cranks and inside motion. My name's already down for NCC "WT"/Jeep no.4, which Worsley Works have been quietly slaving over for a little while!

A bit more work on rolling the cab roof eaves has been reasonably successful, and they now look like this: The whole point is to get the roof profile to match that of the cab front, which is why I said earlier that the thing wasn't as easy as it looked! We are almost ready to start soldering the cab and splashers to the footplate, so that means the central section carrying the nameplates can be sawn out. The instructions say that on the inner rims of the footplate have half-etched "ledges" for the cab and splashers to sit on, and they are visible in this shot: You'll also spot that the right-hand/offside "ledge" is far better defined than the nearside one, which doesn't give enough room for the nearside splashers to rest on. This is likely to be a flaw in the etching process, which allowed one side to be more exposed than the other. The original artwork should have both sides equal - perhaps Des / Weshty can confirm that the artwork he inherited does in fact look that way? Here we are for tonight, and it's begining to look a bit more like no.171 in the Erecting Shop:

.....which is what I was after.....