Childhood models: Lima diesels...

I thought I'd share some more of my childhood models, this time a pair of my treasured Lima diesels that are both long gone...

In my post about the Collett goods last week I talked about a NSE class 47 I'd weathered, inspired by 50026 Indomitable by Ian Metcalfe in MRJ 50... well I found that I actually did have one photo of the model, which was 47583 County of Hertfordshire in Network SouteEast livery. I always had wanted a NSE liveried model, originally wanting an electric Class 86. In the end my Dad bought me a Class 47, more useful for our layout without centenary, for one Christmas, probably around 1989 (as a matter of fact, I used my birthday money one year to buy a Hornby Class 86 in Intercity livery - I used to see these regularly at Crewe where my Dad took me transporting in the early 1990s). This model performed solid duty on my childhood layout (which will be in a future post) and on my friend Tim's layout. He had a large layout around his garage with no scenery, but scale length trains. It was fun using 8 Replica Railways Mk1s behind it whilst he ran his full length Lima HST and Class 59 with ARC hoppers... my own layout was fully scenic, but a lot smaller, built around a single garage, so we could manage 3 coach trains at a push. Anyhow, the model was detailed with a Craftsman detailing kit, and later weathered, successively getting a more worn appearance, until after reading the article I went all out and distressed the paint. I didn't have any photos of 47s in this condition, in fact Ian suggested the impact of the carriage washers at Laira were at fault for the softer NSE paint on the Class 50s - of course NSE 47s headed north, not west out of London on the whole... I suspect their are a combination of washes, drybrushing and actual distressing the original paintwork in this finish, and it was definitely one of the earliest 'finished' models I produced.

Later in my teens I picked up a Mainline liveried Class 37 - this wasn't a bad model, but the bogies were too small IIRC, and the windows too short due to the thickness of the body moulding. The tumblehome was also a little shallow. I think I re-worked this, dropping the model about 1-2mm on it's bogies after reading the article by Tim Shakleton in MRJ on the Dynadrive model (Issue 84 - 1996), sanding a tumblehome on the body with a patch repaint and weathering. I always felt the Mainline logo was too large and the blue not quite right, but I was getting older and more interested in girls and music, so this was the last model I worked on as a teenager.

It's fun to reflect and look back on where things have come from, I've got enough material for a few more of these, I'll try and do a post a week on older models and layouts. For now, I hope it goes to show we all start somewhere. More soon...