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Ragstone Models	Andy Beaton
26 Wadham Close	Email: andy@ragstonemodels.co.uk
Rowley Regis	Web: http://www.ragstonemodels.co.uk/
West Midlands
B65 9SH

Originally part of the Agenoria range

One wet summer’s day in 1964, then a fourteen year old schoolboy, I spent a day of my annual Cornish Summer holiday on Wadebridge station. The station pilot that day was 1367; the crew took pity on me and invited me up into the cab with my fish-and-chips, a neverto- be-forgotten event. I decided to mark the fiftieth anniversary of that event with a model of 1367.

This kit was purchased at the 2014 Kettering Show. The price of £300 included a set of Slater’s wheels, as well as all necessary nuts, bolts, wire and handrail knobs. I opted not to go with Agenoria’s Mashima motor and fold up gearbox which would have been an extra £30. I also purchased a copy of Irwell Press’s Pannier Papers No. 6 on the 1366 and 1500 classes. This was to prove invaluable during construction and also threw up the interesting fact that my’ loco made its final Works visit to Wolverhampton Stafford Road Works, only a couple of miles from where I spent my childhood trainspotting days. There are also many photographs of this attractive class to be found on the Internet.

The kit, supplied in a box big enough for the finished loco, has been very well thought out and I found the illustrated instructions to be very good indeed. There are sufficient exploded drawings to make most construction simple. All castings are shown in the instructions and clearly numbered, as are the etched sheets. The etchings themselves are, without exception, accurately drawn and all parts fit well. Being all in nickel-silver they are very easy to solder. I especially liked the way that parts are grouped on the etches in such a way that nearly all the items for any module being worked on are to be found close together-no hunting high and low on half a dozen different etches as in some kits.

Castings are all lost wax brass, and cast in a very shiny metal. I found most of them to be of decent quality with a few exceptions, notably the chimney which had been poorly cast and didn’t look right to me. It was replaced with one from JPL, as was the safety valve housing. The castings are ‘generic’ and therefore not all of them are required but you end up with plenty of useful spares for other projects.

Although a few rivets are already etched on, the vast majority of them are of the half-etched variety and have to be punched out - I counted well over 1250 of them. However, a trap for the unwary is that there are half-etchings for rivets on the tanks and as I cannot find any photographs which show these at all, I didn’t punch them out. Another discrepancy I found is that no rear sandboxes are provided. The kit has provision for fitting sandbox lids on the shelf in the rear of the cab, but all photographs that I have seen show them fitted behind the cab steps, with the fillers on the cab floor in the doorways (I bet the crews loved them there). It is possible that they were fitted in the bunker as-built but I suspect they didn’t stand up to having loads of coal dropped on them. I acquired some suitable ones from JPL and soldered them to the back of the cab steps.

The chassis is designed to be either rigid or compensated/ sprung, using the rear axle as a fixed one. A dual-beam compensation unit is included in the kit but I didn’t manage to make it work freely enough so just left the axles free to drop, adding springing with phosphor-bronze wire soldered to the inside of the frames. The cylinders are designed to bolt on separately, a feature that I appreciated. I used milled coupling and connecting rods from JPL rather than the etched ones in the kit, a matter of personal preference. A tribute to both kit designer and to JPL is that these substitute rods fitted perfectly and required absolutely no fettling at all. Within a mere six hours I had a working chassis. As an aside, just like the prototype, the model only has brakes on the centre and rear wheels. I wonder why?

The body went together equally well though I did get the bending of the single sheet for the tanks wrong first time. This was my own fault. Fortunately, they are etched in a fairly thick material, with half etches for the folds, and I was able to straighten and re-fold them with relative ease, otherwise there might have been a panic phone call to Agenoria.

Inside the cab, the backhead is made up from two etchings rather than a casting, this works well in the model. Plenty of gauges, handles etc. are provided and a realistic effect is easily achieved. Copper wire for the various bits of piping also comes with the kit. Not the fault of the kit, rather of the real thing, but there is precious little space in the loco for a motor/gearbox. I was able to acquire an old RG7 which was shoehorned in. The design of the backhead allows the motor to sit slightly into the cab, very helpful. A review of a kit isn’t really the place to point out differences in the prototype that may affect construction but amongst points to look out for are the presence (or not) of a single front step on the driver’s side, different patterns of tank vents, different positions of the piping that comes from the injectors, and different types of whistle shield, or even the absence thereof depending on period chosen.

I am really pleased with the finished model which I painted with Games Workshop ‘Chaos Black’. 1367 will pull a very decent load as I soldered lead sheet into the tanks-there is certainly plenty of room! The etched number plates are by Guilplates. A full set of plates for each member of the class is included in the kit but they are etched in nickel-silver and have the wrong typeface.

Altogether, a very enjoyable and reasonably priced model to build, taking me just under 70 hours; I would heartily recommend it to anyone wanting a model of this attractive class. Now, who does fish and chips in 7mm. scale?

A copy of this review was sent to Agenoria and Mike Williams has provided the following comments:

Thank you for letting me read the review. I think most of the problems encountered are due to personal preferences. The various prototypes are covered as much as possible with this kit; however it appears that all six had slight variations. The front step is included in the kit, as are two different types of vents and four different whistles so I don't what happened there.
I have found no photographic evidence that shows the sandbox in the position described in the review although I do not doubt that it will exist. As far as I could ascertain, the box was filled from the top of the rear bulkhead with just the pipe visible under the footplate.
The motor space is very tight and the 18/30 Mashima and gearbox does fit in, just, and I warn builders of this in the instructions and also when they purchase the kit if they intend to fit a different one. I am afraid designers of locomotives didn't think of us modellers fitting motors into models of their prototypes. Its predecessor, the 1361 Saddle-tank, should be ready as soon as time allows.

Mike