A surprise addition: 08202…

I didn’t mean to create a miniature of 08202. Yes, she lives here (at present, on loan from the Avon Valley), but as a vacuum braked example with the early hinged door she didn’t fit in my Speedlink era collection…

However, that was before I found this photo (after seeing something similar on page 94 of Michael Rhodes’s ‘The Railways of South Wales 1975 - 1995, Part 1 - Cardiff and the Valley Lines’). Here 08202 is seen, on loan to the coal board, at Cwmbach, sorry Deep Navigation.

The similarity in this almost sylvan scene to how I pictured the yard at Cwmbach is remarkable. Green everywhere, even here is shouldn’t be, ash ballast and rakes of similar but not identical wagons…

Hired BR class 08 shunting locomotive number 08202 is seen in action at Deep Navigation Colliery on 7th August 1987 with some HEA wagons. Mike Jones photo, Flickr: https://flic.kr/p/2rLYAXJ

Another Farish 08 was sourced, along with a ‘Basra’ body being sold cheaply on eBay. I needed a bodyshell with the door hinge straps - and it was a lot cheaper to modify this older tooling to fit the new chassis than to source one of the new toolings with them. The later coreless motor and speaker fitted chassis intrudes into the cab area a touch. It’s easiest to cut the cab area from the body, along the groove the cab clips in to, and then open out each half with a file offering them frequently to the chassis to check.

In addition to that, this example also needed the front equipment cabinet removing - as I had done with the RMS Locotec example. New doors were easily fabricated and blended in but the hinges were more problematic. These slivers of styrene are tiny, and more representative than accurate.

To get the faded finish I use Precision ‘faded rail blue’ gut added some Humbrol 28. I used Humbrol 69 with a touch of the same for the yellow ends, before detail painting, decals and then re-assembly. Once back together and sealed with lacquer the weathering was the usual ‘98/33’ washes - and since the photos were taken, some gun-metal dry brushed on the steps.

This isn’t just another blue 08, there is no such thing. Each unique in character through placement of warning flashes to the way dirt clings to them. I used period photos to make sure these details were right for I’m not modelling the present, but the 80s on Cwmbach. That means original buffers and black buffer beams - but a few liberties too, for example the fly cranks are black to hide their overscale size.

Even as I write this, another of these venerable little models is taking shape on the bench. I seem to have a bit of a thing for them, they run so beautifully, take up little space too in the grand scheme of things. A mix of depot pets and mundane blue allow me to ring the changes. Cwmbach itself now has 3 (the cut down 08993, the RMS on hire - depicting the early nineties, and now 08202) which is probably enough but there is always scope on Paxton Road… I fancy a Railfreight large logo one next…

Until next time, more soon…

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