Peco 009 loco kit.

The first project of 2020 complete. Standard Peco product with a newly mounted Kato 103 for the drive. A couple of mod's: The extra cab sheet as fitted to the prototype and some extra control rods for the sandboxes and whistle. Unusually I've plumped for an ex-works finish with no weathering in the post 1920 black. Paint is Tamiya, X18 semi gloss black for the main body panels (which is new to me) and XF1 flat black for the tank tops, smokebox, chimney and cab roof.

On the face of it this is a dirt cheap 009 loco, roughly £35 + the Narrow Planet plates + the hours; far more fun to build than the mega bucks for the Fourdees RTR version. Reading between the lines these may not be available forever, but you can still get them from your local model shop. A couple of tidy ups to do on the painting and we're done. I've no real need for this once it's photographed so it may be up for grabs.

Narrow Planet name plates

Plates for the Glyn Valley loco rolled up today. As usual, a top quality product from Narrow Planet. Now I just need to get the kit finished.

Find Narrow Planet here

GWR cabside number plates

Number plates for the 14XX have arrived from Narrow Planet. Very tasty and a bespoke service all for just a couple of quid.

Hornby 14xx body

Another one of those old style conversions that doesn't seem to get done anymore. I note that there is less of this sort of thing going on and yet people are happy to pay £100 for a company to spray some muck on your loco and put coal in the bunker. Ho hum.
Anyway... Airfix/Hornby 14XX altered and backdated to be the first of the class i.e. 4800. So cabling scraped off, whistle shied removed, fireman's steps shaved and joy of joys hacking a filing the top feed away. This is an almost running Airfix example that I might swap onto a Hornby mech' as it'll run better and give more room in the cab. It only cost me a tenner, so not too scary to do. I might not be so happy with a brand new £70 exhttps://narrowplanet.myshopify.com/collections/custom-etched-productsample.
Plates have been ordered from Narrow Planet, which is a piece of cake - pick your scale, pick your number, type your card number in and they turn up. Perfect. Just make sure you get the number right... guess who didn't.

https://narrowplanet.myshopify.com/collections/custom-etched-products

Narrow Planet Nameplates

The nameplates arrived for the Rocoloco yesterday. Seriously tiny - not much more than five mil long. Stunning. For more details of how to get something similar, slide over to Steve Fulljames's link to your right and follow through to his Narrow Planet icon.

And now totally off subject: In case you missed it I moved house back in August and mostly due to internal work upstairs and the rotten weather we only got out in the garden to do a little GBH to all the overgrown stuff on Sunday, though most of this was sitting in the sun with a glass of wine. We'd worked out that there was a hell of a jungle at the end of the plot and if we could clear it then we would gain about six feet more garden, so we set to work. Half buried was one of those dustbins with the chimney, still full of semi burnt garden rubbish. Mrs F upended it. then called me over. 'Wow! Check this out.'

At the bottom was about half a bin liner full of drawings... special drawings...  This threw up a lot of questions. How long had they been there? At least eight months and they'd suffered a bit with the wet.. Who put them there? The little old lady who we bought the house from, or her husband who has been dead nearly two years? Or someone who helped clean the house out? Who ever it was wanted them burnt. Then there is the question of who produced them. The quality is good, but the subject matter is graphic and misogynistic in the extreme (the one below is one of the tamer selections). One would assume the late husband was the artist. Then you have to consider that he was a retired postman and she a retired art teacher. Him, her, both? Along with the finished sketches there are magazine pages mainly from the 1980s showing catwalk models. The limbs have been re-drawn in different poses in biro as if practising - these are not quick pervy drawings this is studiously practised stuff with a pretty good grasp of anatomical drawing techniques. But linking it with the octogenarian lady that we met is a bit weird.

Narrow Planet nameplates

Waiting on the doormat on my return from Wales was a small brown envelope from Narrow Planet (aka Steve Fulljames) containing two pairs of nameplates for the Bevans (I can't believe I just wrote that)

They are exquisite.

Only a couple of mill high and so small that my point-and-shoot camera won't focus that tight, but perfectly readable to the naked eye.