Many readers of this piece will be familiar with the venerable Airfix/Dapol kit of the Drewry 204hp 0-6-0 shunter. In the dark days of 1993, I got to wondering if this could be bashed into a 3.5mm model of the same loco. Apparently, so did a few other people and, consequently, the editor asked me to write an article on how I built number 11103.
I don't intend to bore you with a blow-by-blow account of how to proceed. Anyone with a bit of kitbashing experience will be able to fill in the gaps (ha! ha!), so to speak. Basically, you chop the parts of the kit into four as you reduce its leading dimensions by 12%. I did not use all of the kit parts: only the footplate, bonnet end, sides, roof and cab rear. The accompanying drawings tell a lot of the story and give the dimensions (1:87 in millimetres) for all the parts needed, including the scratch-built bits: sideskirts, cab front, sides and roof.
As you go along, it's a good idea to replace all of the door handles (on bonnet sides) and handrails with items made using fine brass wire. For the handrails, I used Gibson small handrail knobs and .33mm wire.
When altering the bonnet roof, remember to split it into three sections, reduce each one, and then weld it back together. Doing this will produce a correctly proportioned item. Reinforce the bonnet roof and sides with styrene sections. After separating the individual sections, you can reduce them in width. The height is best dealt with whilst the bonnet side is still whole! After reducing the door sections, remove the lowest louvre to maintain the proportions. No-one will notice you have a louvre missing. Admit it, you didn't notice that 11103 had, until I mentioned it! 11103 is one of the early 1952 batch, which had detail differences from later builds: most noticeably the cab front windows. The usual remarks about prototype photographs apply!
The cab front, sides and roof are fashioned from 40 thou styrene. I replaced the moulded radiator grille (destroyed anyway in the hacking process!) with a suitable one from the ubiquitous junk box.
As you can see, I copped out of building a proper 0-6-0 chassis for 11103 (it's powered by a GT-1 SPUD). So, side skirts became the order of the day. This was just as well, as my only other British 1:87 loco at that time was a Sentinel Y10, which was getting a bit fed up with doing all the work on the tramway!
Having simplified matters in one area, a replacement complication arose - those bloody cow-catchers! Then, in the best tradition of railway modelling, luck intervened. I discovered some old 4mrn Vulcan kit bits going for 50p at an exhibition. These provided the cow-catchers (after a bit of hacking!) and a template for the side skirts! This, of course, is all very well for Phil, but what about the rest of you? Er, well, I'm sure you will be able to come up with something! For couplings, I used Kadee #17, as these were the easiest to integrate with the cow-catcher arrangement.
11103 was painted black with red buffer beams by hand, numbered with Woodhead 4mm transfers and sprayed matt. The glazing is Kristal Kleer although these days I would cut out panes from clear styrene and fix them using Kristal Kleer as an adhesive.
As I said, the power is a 31.5mm (at least the wheelbase is correct!) GT-1 SPUD. Today, I would select the superior, and cheaper, 'Black Beetle' (with an appropriate choice of wheelbase and diameter wheels) from SEM in Australia. As to the future, well, I have another un-made Dapol kit; maybe I'll build a proper chassis for it one day!