An old friend from the National Railway Museum came to me with a request. Could I renumber a Hornby 2P Locomotive ?
The model engine in question was to be presented to Ray Towell, the Rail Operations Manager at the museum during his retirement event. The number chosen was 40452, the first engine Ray had ridden on as a small boy.
The model was delivered to me and I started by rubbing the old numbers away using a cotton bud dipped in methelated spirits. With care I only managed to remove a tiny bit of lining but it took a fair bit of work. Then replacement numbers were chopped from a set of ModelMasters waterslide transfers and placed carefully on the cabside and smokebox door. Ideally I'd have gone for Fox ones but didn't have any to hand at the time. The model is destined to live in a display case so no varnishing was undertaken. Not something I'd risk if I expected the locomotive to be handled.
What I didn't realise until I got my hands on the thing was just how bad a model this is. If you look at the reversing lever, it goes through the boiler in an enormous gash ! How did that happen when they were designing the thing ? Anyway, whatever my misgivings, the loco certainly seemed to go down well with it's recipient. It's nice to make people happy with your model making !
Ummmm I looked up a couple of prototype photos, don't they also show the reversing lever going through the boiler cladding in the same way? Unless I'm misunderstanding the issue.
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It does look pretty curious.
Nice photos. They do show a gap in the boiler gladding but on the model this is a veritable crevasse thanks to the thickness of the plastic lever arm. This might be a case where a separate fitting is actually a bad move. Moulding it in to the boiler might have seemd old-fashioned but it would probably look better.
ReplyDeleteOf course this is a relatively old moulding. Now, I expect we'd see a metal arm and that would allow a more prototypical gash in the casing. I think this is the one of the models to be re-tooled later this year or next so we'll see how things improve.
Thank you Phil, after the event I got a text from Ray: "many, many thanks for my lovely 2P..." so rest assured it is appreciated.
ReplyDeleteAll the best
Anthony
And at the end of the day, that is all that matters. As I always say, "It's your train, if you like it then everyone else can shut up."
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