Here's my effort with this old classic which originally featured in the Rosebud/Kitmaster range before being re-popped by Airfix and latterly by Dapol and the model has been built for the Classic British Kits SIG display at this year's Scale Model World show at Telford. The box art features the famous Evening Star, the last steam locomotive built for British Railways. I decided to build the loco as a black workaday Class 9F, which I felt was more representative of the class as only the ES was finished in the passenger green livery. A lot of work has gone into this, which includes removal of moulded on detail and replacement thereof with plastic rod, stretched sprue and tubing, together with steam pipes being manufactured out of brass wire and stretched sprue and brake blocks were added to the wheels using plastic card wedges. Parts were also liberated from a 1/48th Dragon Ta-152 engine sprue, together with small control wheels for the cab being made from tank parts and a scrapped Airfix 88mm gun. In addition to the control wheels, the cab received additional internal parts, such as crew seats and rear partitions and levers etc made from some of the Ta parts, plastic card and rod and was glazed using packaging material held in place with Glue and Glaze. The tender also received a re-built rear ladder and various other details such as new grab handles and rear cross member details. I also added some old metal chain front and rear. In all I would conservatively estimate that I have doubled, if not tripled, the original parts count with all of the additional scratchbuilt items. The basic colour scheme of matt black and NATO black was applied by airbrush and thereafter dry brushing was employed to bring out the detail.
This is my first locomotive build - I usually build aircraft and military vehicles - I really enjoyed the project and it was good to get out of my comfort zone. Overall I'm pleased enough with the outcome, it's not perfect but then again are they ever?
The build has featured in my Workbench Window thread and in the CBK section relating to this year's SMW display - although the latter area is only accessible if you are a current CBK SIG member.
Thanks for looking.
Doing - Tamiya 1/35th Universal Carrier.
Work is the curse of the modelling classes!
IPMS#12300
