Do you remember your first scratch built / kit bash efforts? The good old days..

[cbeckett]

Mine was in 196...cough, when I was 14 - a scratch built OO plasticard Sentinel departmental shunter (as used at Yarmouth and Lowestoft) running on a triang motor unit.

That was before girls, w**k, uni, SWMBOs (x2), uni again, mortgage, kids (x3) etc came along

@50 years later I wonder what happened to it? @45 years later, I started all over again...

Anyone else have fond memories?

PS It looked good to me at the time - whether I'd run a more critical eye over it now, I don't know....

 

[Dtsteam]

Not strictly speaking a bash, but in the spirit of the thread I hope....
Its 1980, and I`ve come home and put a bit of track down in my mums garden. I`ve just started work, I`ve joined the Fylde Tramway Society, and I desperately want a tram - a red one.  I couldn`t afford to trip off to Beatties in Blackpool, although I did enquire  and decided I couldn`t tell my mum I`d spent half a months wages on a tram. A guy in the FTS had a load of yellow trams and one red trailer, so he offered to swap the trailer for something to go behind his blue and white steeple cab. So my 4 wh blue cafe coach and a basic grey flat wagon went in exchange for a red trailer and a bow collector.  I painted all the detail, sprayed the roof a nauseous shade of cream, and stuck a few inappropriate bits and bobs on it. I didn`t have a motor block, so I borrowed the one out of my steam tram when I wanted to run. Given that I only had 2 engines, its was ages before anyone worked out that you could have an electric tram or a steam tram.

Anyway Charlies red tram has survived a few rebuilds over the years and now has a spiffy red trailer of its own to pull.

PS. I also got the cafe car back a few years later in exchange for some Faller E-Train, and that`s still kicking around.

 

[cbeckett]

And looking very handsome too! Not sertin baht the dubo, dubotn ... oh sod it, bozze advert!

 

[playmofire]

Looks very smart and, as you suggest, meets the spirit of the topic.

 

[dunnyrail]

My first Scratch Build effort was a TT Gauge LMS 4F, I was into the S and D at the time and built it in Metal Work at School out of TinPlate. It fitted on a Propriety Tri-ang Chassis. I left School in 1964 so a little while ago now!.
JonD

 

[Northsider]

My first bash (a term not used then) was another crime against Tri-ang TT gauge; working in OOn3 I (almost literally) bashed an Airfix 'Pug' cab and cylinders onto a Tri-ang Jinty 0-6-0 in a desperate attempt to create the Manx Northern/Isle of Man Railway 'Caledonia'. It was more successful than my 'Gem' whitemetal kit of one of the Beyer Peacocks, but that's not saying much!

 

[Rhinochugger]

The problem is that my early memories of trying to scratch build are not 'fond'.

Nothing was successful.

I am not a creator, I am more of a constructor. Thus I was ill equipped both by way of tools, equipment and knowledge, on top of which I was, and remain, extremely impatient.

That is the reason that I am probably rather too proud of my more recent efforts, which at least offer a passing resemblance of the prototype, and actually work

Like Nigel, I built a lot of 00 white metal kits. When I first had young kids, I used to build them for the Model Shop in Guildford for extra money. I could earn about 50p an hour tax free !! O0 O0 I have a photo of the DJH S15 - probably the only one I bothered to photo as most of the rest were GWR (with the exception of a C2X).

 

[Martino]

No photos, but in the '60s I created a sort of Fairlie out of two Airfix Pugs, and then using an Airfix prairie with a City of Truro boiler on a Hornby 8F chassis (with modified valve gear) made a GW 2-8-0 tank. Luckily, I saw sense and refited the valve gear on the 8F, and that's still around, waiting for the day I build the the OO shed layout I've been promising myself since 1968.

 

[viaEstrecha]

Mine was in 196...cough, when I was 14 - a scratch built OO plasticard Sentinel departmental shunter (as used at Yarmouth and Lowestoft) running on a triang motor unit.
PS It looked good to me at the time - whether I'd run a more critical eye over it now, I don't know....

We do seem to have some common themes in our youth, Chris! I too made one as my first attempt, I think a 'Prototype' version (?). As a 12 year old with minimal pocket money it was all I could afford, but it was cherished, even if it was rather tatty! I can just about recall seeing the real thing on the quay at Yarmouth, as we sat for ages in the traffic queue at the bridge, though my memory is awful these days and it might have been a small diesel by then. ???

 

[railwayman198]

In the mid 60's when I was 14 I attempted an over ambitious scratchbuild in brass of a 14xx tank in 3mm scale 14.2mm gauge. Needless to say it was never completed but the bits probably are still in their box in the loft of my parents' house that my brother still lives in. It proved to be my only flirtation with exact scale modelling. Thereafter I stuck with stuff that would actually run!

 

[Rod Fearnley]

My first actual running kit bash was a Wills white metal kit of a GWR Pannier tank 9400 Class in TT scale on a Tria-Ang chassis. I had the most basic tools ever back then.
My first scratch build was a Watford 0-6-2 suburban tank. Wills chassis and motor. Body built from tin scavenged from biscuit tins. fittings were white metal castings.
I remember each step, and was so chuffed when it finally ran. It ended up in Oklahoma some place.

 

[Dave Hill]

Hi all!  My first kit-bash was backdating a Bachmann 4-4-0 to the 1860`s American Civil War era.

 

[Rhinochugger]

[quote author=oberinntalbahn link=topic=300480.msg339194#msg339194 date=1420899179]
Could you possibly post a copy of the pic ?
[/quote]

I`ll have to find it, and scan it

I may be gone some time................................... O0


I`m not sure this helps - the camera was a bit basic in those days  :

 

[JGDURAND]

I began my first ones bash in 1975 with one 140C Jouef, araser the boiler and to put pipes in thread of brass, as well as 141R by modifying them wheels. All this is in cardboards
Then in the beginning of the 80s passing in G, had makes my scratchbuilt first one: a blacksmith some photos of which I show you.
For information the body of the stove is made with the top of a marker, the fireplace with the body of a pen. At the beginning this car was equipped with turned wooden wheels on a drill.
It was the beginning of a great adventure.
A few months ago by experience of consciousness I equipped it with wheels plastic and of link and pin

 

[KeithT]

My first scratchbuild was when I was about 12 in the very early 1950's.
I took a fancy to the Connel Ferry bridge simply because it took rail and car traffic, I had never seen it in real life although I did later whilst it was still in use by rail.
It was for my Triang 00 Princes Royal!! Prototypical? No!
At the same time I built a signal box which I named Creg-ny Baa for no better reason than I liked the name and motor bikes.

 

[Rhinochugger]

Thanks Chuggie, that looks rather nice. To be honest I never even knew there was a kit for an S15, or I might have had a go myself. Now, I'm about to invest in the forthcoming version from Hornby.

The luxury of the DJH kits was that they were all inclusive - the lot, wheels gears, motor. The only 'standard' extras that I had to add for the model shop locos was real coal in the tender (I stuck it down with matt varnish) and a screw link coupling on the front buffer beam (we used the wire couplings that had a sprung fixing behind the buffer beam).

The running number would have been one of the three locos (probably not 30503 with the early roof) featured in the ABC combined volume that features the A4 'Silver Fox' on the front cover. You had to make sure that the variant you modelled was correct for the running number, and that was my main reference book at the time.

 

[3Valve]

My first scratchbuild ever was an OO scale Thorneycroft Charabanc from plans provided in an Airfix modelling book borrowed from our School Library, about 1979.

First scratch build in G Scale was this steam tram loco

 

[vsmith]

More years ago than I care to remember,but it was a Trix or Minicraft N gauge 0-6-0 Donkey I bashed up to HOn30 scale, still have it somewhere even though it stopped running years ago.

First g scale bash was probably this railtruck:

from an HLW Mack, an LGB flatcar and various bits and pieces. Still have it, but its don' been "Uppgradded"

 

[PaulRhB]

I have no idea what my first scratchbuild actually was
I think the first was when I built a card boxcab body of a Schinige Platte electric on a Triang Dock shunter. Then there were various card builds all sealed and properly painted, a 009 Manning Wardle, a 1/12 model of 7 ¼ inch gauge loco and a card sentinel on an old Lego motor block!
Led to much kit and kit bashing since to build exactly what I want

 

[mikanmart]

My first G hacking was a pair of Stainz turned into a single bendy chassis job . Sort of Mallet like (more like a sledge hammer actually)
I had several requests for others , but , nobody would get me the two Stainz to butcher .
About 1968 I think .
I had more money than sense back then , now I have more sense and little money .

Mike