Master Builder - Motive Power (Two more down) 1/35 Industrial Diesel Locomotive

In July 2017, in anticipation of the British Region Convention in Derby, at the end of October, I started building my second model for the Motive Power Certificate.

I wanted to build a small industrial diesel based on a commercial HO chassis. The locomotive in mind was a small freelanced narrow gauge diesel riding on roughly 600 mm track. If I build my model in 1/35 scale, I could use actual HO track.

I acquired a couple of small HO diesels from the Model Power range. Their Porter Hustler and DDT Plymouth are good candidates for such a conversion.

 The Model Power chassis has the motor mounted vertically and it fills the cab of the locomotive, which is not very prototypical and impossible to correct if you want to add a cab interior..

As my locomotive will be in a larger scale, I could fit the motor under the new hood and leave the cab area free of obstructions. The body shell of the original locomotive was held in place with a screw from below. I used the part of the original shell and built the new hood around it. By this I was able to fix the hood with the screw. 

For this build, I used the complete underframe and only added styrene channels along the sides, fabricated new buffer beams and reproduced weld lines along the edgers of the sidesills.

The hood featured a three-piece radiator grille, engine doors, sand filler hatch and chimney. The cab is an open version.

The small piece of the die-cast weight will be covered with the gearbox.

There is still enough room under the hood to house the front light and the decoder and wiring.

I painted the frame with a signal red color. For the body I tried the rock salt chipping paint method, which rendered a very nice rusted finish with chipping paint..

The levers, gears and seat are all scratchbuilt using different bits and pieces of styrene.

Well, as you can see, the effort was not worth a Merit Award, but worth a new experience because this was my first freelanced locomotive. I could try a couple of new techniques, both in scratchbuilding and painting/weathering.