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Hobby Holidays	Phil Atkinson
The Spinney, Low Street	01427 848979
Beckingham
Doncaster	Email: phil@hobbyholidays.co.uk
South Yorkshire	Web: http://www.hobbyholidays.co.uk
DN10 4PW

Designed by Nick Easton

Purchased, built and reviewed by John Evans

At Telford in 2015 I purchased the kit for this locomotive from Nick Easton. For £250 it came complete with Slaters wheels and Mashima motor with fold up gear box. In the event I replaced the motor and gearbox with a Canon motor with a milled gearbox and spur gears which I had to hand.

The kit comes complete with ten sheets of instructions which whilst comprehensive are not always easily understood. I found it essential to have to hand LMS Journal No. 2 which contains photographs and General Arrangement drawings in order to identify all the etched components. If you like rivets this loco has plenty. They are accurately half-etched but it takes a few hours to punch them all out. The suggested method of construction is not one I would recommend and I always build the chassis before the superstructure not the reverse. It is suggested that the body, footplate and roof constructed as separate units and are then soldered together in order to facilitate the fixing of the radiator pipe which is attached to the end of the cab. I chose to keep the roof as a loose fit by cutting formers to the profile of the cab ends, rolling it and soldering it to these. The offending pipe can then be located with a touch of superglue as the last piece of assembly and can easily be removed if required.

A resin block is provided to represent the 400HP Paxman engine, although it’s a bit on the crude side. Instead of fixing this to the frames as suggested in the instructions, I chose to keep it in the main bodywork. The saving grace is that you cannot really see it through the windows. No cab interior details are provided nor any information on them. The General Arrangement drawing clearly shows basic controls and brake wheels in each cab.

The chassis goes together well with the exception of the crank throw which is fractionally different from the throw of the cranks on Slaters wheels. The instructions do suggest elongating the holes in the cranks if this appears to be the case, but by the time you get to this stage it is difficult to do this. I solved the problem by enlarging the relevant holes in the coupling rods, which, as the drive is on to the centre axle are not taking any force other than to rotate the cranks themselves. No provision is made for pick-ups and I used my tried and tested method of copperclad strips across the frames and phosphor-bronze strip bearing on the wheel treads. The other omission is that no rain strips for the roof are provided. You could use Plastikard strip as suggested, but brass L-shaped strip soldered on is a much better alternative and not anyway near as difficult a job as intimated.

At the end of the day a good model of an interesting prototype results. Shortcomings are the incorrect crank throw, the very basic resin block for the engine and no cab detail. Also what I regard as a very curious suggested method of construction. All in all the kit gives good value for money, but does demand some fairly intricate soldering and the suggestion that the window frames are attached with superglue is odd. Not to be commended for the beginner, but anyone with some experience should not find it too difficult. I would however recommend building the roof as a detachable unit. The plus to this is that when I can source a good representation of the engine block it is easily installed.

A copy of this review was sent to Nick Easton who thanked John for his very fair comments. Nick has built a number of the kits himself and pointed out that he did not encounter the problem with the crank throw dimensions experienced by John.