Purchased and Reviewed by Mark Horley (Gazette vol 21 issue 6 - Feb 2021)

I bought this kit at the 2018 Gauge O Guild show at Telford, direct from the Alphagraphics stand priced at £95. I have previously enjoyed constructing their card building kits and had admired the example locomotive on their stand for several years. The prototype was supplied by Hunslet to the Timoleague & Courtmacsherry Light Railway in Ireland, but the addition of the leading pony truck to the standard 0-6-0 design creates a much more interesting looking engine. The kit can either be built to run on standard 32mm track or to scale Irish broad gauge.

The flatpack cardboard box contains four sheets of etched brass components, a bag of whitemetal castings and instructions. The instructions are a suggested assembly sequence, described in text with annotated pictures of the three main sub-assemblies: footplate and body, chassis and boiler. There is also a scale drawing in plan and side elevation.

At the show I bought Slater’s wheels (£80), a Mashima 1833 motor and gearbox (£50) and sprung wagon buffers to replace the solid castings supplied. You also need to supply sundries such as top hat axle bearings, ₃/₃₂ in. and ₃/₁₆ in. tube, various thicknesses of wire, couplings, handrail knobs and pickups.

Following the instructions, I started with the footplate and body. Most parts are located by tabs in slots, so you can’t go too far wrong but you need to watch for the fine alignment. My first problem occurred when I went to add the body sides and realised the previously attached bunker front and top looked wrong. The half-etched line on the bunker etch (part 2) is about 2mm too low so you need to create a new fold line higher up. The buffer beams again fold up to create a box but if you want to use sprung buffers (I used NMRS sprung GWR taper wagon buffers) you need to drill through the rear face of the buffer beams and consider cutting a slot in the footplate to accommodate the back of the buffer shank. I also found the half-etched overlays for the face of the buffer beam had two slots for the safety chain eyes to fit into, but corresponding holes in the buffer beam sub structure had to be drilled out.

The chassis is etched in a single piece which folds into a U-shape channel with a number of T-shaped spacers which solder into slots into the chassis side members working in numeric order from the front to the back (one of the two photos is labelled incorrectly). I deviated from the instructions soldering up the coupling rods and then used my Hobby Holidays’ jig to set the driving axle bearings in position. I had to ease the centre axle hole a fraction but I doubt this was an adjustment which would impact on running. The kit doesn’t include any arrangements for electrical pickups so, before folding up the chassis, I drilled holes to allow homemade plunger type pickups to be used. Having assembled the front pony truck I found the fit of the Slater’s axle rather loose, so I added OO driving axle bearings which I had to enlarge slightly with a file. The front buffer beam is soldered to the front of the chassis mainframes with horizontal slots in the rear face engaging with tabs on the front of the footplate. I identified parts 53 and 54 as guard irons to be attached to front and rear of chassis and also added sand pipes from 0.9mm wire and scrap etch.

The smokebox is a simple unit assembly from front and back plates with a half-etched wrapper. The firebox is a single etch which needs forming into an inverted open box, the front and sides being bent around a rod to form rounded edges. The boiler itself is a half-etched sheet, which I formed into a cylinder using rolling bars. With no positive tabs or slots, aligning the firebox, smokebox and boiler is tricky and requires some patience supporting the various elements before tack soldering together.

From the trial fitting of boiler to footplate I thought there were several visible gaps which I decided to fill by soldering in pieces of scrap etch. The kit is designed to take an 1833 motor with a Premier Components gear set and an etched gearbox frame suppled in the kit. Having bought an MSC 1833 motor complete with gearbox I found the geometry was different, so I had to add about 3mm onto the back of the firebox to allow this to fit. The firebox back has a layer with half-etched relief and a regulator to which I added some additional pipes from wire and scrap etch.

The builder should then form the ejector pipe from 1.5mm wire, lubricator pipes from 0.5mm wire and the whistle pipe from 0.9mm wire using the drawing and photos as a guide. There is a hole in the opposite side of the smokebox from the ejector pipe, so I added a thin pipe on this side as well. I also chose to add some rodding from scrap etch to represent the levers for the front sandboxes. I used Laurie Griffin castings (19-035) for the smokebox cylinder lubricators. The various whitemetal castings were then soldered or glued in position.

To finish I used an aerosol etching primer and then an overall coat of satin black. The depressions in etched nameplates supplied were painted red and the raised brass polished by gently rubbing on a sheet of paper. I have weathered the superstructure, mainly using the paint on, wipe off method propounded by George Dent. The underframe and wheels were treated with a stippling technique as recommended by Martyn Welch.

Overall, I enjoyed building this kit from Alphagraphics and I would recommend the kit to anyone who can solder. As designed, the parts fitted together well (apart from bunker front and safety chain eyes mentioned in review) and there are no long fold lines or half etched rivets to be punched. The alterations I made to fit sprung buffers and couplings are easy enough if carried out before parts are assembled.