A New Loco

After a lull in modelling during the summer, I returned to the diorama and later in the autumn started a new loco. My model in the Vale of Glamorgan is slowly acquiring a landscape in this south-easterly view, in which the trees act as an easterly view blocker. The Aberthaw power station chimneys are just visible on the Welsh side of the Bristol Channel (on the left past the lower branches), while on the English side Weston-super-Mare is lost in the haze below the distant line of low-lying clouds.

By the middle of September I was collecting information on the GWR 2884-class 2-8-0s with help coming from Devon, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire (thanks Ian, Ian and Nick). The inspiration for a model of this class was finding out that it shared a Swindon No 1 boiler with my Hall and has a similar side-window cab. I like the idea of building a pair of locos with design similarities, as with the two Caledonian 4-4-0s I made for Kyle of Sutherland.

One of the very few colour photographs I took of ex-GWR locos in steam was of 3842 at Cardiff in the spring of 1965. The model will be of 3832, the first of this class I saw in November 1962 at Worcester on a school trip to Stratford-on-Avon. A heavy freight loco for St Donats 1963 is not as illogical as it sounds: the real Vale of Glamorgan Railway regularly hosted trains diverted from the main Bridgend to Cardiff line because of engineering work.

This mock-up of 3832’s cab, footplate and smokebox saddle was paired with Toynbee Hall’s boiler to test my boiler theory against the 1965 photograph taken alongside the then-new Cardiff Canton diesel depot. 

Hall Chassis Progress

 The final job on the body, before turning to the chassis, was the cab roof.

The first job on the chassis was the bogie. I was off to a flying start with a spare P4 part from a Martin Finney kit: Part 18, the fold-up etching for the basic frame. The remaining dozen parts used measurements of the Finney frame to supplement the few bogie measurements I did have. I incorporated my usual style of side control springing acting at axle level on the 3/32" brass tube mounting pillar.

Toynbee Hall now has a chassis with spacers temporarily soldered one side only, loosely assembled with jig axles, a trial cylinder assembly from a set of  Kemilway parts I bought in 1985 through the Scalefour Society, and a painted bogie with jury axles. I made up a cross-frame slidebar bracket from spare Finney Parts 39 laminated around a central core at the appropriate spacing. And to help with the illusion, I fettled the smokebox door rescued from my old Triang Albert Hall bought in 1967/8, added a nickel door dart and a front number plate for 5961.

Hall Boiler Progress

At long last I sourced a sheet of 8 thou nickel silver (thanks for the recommendation, Frank) allowing me to continue with Toynbee Hall’s taper boiler – see post of 4^th October, 2020. I also found it so much easier to in-fill the cut-out in the cab front rather than make a new item, and the Finney chimney certainly helps the look of the model.

The boiler and firebox bolt together, and the boiler is a push fit onto the extended smokebox inner. The complete boiler unit sits on the saddle at one end, bolted to the smokebox, and is bolted to the cab front at the other end. I finished this stage of the work by preparing a nickel blank for the cab roof, then put the project to one side to take a break.