Like so many local members, I acquired bits and pieces from the workshop of John Orson after his death.  One item was a solid little chassis that I thought would be the basis for another little industrial loco. After I stopped driving, taking a steam loco with all its requirements and some rolling stock was going to be a real chore and, at the suggestion of a friend, a small battery loco, small wagons or skips that would go into one case was the way to go.

I already had two diesels so a steam outline would be a nice addition to my stock but, although there are some very good battery powered examples that members have made, I’ve always felt that steam outline should be steam powered but now was the time to think differently.

So the challenge was to make a small steam outline, battery powered, industrial type loco.I went back to my 7mm narrow gauge days and followed the lines of one I’d made many years ago with no particular prototype and used the term that crops up a lot, generic. I don’t shop much online and my local shop being closed for most of the year, I would have to work with what I had.

The footplate and buffer beams are from a piece of folded aluminium sheet, all of the bodywork is plastic sheet.

 

The smokebox door was shaped from laminated sheet. Some ladies might recognise the chimney, but very few men; it’s the spool from a Guttermans’ sewing thread spool and the dome was a problem until my wife produced a nice shaped bottle screw top. Lots of Cambrian rivets and a few bits of brass rod shaped for various fittings and Roberts your mothers brother.

I had a problem with the roof. A bit of tin plate became very wavy after soldering on some stiffeners so I turned to a piece of Liteply. My son supplied a Strikalite battery. I always wondered why, over the years, we’ve put up with transmitters with sticks and I do like the  recently developed small, one handed jobs but I had a Planet with ‘sticks’ and a receiver so in they went along with a viper 10 from a redundant boat.

A Motley figure and various plates I had, finished it off and I’m rather pleased with the result.

June 2021