Sean

So as I havent painted a straight line by hand in over 100 years I decided to do the first paint job without any sanding or filling as i knew it would be an absolute horror show either way, and well i wasnt wrong so theres little need to share this example experimented with adding the third wheel, which the chassis could successfully take however once the footplate was installed back on it was locking up the new wheel so I will need to revisit this later with a dremel when it goes back in for another paint job after ive had some more practice with a brush however for now I am very happy with what I was able to pull together in just a few evenings with mostly scrap and a chassis to run it on. back on duty breaking up the incoming tanker train. waiting for passenger services to leave in order to move test freshly converted load around the network.

after a good session of trimming,gluing and filling its straight into service shunting the incoming tanker train before a slot becomes available in the paint shop, soon she will be sprayed up into her original cie livery.

In all my years of playing with model trains I have never built any of my own items of rolling stock, but as I am trying to add more CIE stuff to my collection(on a budget!) I thought it would be a great time to start. I havent modelled anything except for badly put together airfix kits when i was younger so I am modelling from a complete beginners perspective on this one! This body shell comes from a toy HO guage set I had years ago, has been knocking around in my model box for years as i had always thought about trying to turn it into a 121 "one day", however of course that day never came, in the past couple of weeks I have been looking at photos of a lot of old stock to see what i could repaint or remodel into cie vehicles and so the E class popped up. I had been comparing this to my Hornby class 06 but thought there was too many differences for me to be able to do a convicing conversion when i came accross this old bodyshell and noticed that it shared a lot of details with the E class, big square opening near the front with a round opening on top, and louvred doors running back along to the cab, I thought great ill mate the body to the cab of the class o6 and that will be an ok first conversion, I will use some artistic license to make it into an 0-4-0 loco and it will look great on my new layout. On closer inspection I decided that the cab on the HO Loco had a closer window arrangement and although it had no door i would either cut one in later with the dremel or just leave that detail out, however now that im feeling a little more confidecent i may end up using the sides from the 06 cab to detail more when im done. So after undressing 06 and hacking away at the bodyshell for around half an hour with a blunt instrument I was left with this, notice how I have also dug out a spare set of loco wheels from my spares box ;) the plastic card is just a random bit of plastic card i found in the house. now time to start trying to turn it back into a locomotive! So a little while later this is what i have ended up with. the back of the loco has been built back up with plastic card and now needs to be trimmed down to shape, the 06 footplate got its buffers removed and a spraying of black paint, the engine section has had its chimney filled in as well as the headlight hole on the front, I did sand the front flush to look more like the E class however the blob of filler has meant i need to do it again. finally starting to look like how its supposed to, the body will be able to slide forward a few mm on the footplate when i trim off the bottom of the plastic card which will improve the overall look, im really looking forward to getting the 2 body pieces mated together and looking nice so i can put a cover of black paint on.