I took advantage of Hattons O Gauge Sale and purchased another Dapol Sentinal for £130, which I thought was a bargain.

This will be a total change of identity and region, and will become a Civil Engineers Loco. I have done a little research and two loco’s match my requirements for a Lowestoft loco, a bit more research still needed.

I have already taken off the vacuum pipework, the next steps will be to remove the LMS and numbers and repaint as necessary. I will also paint the buffer beams red, as they should be.

I have purchased some ‘Old Time Workshop’ suitable transfers that will give both options for my chosen loco.

Updates as I proceed.

Today has been extremely hot and Airbrushing was just about out of the question. I was looking through some photos of steam engines, especially weathering on the connecting rods and the motion.

I started to have a look through my enamel paints and see if any colours could replicate the weathering I was seeing. I found a Railmatch Jar marked up ‘oily steel’ and thought that it was worth a try.

I picked a Jinty and a J94 to try the new method on. I will add that I used to just leave the overspray on the connecting rods etc. They looked OK but did not stand scrutiny based on the photos I looked at.

Here are the results – I think its an improvement.

I have certainly spent a lot of time on this Loco and truth be told it has drained my confidence a bit. Anyway I masked the roof and the chassis/bogies off and loaded the Airbrush up with ‘true’ BR Blue not that horrible faded stuff. I then sprayed over the light blue that was not covered by weathering, I think I should have done this earlier rather than try and weather it away, but we all have to learn the hard way. After spraying the real BR Blue I cleaned all bits of overspray away.

Well here you are a few photos, am I happy, probably not, but it is certainly better than it was.

The first photo is a ‘before’ and the next four are ‘after’.

I think the title is a bit misleading, it is more a re-weathering. I purchased a factory weathered Loco that was going to be the base model for a Loco that was always one of my favorites. The re-numbering certainly was not easy due to being already weathered. I have to say that the factory weathering was about what I expected and left a lot to be desired, I was especially a bit doubtful about the ‘faded blue’ as it was just too perfect and even.

I decided to have a go at re-weathering it over the top of the original factory weathering. Special attention would be given to the Roof and Exhaust, and the Bogies which were a one colour splurge.

I have tried to make the colours more variable across the Loco and tried to dull down most of the Blue with misting and wash and wipe. I don’t think the prototype was ever as dirty as this but needs must!

Well here are the results, I feel it is an improvement, but I am still likely to have another attempt later.

There is no doubt about it that the dear old Jinty is as about as Midland as you can get, but by picking the right numbers you can pick Loco’s that spent long periods of time on other Regions of BR in the 50’s.

I find research a big part of this hobby and thoroughly enjoy it. Finding out all details of a certain Loco can be easy at times, but it can also be frustrating, after all we have to rely on info that is now over 70 years old, and there are conflicts. I try to confirm all info in at least two different books or internet info.

47480 (push-pull)

I had to renumber and letter this Loco as Dapol have not done a BR example yet – it ended up being a partial repaint, but it is something a bit different. This Loco along with a few other Push/Pull fitted Locos spent most of the 50’s on the Western Region, although it did return to the Midland Region in the late 50’s until withdrawn. This means with careful planning it can run on two different Regions on my Shed layout. It was based at  87K  while on the WR.

47429

This Loco was an Eastern Region Loco during most of the 50’s being based on the old LTS line for a time, 33A mainly, but it also spent time at 35A,B and C as well as 34E. In the late 50’s it was transferred  back to the Midland Region. Again it can appear on my Shed layout on two different Regions.

47329

This is a pure Scottish engine and spent all of the 50’s at 67A. Sadly this was also a quite early withdrawal, going in 1959.

Conclusion

I have three Loco, but I can run different eras or Regions. The Loco’s have just been weathered in my ‘return to weathering batch’  Two are Light Bodies (Dusting) and Medium Chassis, the other, the push -pull Loco is Medium overall.

One further little comment, most Sheds had a predominance of one type of Loco allocated, but at Exhibitions you regularly see 10 Loco’s or so, all different types – not really prototypical. With the likes of Dapol and other now producing reasonably priced Models in O Gauge, why not have a small batch of one type of Loco.

These two Loco’s have very different stories.

68073 Small Coal Bunker.

This Loco was purchased about ten years ago and sat in its box for about four years before I plucked up enough courage to strip off its lacquer. This Loco came in a brass finish and needed dismantling and cleaning before spraying. I used a Badger ‘grit’ airbrush and spent a lot of time getting all lacquer off – a very dirty job.

It was then undercoated (2 layers) and top coated (2 layers). The transfers were mostly HMRS and Fox. It was then left in the box again until last week when the second J94 arrived after an Ebay purchase.

68023 Extended Coal Bunker

This Loco arrived last week in ‘new’ condition, pre-painted by Bachmann and ready for transfers, see previous post.

Weathering

After doing the transfers on 68023, I retrieved 68073 from storage so that they could be weathered at the same time. I decided that I wanted a relatively light body weathering with the chassis just a bit dirtier. Both Loco’s are what I call ‘misted’ on the body.

This is an O Gauge Sentinal purchased by my Son direct from the Dapol NQP sale. It cost just £100 and the only problem was a missing part that was easily replaced and it ran very well.

After renumbering it as shown in a previous post, I decided that this loco would be my first weathering since Self Isolating back in early March.

I have done this post a bit different from my usual ones in that more close up photos of the weathering is shown.

If anybody wants further info on how I achieved any of the effects – I will explain further.

I have several recently purchased Loco’s that required some numbering/renumbering. Having still not made my mind up as to what layout I will produce next, I thought I would catch up with steam locos.

The Locos are posed on ‘Mission Road’.

I used HMRS for the numbers and Fox for all the little add-ons etc. All have received a coat of varnish ready for weathering later.