Hi Steve - glad you found it interesting. Unfortunately I've not managed to make much progress since the last entry. I bought myself an air compressor at the start of the summer and sand-blasted the bodywork ready for painting. Unfortunately during this process I managed to knock off one of the footsteps - not due directly to the industrial type sand blasting equipment I used, but due to the step getting caught on the clumsy leather gauntlets I was wearing to hold the model. Doh!
I'll re-solder this soon, but it has been getting shoved to the back of the priority queue all summer due to the re-emergence of another of my interest bubbles (an old Triton motorcycle for those interested in such things).
One small bit of progress was receiving my specially commissioned Worksplates from Diane Carney. She had two versions of Barclay worksplates available, but not the exact type I required for the 06. I've spent so long on this kit that I decided to bite the bullet and get her to make correct artwork for this type.
I found the best source of information to be auction catalogues - I spent a lot of time scaling the highest resolution broadside photos I could find before I eventually realised that auction houses accurately list the dimensions - The attached listing from GCR Auctions is from the same batch and indicates the size as 9 3/4"x7 3/4"(although I found another listing which notes the minor dimension as slightly smaller).
"Lot 358 A diesel locomotive worksplate, "ANDREW BARCLAY SONS & CO LTD, KILMARNOCK, CALEDONIA WORKS No 463, 1960", from a BR Class 06 0-4-0 204 HP diesel mechanical shunter D2436 allocated new to Ayr in April 1960 and withdrawn from Eastfield in November 1971. It was cut up at BREL Glasgow in December 1973. Cast aluminium oval, 9 3/4"x7 3/4", the characters are polished, though the plate retains its original green paintwork. The lot is accompanied by a letter from the builders dated 1980 in which they provide information on the history of the locomotive and its mechanical specification. - Sold for £190"
After one false start due to Barclay having two "standard" sizes over the years, these lovely etchings arrived:
This is just part of the sheet - there are a number of spares on the sheet. To give you an idea of size, each plate is just under 6mm wide.
Having worksplates with the works number of my chosen loco suddenly somehow brought the thing to life in my mind.
Address for those interested - Diane was extremely helpful and can be highly recommended.
Those with keen eyesight will notice that I've got plates with works numbers for two locos:
No 467 for D2440 (this loco) and No 464 for D2437 (06 008) - just in case of future project... I pored over so many photos of the latter loco in my hunt for prototype info that I became quite attached to it.
For comparison, these are the worksplates included in the kit. I guess the designer originally put some artwork on there that just wasn't possible to etch in this thickness and the whole thing has just been eaten away.
I rashly cut off all the spokes as an incentive to actually do something in january of this year, but had no clue as to proceed further. I came up with the idea to draw guide lines on the sheet of bathroom shelf that I use as a flat modelling surface, but was acutely aware of the importance of sighting from the correct position to avoid parallax errors. My reasoning was that if I align the balance weight as accurately as I can now, using all the focus my bodging brain eyesight will allow, any discrepancy will be less obvious when the things are whirring round in operation.
