 |
LNWR/LMS King George V class 4-4-0. This thing looks just sooo "British." I'd really like to build my model of it for display if nothing else. But can't until I figure out the "round bits" underneath.
|
Some background.
Years ago my late Grandmother went to see her brother who lived in York, England at the time. She wanted to bring me something back as a gift and, knowing my interest in trains, he suggested going to a train show that happened to be going on that weekend and buying me a model I could put together (the fact that I have enough projects didn't seem to enter her mind, although she'd seen the piles of boxes in the basement plenty of times).
She presented me with a wonderful gift - a Brassmasters kit for a OO scale London Northwestern (later LMS) 4-4-0 called the "George V." I always thought it was kind of cool that the Brits kept naming locomotives long after we ended that practice in this country.
When I opened the box I immediately ran into two problems.
First of all, there are no photos of the model or prototype in the instructions. There's a couple of very rudimentary drawings, sketches really, but there's also a considerable stack of etched parts - and me without an English to American dictionary handy figuring out which part went where was going to present a real challenge.
There isn't even photos on the Brassmasters website. Yes, there's a reference to a set of photos to the almost identical "Precusor" class model. But those images are so small to be almost useless and the model is only shown unpainted. Not a bad thing, but a photo of the painted model would also help. And, let's face it, it's a different engine. And this kit was hardly what one would call cheap.
This thing went back into the box and has sat there for more than a decade.
As you may have noticed from my last post Christine and I just had a wonderful vacation in London and Paris. In London I found a small hobby shop (Ian Allan Publishing - really a bookstore specializing in railway books with some train models - but well worth a visit if you're in London or one of their other locations in the UK - http://www.ianallanpublishing.com/our-shops.htm)
The staff was extremely helpful, as were some of the other customers.
A total of 90 of George V class engines were built, which means they weren't exactly "rare." So I figured there might be a book with lots of pictures, and maybe a drawing of this thing. They had books on every class of locomotives you could think of - except the George V.
At least today we have the internet and I can, and have, Googled pictures of the prototype. And I found a few.
But there's still a second big problem with this thing. There are no wheels in the kit. That's not unusual - seems a little strange but we have plenty of craftsman freight cars and the like that don't include wheels.
Worse, there's no indication of what kind of wheels I need, or who might offer same.
Since I was standing in a train store in England I made the mistake of asking where I could get the wheels for this locomotive.
"What type, EM, P:4, or OO?" was the reply....
All I could think to say was "uh, Round."
I ended up learning a lot about wheels, and the differences in British scales. Deciding which wheels to use impacts how the kit goes together in a rather significant way since P4 requires bending the etched chassis at one point, and OO means bending it in another. At least that's what I able to ascertain from my reading of the instruction sheets and discussion with the helpful staff in the store. But I still didn't get any wheels. (I did buy a considerable stack of books on Irish Railways.)
But "sourcing" the wheels is apparently going to be a considerable challenge.
Made me appreciate RP25 all the more....
