Every railway modeller has a favourite locomotive. For some it will be a dashing express engine with shiny paintwork and gleaming brass. For me it is a little know engine that ran on a colliery line. I love it because it is different, dirty, chunky and has lots of waggly bits. From the title of this post you will realise I am referring to a Garratt locomotive - in this case, William Francis.
Needless to say I have built a model of this loco. It runs on my 4mm layout Melbridge Dock - you can find a picture on this page. While it's not really appropriate (I justify it by pointing out one of the 4 locos of this type ran onto Cardiff docks occasionally) since it's my train set, then I get to run what I like. Shunting a 6ft long model with an articulated engine is fun anyway.
I've always had a hankering to build the loco again, but in a larger scale. At one point Backwoods Miniatures, the manufacturers of this 4mm kit, were looking at a 7mm version but this never happened. Then several years ago a kit appeared as a limited run by a consortium called Avondale kits. At the time my wallet couldn't handle the price and apart from one bogie unit I never saw a finished model.
A couple of years ago I was chatting to Mercian Trevor and he admitted to being part of this consortium. He also knew where the master for the etches were. Much prompting from me, and detective work from him and we think all the parts can be brought back together. The original run had never been completed and the moulds still have life in them so the kit may be a commercial proposition again. First though, someone had to go through it and make sure everything was OK. And I was determined that person was going to be me.
Of course it helps that Trevor had always wanted one of these locomotives and always been too busy to do something about it. So I'll be building two of them.
At this point some history would be useful - and I can't do better than suggest you follow this link to a page by the Industrial Railway Society article.
So yesterday I dug out the bits. You get several etches and a bag of whitemetal and lost wax castings. The photo shows the whistle - what a beauty. The other castings are just as good.
The plan is that I am to get "something" ready for Warley. How far I get depends on how good the kit design is and how much time I have to put into it. Whatever happens though, I want to build this kit more than many I've had in front of me so there is a big supply of midnight oil on order...
More information and pictures of Garratts can be found here.
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