He's unable to spray paint the ones he's finished and apparently can't face the prospect of starting some of the unmade kits so instead he has turned his attention to one of our great unfinished projects.
I suspect every modeller has something that they have started work on which subsequently stalls and gathers dust on a shelf or is tucked away in a drawer.
In our case it is Merican Models kit for the FR England engines which hasn't had any work done on it for the best part of four years.
It was originally intended as a replacement for our 24 year old model of Prince made from a Langley kit and still doing sterling service with its original Ibertren chassis - albeit with a motor transplant.
The recent announcement of a decision to restore Welsh Pony to working order appears to have prompted Himself to pick up this kit again and complete it as a model of the only surviving Large England.
(It can be adapted to represent either the Small of the Large engines.)
Progress so far this week has been to assemble the most distinctive bit of the England engines - the saddle tank.
His first report suggests that he has been reminded why he put the kit down in the first place. Apparently it is very tricky.
Legend tells that it was designed as a 7mm kit I and has been shrunk for 4mm and the instructions are still as for the 7mm kit with a few tips for 4mm.
If you enlarge the photo below you may get some appreciation of the predicament.
The next job, he tells me, is to tackle the running plate, which apparently means remembering to fold it to the larger Welsh Pony size.
I will let you know how he gets on.
It might be worth checking back with Trevor at Mercian. I know he has upgraded some of the kits which might mean some 4mm mods. On the other hand, that tank looks pretty good and if it's a challenging kit then you will have a unique model. And Himself has some battle tales to entertain the punters with at shows.
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