K Where?

The news that K1 is departing the Welsh Highland for an unspecified sojourn at Statfold got me thinking I should post a wee gallery of our 4mm scale version on Bron Hebog.

This development was not unexpected to those in the know, indeed we dropped a cheeky hint at the Greenock exhibition of what was coming down the line.

Call me a pessimist but I’m not expecting to see it steaming again on the WHR any time soon.....

K1 and the FR is a relationship which has blown hot and cold over the last 50 years, and this seems to be one of its chillier periods.

It was as purchased in what can only can be seen as a spasm of romantic optimism, was shipped off  -  with relief -  to York after a period languishing at Harbour station, and then picked up again in the 90s as a convenient curiosity to give the WHR project a veneer of heritage.

But I don’t think the FR’a heart was ever in it.

I well remember the nickname ‘K-when?’ during its protracted restoration.

Yes, I fully understand the commercial logic of concentrating on a core fleet of NGG16s, and that is is not kind to the track, but I cannot believe there is not some role for it.

Consider this season just gone where there have been all kind of exotic double headed combinations to keep the service going when a Garratt ‘goes tech’.

It’s not as if the FR doesn’t have other indulgences - I guess K1’s face just doesn’t fit.

Whiskers On Kittens

I can't pretend that the Rodgers and Hammerstein lyrics bear any relation to the models in these posts, so please don't waste any of your time looking for hidden meanings.

This time I thought I would feature our Cinderella Garratt, K1.

For the locomotive which was supposed to be the icon of the WHR reconstruction - the WHR's Double Fairlie - it's remarkable how low a profile it had once it returned to steam.

I suppose that's the WHR for you - commercial to its wheel flanges - and K1 just couldn't handle the loadings the railway requires.

I hope we will see it steam again, though.

This is a Backwoods Miniatures kit, and until the latest vintage carriages came along, with all their gold leaf, I thought it was Himself's ultimate lining job.

K1 Freight

Part of the fun of exhibiting Bron Hebog at the WHR at an event like Super Power is we had to chance to replicate what we saw happening on the real railway outside the goods shed doors on the layout.

The first train I saw when I drove into the yard on the Friday was the long mixed train made up of B and DZ wagons with the South African guard's van and carriage 23 hauled by one of the NGG16's, so after we'd set the layout up and were putting out the stock we promptly recreated this using out latest rake of Boston Largs Works wagon kits.

For the rest of the weekend the carriage was removed and it ran as a freight train hauled by K1 which was making its long awaiting return to action.

Here are a few shots of our recreation of it on Bron Hebog.

MOTW - K1

I've been putting this one off for a while but the eve of Bron Hebog's last exhibition appearance of 2012 seems as good a time as any to wheel out the 'Mother of all Garratts' on Model Of The Week.

Our K1 is built from a Backwoods Miniatures kit and is pretty much put together as Pete intended.  One of the most obvious alterations is the extended railings around the coal bunker at the back.

The loco has also been through wired connecting the motors on each bogie which has transformed the performance of the machine which was previously prone to sticking on points with its relatively shortly four coupled bogies.

Himself is, justifiably, proud of the lining job on this model which took weeks to complete.

The two colours were applied separately and included small areas like the panels on the back of the front water tank which you can see in this shot below.

If anyone needs any introduction to K1 the story is it was built, in Manchester, for the North East Dundas Tramway in Tasmania in 1909, retired in 1929 when the line closed and shipped back to the UK for display at Beyer Peacock in 1947.

It was bought by the FR in 1966 'for future use' according to the official stock book. Not being around at the time it's a decision which has always intrigued me.

It strikes me there was either a top rate clairvoyant on the Board who foresaw the FR reopening the WHR one day or they were prepared to butcher any locomotive to within an inch of its life to make it fit for service on the FR.

(The third explanation, that it was bought for the sake of preserving an important landmark in articulated steam locomotive design seems frankly perverse for a railway that did not have a shortage of things to spend its money on closer to home in the 1960's.)

Whatever, K1 was bought, and ten years later was punted off to the National Railway Museum for 18 years before an eleven year overhaul, and a new boiler, saw it return to service on the WHR in 2006.

It hasn't seen much use in recent years as train loadings on the completed line have got beyond it, but volunteers are currently tinkering with it at Dinas and we're being promised it will appear in service again.