Andrew Barclay well tank in 009...

Since Andreas and Minitrains released the 'hobby zug' Boehler locomotive I've been pondering whether to get one or not...

I finally took the plunge this month and sourced one through the excellent Festshop (thanks John Wooden and the Festiniog Railway) and it's a great little model with some nice detail. However, it was never planned to keep it as it came, despite the lovely lighting front and rear, it needed angliscing for use on Creech Bottom.

It always struck me that it had a certain 'Andrew Barclay' 0-4-0wt feel to it, so once I stripped off the cab I measured it up and I thought that with a little artistic licence I could get away with something that looked the part albeit not entirely accurate. The main problem is the pitch of the boiler, which is too high really, but it was a compromise I was happy with...

Now I realised that this 'conversion' might be of interest to others, so rather than build one out of styrene I decided to work on it in 3D, and design an associated etch so that perhaps it could be released as a conversion kit at a later date! So far I have drawn up the cab, chimney and buffers - and I plan to get the etches designed over the weekend. There should be time to get the finished parts together to show to anyone interested at ExpoNG later in the month!

More soon...