Ivor was telly trains for me. I'm too old for TV Thomas the Tank, but I loved the Postgate drawings and stories set in North Wales. In the corner of my bedroom for a long while was a dragon made from a cardboard box and of course, called Idris.
My version wouldn't have fitted in the firebox of a small engine, he started life (I think) as a box a boiler came in, and I could sit inside. His head was made from a shoebox and he liked to eat the waxy corrugated paper from chocolate boxes.
Anyway, Ivor is a little tricky to pin down. His boiler suit is grey/blue and he sports hi-viz for safety. It wasn't very hi-viz on the screen so I used a suitably dull orange chosen because it was the only orange I could find in my paint collection.
One area I don't think I have right is the neckerchief. I went for a red check on white, but with hindsight, I think it should be white spots on red. Oh well, he must have had more than one.
All I need now is an Ivor. There is a kit available, but I doubt I could live with those wheels and so construction would be a more challenging affair. On the other hand, I wouldn't fancy my chances of replicating the livery any other way.
Never mind, Jones will just have to drive other locos for a while. I'm sure he'll enjoy the challenge.
7 comments:
There is also a 4mm scale kit for Ivor.
Richard
And a 7mm scale one - both from PH designs. One day I'll get around to me O gauge kit...
And a free, downloadable one as well:
http://www.smallfilms.co.uk/ivor/makeivor.htm
I've got a stalled build of the 4mm scale PH designs one sat in a drawer that I would like to get back to. Main issue is that the stated wheel sizes are too big. I actually made my own to match the TV show (or at least got most of the way there) only to find that they wouldn't fit; they catch on the splashers and the wheelbase is fractionally two small so the wheels jam against each other. This might explain why I've never seen a completed 4mm version of this kit, either online or in real life.
You can see all the gory details over on my blog under the Ivor the Engine label. When I eventually go back to it I'll be sure to add more posts.
I have seen an I think EM gauge example running.
Indeed I asked hteowner to run it on hte Layout so that I could take a photograph of it and he obliged
Cant remember his surname or the name of the layout but it was at the EM gauge show at Bracknell I think 2 years ago.
Richard
Mark - you are making me nervous about the 7mm scale kit I have. After all, if you can't make the 4mm version work, and you are FAR from a newbie...
My gut feeling is that the 4mm kit might be a scaled down version of the 7mm kit. Certainly all the photos and drawings in the instructions for the 4mm kit seemed to first appear on an RMWeb thread documenting the design of the 7mm kit. If this is the case then the different wheel profiles in 4mm and 7mm might explain the reason for them not fitting. Either way, when you get to it I'd suggest measuring the wheelbase on the chassis etch before settling on a set of wheels to make sure they'll fit, and put the buffer beam at roughly the right height (also an issue on the 4mm kit as you might have seen from the maths in one of my blog posts).
Other than the wheels, the parts of the kit I've assembled so far weren't particularly tricky, although I haven't tried rolling the boiler yet... must add a set of rolling bars to my toolbox!
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