Variations on a theme of Heywood

[Bill Corser]

This is my second post since joining the forum yesterday, after I rushed in and posted on Bernhard's thread rather rudely, so this is by way of an introduction. I've been modelling narrow gauge railways since the 1970s, but started in Gn15 when I retired about 16 years ago. At first I built industrial locos, stock and layouts, following my previous efforts in 7mm scale/0-16.5. The Eimco loco I put in Bernhard's thread is one such. However, about 4 years ago I got hooked on the Minimum Gauge, as advocated by Sir Arthur Heywood in his book of the same name, and the following is what I've come up with so far ...

I started with a kit of resin castings for Heywood's second loco, made by Smallbrook Studios. As usual, I wasnt going to build it as intended, but fiddled and fettled, replacing resin fittings with brass, and adding cosmetic valve gear. The result was KAFFIE ...



... the vehicle behind is Heywood's 4-wheel brake van, which I scratched in styrene card.

I went on to batch-build two more of this kit - one for me and one commissioned by another modeller. However, as he then disappeared from the scene I sold it to someone else!



I scratched Heywood's first loco in styrene as a follow-on from the first example ...



... and then took another of the resin kits and extended it to make Heywood's 0-6-0 version ...



The 0-4-0 locos run on Hornby Smokey Joe mechanisms bought used from eBay, while the 0-6-0 is on another Hornby chassis from the same source.

I use hand tools in my building, and styrene sheet is my preferred material.

[Bill Gill]

Bill, Welcome to the forums. A nice stable of little locos there! Thanks for posting them.

[finescalerr]

Most satisfactory. -- Russ

[Ray Dunakin]

Excellent work! And, welcome aboard!

[Bill Corser]

Many thanks for the kind welcome chaps!

One of Heywood's 0-4-0 locos was bought by the Ravenglass & Eskdale railway and turned into a miniature loco - a 1/3 scale version of a mainline loco - so I thought I'd try to achieve  the same look.

The starting point was this toy tender loco ...



... it's push-along toy, and if you press the button on the dome it makes 'whoo-whoo' and 'chuff-chuff' noises. Stripped down it looks like this ...



The footplate is metal, while the boiler is red plastic under the green paint. The tender is green plastic - the loco looks vaguely British, but the tender is Germanic!

After an interesting period of trial and error conversion work I ended up with this ...



The loco chassis is a motorless Hornby 4-4-0 mech, teamed with a Hornby tender drive, both sourced from eBay.

The driver is a modified figure from the Tamiya Mechanics set - I also enjoy making new figures from mixed-up bits of kits, toys and Preiser and Chinese rip-off figures, with the help of my trusty assistant Igor ...

[finescalerr]

Does it still make 'whoo-whoo' and 'chuff-chuff' noises? -- ssuR

[Bill Corser]

No, I have to supply those ...

[Ray Dunakin]

Wow, a silk purse from a sow's ear!

[Bill Corser]

Thanks Ray ...

Funny you should say that - when I wrote up the build on the NGRM Online forum I called the thread "Sow's ear seeks silk purse" ...

http://ngrm-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/21463-sows-ear-seeks-silk-purse/