A railcar tribute to John Webb

 

A mixture of circumstances, sees me add a GWR railcar from Kernow Models to my collection. The main driver for this being it reminding me of the stunning EM gauge Midland railcar, built by my late friend John Webb. His model was scratchbuilt, and the valve gear looked like something a watchmaker would put together. Now in the care of another friend, who has a suitable layout to run it on, a good home for it. 

However, I can now have something similar. It's even nearly the right livery - if you squint and lower your standards a bit. OK, it's maroon, but that's as close as I get. 

The model is very nice, and runs well on the little layout I've been taking to shows. 

In fact, I can see this being a reasonably useful model. When I need some passenger stock for a photo, it's going to be standing in!

The model is good, but not perfect. The buffers are sprung, but also rotate a little. Despite my best efforts, they always look wonky in pictures. A dot of superglue will fix this, at the price of unspringing them. I can live with that. 

There are some bufferbeam steps made from plastic which seem to stick out at odd angles. One of the front ones was really mad, but tweaking it back, the thing snapped off and now lives in the packet with the details. I'm not sure this can be fixed as there is little area for glue on the spindly support. Do I replace it with a metal one, or just cut the other off to match? 

For now, this is a lovely model. Yes, I still plan to finish the kit-built version one day, but that can be painted in BR blood'n'custard livery with some weathering. Not a paint job Kernow are likely to offer, along with Network Souteast. Yes, I did ask.