Commission: Jack Lane in 009...

You will find a myriad of these lovely little Quarry Hunslet's on narrow gauge 009 layouts across the country, so what if you want something a little different?

I am told that this is likely to remain unique for some time! I've taken a 'Nesta' and re-worked her to represent 'Jack Lane', one of the modern builds by Statfold. Whilst Nesta is a relatively standard example I had to consider how to represent the differences of the Statfold pair - based on the 'Port' class of Quarry Hunslet at Dinorwic which were delivered with cabs, a higher pitched boiler and safety valves mounted on a central dome, rather than in the cab.

Luckily Steve Purves, the designer of this wonderful model made some fantastic decisions for us model makers in it's construction. Four screws and a complete chassis drops out, a few more and the body seperates from the footplate. I simply added some 10thou styrene under the firebox and smokebox to adjust the pitch of the boiler.

The dome and new water filler required scratch building, I made these from styrene and spent sometime shaping the flare to be a good fit on the tank. I re-used the safety valve elements on the new dome. In the cab I crafted the front sheet to support the pressure gauge, re-used from Nesta, and I cut down the turret on the firebox and painted it black. On the tanks I needed to add the sandboxes and levers, from styrene and metal section (the actuators are actually from cut off 'legs' from LEDs!)

The paint work is Sherwood green, with hand painted black edging before the Yellow / Black Fox N scale lining is added to each panel. This is time consuming and fiddly but the results are superb, because you get a neat and repeatable finish, very important on model of this size.

The model is finished off with some lovely etched plates from Custom Nameplate Studio, and then has been sealed with dull-cote, to protect the finish and the plates from tarnishing over time. My customer is very happy with his (for now) unique model. If you've got a prototype you'd like me to re-create I'm happy to refinish existing RTR models as much as scratch build so do get in touch for a no-obligation fixed price proposal. I offer a complete end to end service, I can source the models if required, fit DCC, design custom 3D and etched parts, source details, transfers etc and paint finish and weather the models. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these cruel close ups of a model that is absolutely tiny! Until next time, more soon...

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