O1 for London

nevard_121218_thompsonO1_DSC_2375, a photo by nevardmedia on Flickr.

Stratford (East London) shed's Thompson O1 No. 63650 has been spotted on Cement Quay between duties a somewhat long way from 'The Smoke', but as somebody recently commented on one of the toy chuffer forums 'these locos had rubbish brakes' so that could be the reason why it was spotted here right down in Gloucestershire - it over ran a bit!

The joy of an industrial layout like this is that it could be almost anywhere, which is a great excuse to run whatever pleases, which is great because my current interest loco-wise is in big 8 coupled goods locos!

Catalogue dribblers will know that 63650 with 'early crest' is not one of the options for this new release, that's because yesterday afternoon I decided to repaint, renumber and weather up a LNER liveried one I had in my possession. Looking for colour prototype photos, the excellent 'Steam in England' featuring photographs by the great R.C. Riley came up trumps with a nice photo of this hardy Eastender captured on Stratford shed sometime in the elate 1950's.

Converted from an O4 in 1945, this sturdy engine lasted right through to the classes final year in 1965, and I've tried to depict the engine much as it would have been between exams, not a complete wreck, but as a machine that's seen a bit of use.

The favoured way these days to weather up engines and rolling stock is to use an airbrush, but despite owning a couple of these useful tools (in the right hands), these days I like to weather just using brush techniques. One reason is because being lazy by nature I hate cleaning airbrushes, and the other because I'm more confident with a brush in my hand along with a good period colour photo to copy for inspiration.

The brush technique will form a Workbench feature in a future Model Rail, I've taken the step by step photos but now need to put a few words together which will hopefully make some kind of sense. In the meantime, if you want a closer look at the above photo, click on it for other viewing size options. And before some sniffy type comments, yes I know it needs a crew, coal and lamps.