He's been presented with one of Brian Madge's new kits for the diminutive 'Quarry Hunslet'.
What's very exciting about this new entry in the 009 market is it has proper outside frames. For the last 20 years our model of Britomart has been running around on an ancient Arnold N gauge chassis with us trying to pretend that we never noticed its very obvious inside frames.
The challenge comes from the kit being designed to represent Velinheli, one of the cab-less members of the 'Alice' class, whereas Britomart not only has a cab but also a subtle difference in the outline of the frames at the rear of the loco.
Himself has been investigating whether there is any possibility of being able to simply transplant Brian's outside framed chassis into our existing Chivers body.
Unfortunately it appears not!
The only way of fitting the new chassis would be to double up with the new footplate frame mounted beneath the existing whitemetal one, which would be far too thick.
It's also doubtful whether the motor unit would fit inside the existing saddle tank without an awful lot of metal being carved away.
Understandably, Himself is reluctant to rip apart our current Britomart and start hacking away at it with no guarantee the transplant is going to be successful, so I suspect our next move will be to obtain another Chivers Quarry Hunslet and create a mongrel loco with bits taken from both the kits.
I shall keep you in touch with progress.
Velinheli is a very favourate visitor of the GMs, and you could decorate the next one as the IV Lord who seems to be staying around a bit
ReplyDeleteI think Brian M is planning alternate chassis frame versions for later batches of the kit.
ReplyDeleteOwen, there are intentions to have both a Velinheli and a Hugh Napier (they've both appeared at Beddgelert, after all) but the 4th Lord might have to wait for Brian to produce a new kit because he's a 'Port' class not an 'Alice'.
ReplyDeleteSteve, freshly milled frames are already in the post. Brian's service is on a par with Narrow Planet's :-)