After a little less than two days on my workbench, my Hornby LNER Q6 has re-emerged as No. 3394 sometime in 1947.
Source information comes from 'Green Book' Part 6C and Yeadon Vol23, page 83. The locomotive has a 50A Boiler, the older style of flatter smokebox door, a windjabber, and no external drive to the cylinder lubricators on the LH side. It does not have the cover plate over the cladding sheet joins along the top of the boiler. (I don't know where Hornby got this from, but since none of my other Darlington built 5'6" boilers have this feature I'm happier without it! ) My model also has (although it is not visible from this angle,) a properly painted cab interior and the characteristic NER sheeting around the firehole door. The tender has fire-iron holders and two fire-irons on top of the coal load.
The coal should be genuine County Durham coal, since it comes from my garden. It does look a bit shiny however! (More research on my local seams required), and I'm worried that perhaps some previous owner of my house filled their coal cellar with anthracite! (Seems unlikely - and this will have to do until I unpack the coal supplied from my previous residence.)
The tender has also had additional weights added.
The model needs a bit more subtle and selective weathering, and I haven't touched the buffer beams or buffers yet. My picture makes the spectacle plate look a bit 'plasticky'.
I should say that, as far as I can see, this is a very well engineered model. It comes apart easily, and the critical screws on the engine fit into captive metal threads. (not so on the tender, but still easy to dismantle.) It runs very well, and it will be interesting to compare it's haulage capacity with it's white metal stablemate. The Hornby detail that is there is excellent, including the slope on the cab floor up to the firedoor. There is much to admire on this Hornby model. I note the various controversies about it not being suitable for LNER condition, but it matches my 1946/47 requirements almost exactly.
The lubricator drive was relatively easy to remove with carefully applied Xurons and needle files. (I haven't bothered to remove the resulting 'extra washer'.)
The windjabber (no fancy foreign names here please!) was easier to make than I'd thought. A piece of plastic tube 5mm OD is almost a plug fit to the Hornby chimney. A small wrapper of thin plastic was attached to the outside top of the tube, and when all was dry, cut and filed to shape. The inner rim of the Hornby chimney was removed with a sharp scalpel for the front half of the diameter, and the new unit slid in. When everything was secure, most of the additional plastic on the inside of the chimney was removed with a rat-tail file.
The removal of the strip on the boiler top was the trickiest modification. A sharp blade, swiss files, and fibre-glass pen, together with a lot of care were required. The boiler did need to be re-painted, but my trusty mix of acrylics allowed me to do this even allowing for my very limited painting skills.
The HMRCS lettering sheets do not match the Hornby numbers, so my first idea of retaining the leading '3' didn't work. (The new one went over the top.) After limited weathering the difference between the cab and the tender doesn't show too much. My photograph shows the '9' as being too high, but the Yeadon picture may show something wrong with either the '9' or the '4' on the original anyway!
In some ways one of the BR liveried models might have made a better starting point for my requirements. However, it was probably easier and less risky to add the windjabber than to remove the BR smokebox numberplate. This latter is a task I always find difficult.
I am slightly worried about the tender. According to Part 6C, 2237 (original number) was built with the last style of 4,125 gallon tender with the curved down coal rails. It obviously doesn't have that tender in the Yeadon photograph, but is not on any of the lists for tender transfer to/from other classes. If it is a transfer from a Q5 or a B15 then the it will be too tall, and too wide. However comparison of the Yeadon photograph with mine doesn't seem to show this up. Life is too short for continuing to worry, and at the moment I think it looks like a good fellow worker for my own 3418.
Not quite sure how often a West Hartlepool engine would have traveled to my side of the ECML - but it will on my railway!
