One of the things that my abandoned quarry Cloddfa Pedr was crying out for was a small locomotive that would have been used for shunting the wagons and skips. The answer came to me from re-reading one of the late Peter Jones' Garden Railways articles in which he discussed the merits of the "shoebox project", a modelling project in which all the materials and tools required could be kept in a shoebox and thus bought out whenever the opportunity arises whilst watching TV or on the dining table etc. I took this principle one step further and decided to build a generic little "Lister / Simplex type" IC industrial shunter using only bits and pieces left over from kits and collected in various spares boxes under the title "that might come in handy one day".
The result is "Byg" the name ironically looking like it should be pronounced Big in English, but actually being Bug with the Welsh use of the letter Y. Now pretty Bug aint and neither is she the Flying Scotsman.
Here's a list of the components used in the build.
* Axle boxes and wheels - IP left over from kits. I'm not a great fan of IP's running gear and have replaced these, hence the reason they were in the spares box. As Bug is a non-working model this becomes irrelevant - plus the IP wheels will go nicely rusty when it's parked in the quarry.
* Chassis / buffer beams - stripwood and various thickness of plasticard. Some of the Plasticard still has it's 22P price tag on it from Beatties, so you can tell that I've had it a while!
* Seat / toolbox - Plasticard box covered with coffee stirrers.
* Engine cover - A lump of wood covered in shaped plasticard. The air filter came in one of Back2Bay6's brilliant "grab bags" of various bits. It's domed top is a washer and Phillips screw filled with Araldite. The exhaust stack is a Hartland pick-up bullet removed form one of my trams during it's recent battery conversion.
* Controls - The hand control levers are from the wife's sewing box, the control panel from plasticard (the instruments have been "liberated") and the foot pedal is the rounded end of a coffee stirrer and a piece of garden wire. The brake wheel came from a Bachmann caboose.
* Lifting eyes - Hartland, courtesy of Matt.
* Chain - Purchased in bulk from charity shops for next to nothing.
* Step and coupling hooks - More garden wire.
* Oil / fuel drums - Back2Bay6 and Perfect World. The Esso decal is from a Tamiya LeMans Toyota racing car kit. It's the closest Bug will ever get to being glamorous!!
The only thing I'd still like to add is a radiator to fit on the end of the engine cover. The question is - do I have a look for something suitable the next time I'm at Back2Bay6, or do I make something in the spirit of the rest of the model???
Bug will now re-enter the workshops for a kind of reverse preservation - ie a generous covering of rust. After all, she is supposed to have been abandoned!!
The result is "Byg" the name ironically looking like it should be pronounced Big in English, but actually being Bug with the Welsh use of the letter Y. Now pretty Bug aint and neither is she the Flying Scotsman.
Here's a list of the components used in the build.
* Axle boxes and wheels - IP left over from kits. I'm not a great fan of IP's running gear and have replaced these, hence the reason they were in the spares box. As Bug is a non-working model this becomes irrelevant - plus the IP wheels will go nicely rusty when it's parked in the quarry.
* Chassis / buffer beams - stripwood and various thickness of plasticard. Some of the Plasticard still has it's 22P price tag on it from Beatties, so you can tell that I've had it a while!
* Seat / toolbox - Plasticard box covered with coffee stirrers.
* Engine cover - A lump of wood covered in shaped plasticard. The air filter came in one of Back2Bay6's brilliant "grab bags" of various bits. It's domed top is a washer and Phillips screw filled with Araldite. The exhaust stack is a Hartland pick-up bullet removed form one of my trams during it's recent battery conversion.
* Controls - The hand control levers are from the wife's sewing box, the control panel from plasticard (the instruments have been "liberated") and the foot pedal is the rounded end of a coffee stirrer and a piece of garden wire. The brake wheel came from a Bachmann caboose.
* Lifting eyes - Hartland, courtesy of Matt.
* Chain - Purchased in bulk from charity shops for next to nothing.
* Step and coupling hooks - More garden wire.
* Oil / fuel drums - Back2Bay6 and Perfect World. The Esso decal is from a Tamiya LeMans Toyota racing car kit. It's the closest Bug will ever get to being glamorous!!
The only thing I'd still like to add is a radiator to fit on the end of the engine cover. The question is - do I have a look for something suitable the next time I'm at Back2Bay6, or do I make something in the spirit of the rest of the model???
Bug will now re-enter the workshops for a kind of reverse preservation - ie a generous covering of rust. After all, she is supposed to have been abandoned!!
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