There will always be an England…. (Somewhere in the stash)

Whilst the primer and top coat on the Corris team car and van is drying and hardening, I’ve taken the current active nature of my modelling mojo to work on another project. With the intention of painting them all together on a clean work desk. 

There are two part built kit locos in my stash that are suitable for Wheal Ponder and ones which I’d rather like to see finished. Now seems as good a time as any to finish them off so they can run on the layout and before I get distracted on another layout project. 

Naturally, I chose the simpler one to finish first! This being a Port Wynnstay Ffestiniog Railway England loco. The England locos are similarly sized to the Fletcher Jennings locos I already have so will fit in nicely. They’re a popular choice amongst modellers, but hopefully mine will look a bit different to most. 

One advantage of getting the loco when Phil was still living in Derby is that I have a pick and mix kit of the original side tank loco, with a smoke box and cab from their latter period with weights on top of the side tanks. This combined with detail added from my bits box should make it look a little different. This being an England delivered to Cornwall rather than Wales after all. 

This kit has sat in the drawer part built for over a decade. I made up the footplate, tanks and cab before putting it aside. One reason for this is that I’d not got (and still don’t have) a Mercian chassis for this loco. I’d thought about scratchbuilding one or using parts of a Bachmann Porter to run it but this hadn’t got very far at all. 

Fast forward several years and I found myself looking at it again and comparing it to the Dapol B4 chassis that I’ve found runs like a dream under the Fletcher Jennings locos. 

The wheelbase might be 3mm too short but I was happy to overlook that. The chassis also has a single slide bar, but then so did the later Large England locos when delivered to the Ffestiniog so not infeasible. It was all close enough to make it worth a go and see where I ended up. 

The square tanks and boiler housing means there is plenty of space for a motor and gearbox. Sadly, not enough space for the circuit board wizardry fitted to the Dapol chassis. It was a simple job of removing this and the firebox flicker board. Cutting the wires and then re-soldering the ones together to feed the pick ups direct to the motor. As I use DC on my narrow gauge this wasn’t a problem. 

The chassis and firebox castings were then attacked with a mini dremel and a short (but messy) time later, I had a rebate in which the chassis sits snuggly. It’s still a couple of mm higher than an England ought to be, but I’m happy with how it looks. 

As part of this process, I had to remove the under footplate detail. This did give me a flat body to work on mind. Later in the process, I added the firebox detail back using styrene and a micro strip representation of the foundation ring with rivets embossed on. 

I’d originally intended building the loco without a tender, but it didn’t quite look right. Suppose we are accustomed to seeing England locos with tenders I suppose. I did wonder what one might look like as an 0-4-2 but I resisted that urge this time. I had a Port Wynnstay kit for the larger tender so put that together too. It didn’t take long and I’m pleased to say that it fits in the headshunt at Wheal Ponder with about three milimetres to spare!

My usual process is to add detail as I go. Working out what bits look suitable from my bits box and this is what I did this time. My selection of castings didn’t have some of the detail parts that come with a standard kit, but I was able to add sufficient parts to substitute and add a bit of personalisation to the loco. 

With my modelling mojo being quite strong at the moment, this process was a lag in a fairly quick one and the photos show the loco having a test run before being cleaned up for a coat of primer. 

Whilst were accustomed to seeing these locos painted red, reading the more recent histories of the Ffestiniog locos, I see that the England locos were either green or probably blue when built so there is some more choices there for painting. 

The loco undertook some test running this afternoon before entering the paint shop:

There are three weeks until the layout appears at the Narrow Gauge Now layout at Mansfield. I shan’t be building anything else between now and then. But will see whether the Corris carriages and this loco make it through to completion in time to feature. I’m not taking any bets on whether they will or they won’t at this stage!