Brettell Road, 1960s black country (ish)

Jim smith-wright

Western Thunderer
My history with milk tanks has been, to an extent unnecessarily convoluted. Originally I planned to build a David Geen kit for a midland one and I got the Rumney Models underframe for it in preparation. However when I came to get the kit from David he only had one left and that was for a GWR one. Justin kindly swapped the chassis kit for me and, as I've mentioned before, doing battle with my collection of bits I ended up with my model of a milk tank.

However the desire for at least one LMS one never went away and for more years than it really should have been I would discuss the idea of doing one using Rumney bits with a Lima tank when I saw Justin at a show. Apparently I wasn't the only one

rumney-lima-milk-tank.jpg

Well finally, heres what I've come up with, The only bits of the Lima one left are the tank - end supports and filler hatch. The rest is pretty much all Justin with buffers from Lanarkshire models and the tank supports kindly cut for me by Tim Horn.

The diagonal bracing is obviously over-length at the moment. The strapping isn't tight and the ladder is just rested in position until after painting. This seemed much less of a fight than my other one, so much so that I've ordered bits to do another 2.
 

Jim smith-wright

Western Thunderer
A trio of tanks this time starting with...

LMS-milk-tank-final.jpg
... the LMS milk tank I featured last time. Now ready for service.

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The Bachmann 14t cradle mounted tank wagon. Very much of its time with a very generic (and pretty rubbish if I'm honest) chassis.

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Luckily Justin does something a little more refined and very nice to build it is too.

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Ready for the brass bits to be painted. The ladder is only loosely in place. The walkway is from my box of useful stuff (I think Stenson models) and the buffers are from Lanarkshire Models.

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Still sticking with the theme of tanks but is a slightly dubious way, work in progress on a 96xx tank. I originally picked this up quite cheaply with and idea to include it in my scrap train. Round Oak scrapped quite a few locos, but it didn't take me long to decide to do it as a working loco instead. Especially as a picture of this very loco heading a freight train through Brettell Lane cropped up in my facebook feed.

As far as I can tell this model by Bachmann is an evolution of the Mainline model I've already used to do my 57xx tank, with a later cab and other refinements. All of the handrails are separately fitted but I felt the handrail knobs were way too big so I replaced them with Alan Gibson ones. I reused the long handrail but as its not so wide i had to cut it in half to lose a little from the middle. The sandbox fillers are too far forward as they were repositioned with RT Models linkages but not before the front splasher was cut down in height. A compromise for the over sized flanges on the RTR wheels and something that has entered my 'now I've seen it, i cant unsee it' mindset when looking at model steam locos. Smoke box dart is also Gibson and the lamp irons are from Masokits. I also replaced the pipes on the footplate. Some 96xx had a bracket half way along with i quite liked but unfortunately 9614 was one that didn't.

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Rear view. The lamp irons were too high up on the bunker. This is correct for a 57xx but on the 96xx tanks they were lower. I was replacing them anyway. Buffers are Lanarkshire models. I prefer a better detailed solid buffer over a less detailed sprung one.

96xx-tank-RHS.jpg
Drivers side. The pipework just in front of the cab is the same on both sides of the model. Again OK for a 57xx but on the 96xx they were different with a somewhat more barren look on this side. The footplate pipework is also routed differently around the cab footsteps. Chassis will be a high level one with my working inside motion bodge as described here. An unremarkable little tank engine – Part 1

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Finally something that you will never see - Brettell road in the sun! It was coming in the shed door and caught my attention.
 
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