…or another bit of the wish list completed!

Drummond 131 class No132 looks a little work stained as she rests between duties.

Ever since reading David L. Smith’s Tales of the Glasgow & South Western Railway as a schoolboy my model railway interest, some say obsession, has been to reproduce in model form some of the old Sou’ West. Since adopting 7mm scale, after many years modelling in P4, my modelling time has been concentrated on building locomotives with the aim of having a miniature of each of the principal classes. With the completion of No 132 I have now built one of each of the small wheeled 4-4-0s hence this short article to mark the milestone.

The Glasgow and South Western Railway was a medium sized but self contained concern serving the South Western corner of Scotland, a triangle with Glasgow, Carlisle and Ayr at its corners. Most of its revenue came from coal and mineral traffic but it also ran an extensive passenger service radiating from its principal Glasgow terminus, St Enoch’s. For the trains to Ayr and Carlisle the 153 & 8 classes of 4-4-0 with 6ft9in driving wheels were on top of the job but were a bit out of their depth on the very difficult Greenock Road. The line has a gradient profile similar to a house roof climbing at 1in70 from the platform end at Princes Pier reaching a summit just before Upper Port Glasgow. For this difficult line a locomotive with a 6ft driving wheel was found to be ideal. The first of these being the ‘Wee’ or ‘Greenock’ bogies introduced in 1882 to the design of Hugh Smellie.

Wee Bogie No128 waits its next turn of duty in the yard at Auchlin.

Power is provided by an RG7 motor and gearbox. My only loco so fitted and unfortunately my only loco to emit a most unrealistic whine when running. Another disadvantage of the RG7 is its size which makes fitting into a small boiler loco quite tricky and leaves little space for additional weight.

With small boiler 4-4-0s the space between the frames is very noticeable and needs some representation of the cylinders and motion. On this model I chose to fit a non-working set that looks as if it would work. When the engine is stationary nothing moves anyway and when in motion it’s difficult to see if anything is moving.

The Wee Bogies were dual fitted making them suitable for working trains of the Auld Enemy, the Caley, and carried the Westinghouse or ‘Washin' Hoose’ pump on the driver’s side. The pump was quite a small one and nothing from the trade was suitable so a fair bit of time was spent in fabrication from turnings and bits of wire and tube.

The open type cab requires full detailing which in this engine is built round a gravity cast white metal boiler front which I made in a RTV (room temperature vulcanizing) rubber mould using scrap white metal melted on the gas cooker. Fittings are either scratch built or from commercial brass castings. To add a bit of life, and essential ballast, a portly white metal crew fill the cab, fine when on the road but a wee bit silly when stabled on shed.

After the loco the tender is a relatively straightforward piece of modelling with only a couple of difficult bits. The flared top is a bit tricky to make. I like to make it as a separate, oversize, piece soldered onto the sides and back and then flared in a specially made pair of bending bars before trimming to size. The beading was soldered on after the sides and back has been assembled around a floor and tank top. The beading is formed from well-tinned half- round wire. I found that the most difficult bit on this tender was the brake gear.

On these engines the brakes have pull rods both outside and inside each wheel. This is difficult to keep in line and close to the wheels without causing a short and made even trickier by having compensation levers between the second and third set of wheels. I cut out the rods in pairs and assembled them with thin wall brass tubing as spacers and 0.5mm wire for the pivots. The brake shoes are Slaters plastic ones which help avoid nasty sparks. The wheels run in simple inside bearings with little coil springs and the brakes are held on by 12BA screws into the inside frames so that they can be removed for painting and maintenance.

The livery was applied with my trusty Badger airbrush over a primer coat of rattle can grey. The green was mixed from the Humbrol range and the footplate angle is from Precision Paints. I applied the lining with a bow pen, small brush and Pelikan inks. The lettering and garter crest was hand painted. An overall spray of Ronseal satin varnish sealed everything in. So far I have not added any weathering and the loco displays an ex-works appearance. I was fortunate to be awarded the Chairman’s Cup for 128 at Guildex 2002. No 128 pauses at Auchlin station on the ordinary passenger service to Ayr. Greenock Bogie No 355 sits in the bay as Wee Bogie 128 calls with a stopping train for Ayr.

When James Manson took over the locomotive reins at Kilmarnock in 1890 he produced a successor to the ‘Wee Bogie’. This was the 336 Class but they were universally known as ‘Greenock Bogies’. The design was very similar to Manson’s 8 Class which was the principal express locomotive but they were fitted with smaller driving wheels that increased the tractive effort making them more suitable for the hill climbing required on the Greenock road. My model is based on No 355 and was built from the G&SWR Association kit which was produced in limited numbers. The kit was available to members only and is now out of production. I was involved in the design work and made the casting patterns so when I came to build my own model I decided to add all the bells and whistles.

The wheels are from the Slaters range which I thinned down and re-profiled to S7 standards. The wheels are sprung with Slaters horn guides and coil springs, power comes from a Mashima 1833 driving the rear axle through Ultrascale 40-1 gear set.

Current is collected by my own design of light sprung plungers on both driving axles and by wire wipers on the tender wheels. I chose to fit full working valve gear on this engine as the valves are on top of the cylinders, actuated by rocking shafts, and quite prominent. The cranks are fabricated from mild steel plate and 3/16 in steel taken from a redundant O gauge axle. The cranks and eccentrics were fitted at the same time and pinned and soft soldered before cutting the main axle. The correct width between the frames makes fitting valve gear a little bit easier though still a fiddly job.

The rest of the model was as per the kit except I chose to fit the brakes with plastic shoes allowing them to touch the tyres as per prototype. Paintwork is very similar to 128 but she carries her ownership on the tender side courtesy of G&SWR Association transfer lettering. A lot easier than hand painting and another benefit that membership of a line society can bring. A little light weathering round the wheels and tender top gives an impression of a loco recently out of the works and well cared for.

I was fortunate to win the loco building competition at Guildex in 2009 with 355.

In 1912 James Manson retired after 26 years in charge of the Locomotive department and was replaced by Peter Drummond who had been in a similar capacity on the Highland Railway. This was a time of change on the Sou’ West. Drummond’s ideas were at odds with all that had gone before. Gone were the delicate Edwardian lines of Manson to be replaced by the massive and heavy lines of a typical Drummond engine. His first design for the Sou’ West was a goods engine which at the time was the heaviest 0-6-0 in the British Isles. His first 4-4-0 was the 131 class and surprise, surprise, they too were the heaviest of their type beating the GCR Director by 17cwt.

As built, the 131 class had steam driers and Drummond feed-water heaters but these were soon removed. There are tales of poor riding with the loco taking sudden lurches and discouraging the drivers from running fast. An improvement came with Drummond’s next 4-4-0, the 137 class, which was similar in appearance but sported full superheat and Weir’s feedwater heating apparatus. Once again they broke the weight records not beaten until the LNER D49 Shires came out. They also inherited the rough riding characteristics.

In model form they make impressive locomotives with lots of room for weight over the 10’ wheelbase. I built both together up to the detailing stage and then concentrated on each individual engine. Wheels were Slaters again re-profiled in house but this time I made my own horn guides from brass angle and axleboxes from square brass bar. The bogie carries a share of weight and guides the loco into curves by means of a sprung centre bearing. Power comes from a Cannon motor mounted vertically at the rear of the firebox leaving ample room for a large piece of lead cast in a simple wooden mould but tailored to fill the available space. Pickups are again low force plungers on the loco and fine wire scrapers on the tender.

Bodywork is mostly nickel silver with brass angle used on the cab roof. As I was making more than one engine I made patterns for the boiler mountings and tender axleboxes and cast them at home in RTV moulds again using scrap whitemetal.

No 132 is finished in Drummond Green, actually Railmatch SR light olive, with Precision G&SWR red on the tender frames and footplate angles. Lining is paint this time with Humbrol applied by bow pen and brush. I have chosen to apply a heavy weathering to replicate a working engine during the dark days of WW1 when cleaning took a bit of a back seat. The crew are both taking their ease sitting on the splashers inside the cab which doesn’t look too silly when the loco is on shed.

Superheated Drummond No 14519, newly turned out in her new LMS red coat adds a splash of colour to the drab Ayrshire coalfield.