Childhood fascination: 03179 in N (part 1)…

It’s the price that swung it. £69.99 for a wonderful Graham Farish shunter - and in my favourite livery from childhood. Plus, I’m due a YouTube payment of about that for December and January’s advert revenue on the channel - so almost a reinvestment…

I know I don’t need to justify myself to you lot, many of you will already be personally familiar with the process of accidental retail therapy. Here we have talked before about the power of nostalgia (rather than melancholy) and one important aspect of railway modelling being the ability to escape to a mental space before the stress and pressures of adulthood, when life was simple and revolved around monthly issues of Railway Modeller, a new train for a Christmas and pocket money that never went much beyond a wagon from the local model shop…

Buying this model, on a whim, back then would have been the stuff of dreams. 

I must really have made it…

03179 in its unique Network South East livery has always held a special place in my heart. As previously mentioned it wears my favourite livery - perhaps because of being born and early years in London despite moving to Chester, I  always felt an affinity with the capital and the livery of its suburban network - perhaps I just liked the red lampposts… 03179 was the first colour picture in my first train spotting book (bar the cover - and we know where that itself led), and it was pictured clean and freshly painted, full of purpose and promise outside the almost mythical Ryde depot - the Isle of Wight? Where and what was that?

It’s funny, the story of the pair (03079 and 03179) on the island is difficult to uncover despite being so relatively ‘recent’ - but from my limited understanding, they weren’t for depot shunting of the new tube stock, but rather to run engineering trains during the winter. Even worse, 03179 was to help with lifting the double track from Sandown to Brading - and then become a parts donor to keep 03079 working… looking about on Flickr it’s difficult to find a photo of either of the 03s anywhere but Ryde depot or Sandown Engineering sidings - certainly I’ve never found them working a train. So why do we all hold the prototype in such regard, Modelzone commissioned one in OO going so far as to re-tool the cab - and in 2022 Kernow commissioned this beauty in N - hundreds of models, bought by us modellers, of an obscure and landlocked prototype…

Yet you know already, don’t you, that it doesn’t matter… this model is here and it is completely wonderful. The Farish paint application is full of that exciting lustre of a new model, she crawls out of the box, silently and smoothly… and I picked up a SR brake van (the incorrect 25t model, but no one does the lighter weight branch line examples that travelled to the Island) to work any future train with the model. However, regular readers will also know that I struggle to leave anything ‘as it comes’ and the roof needed attention. 

The prototype was cut down to clear the tunnel and road bridge between Ryde St John’s Road and Ryde Esplanade. Not as severe as the Burry Port and Gwendraeth conversions - the roof profile was simply cut off and replaced with a sheet of steel at a gentle curve, lower overall height. 

Rather than drastic razor saw action I masked the bodywork to protect both details and finish and used a sanding stick to modify the model. It isn’t perfect, there is a tiny curve front to back that you often get with sanding in this way - and I haven’t added the rain strips as I think they’d be a bit visually distracting. I have taken about 1mm off the total height and it visually looks lower - but I stopped with a fear of weakening the centre of the roof if I went much further. The plastic moulding is blue plastic, so I could leave this as is - but I expect I won’t - but that can wait for part 2…

The story is not over - a new book ‘Ryde Rail’ by Richard Long is here - I tracked down a hard cover example via my good friend Simon’s bookshop - it is nice to support a smaller trader sometimes. This would suggest the brake van will be detailed and repainted in Dutch livery, the loco weathered and perhaps some rolling stock constructed…  even a micro at some point? The model feels like it deserves it. 

Maybe I deserve it too?

Until next time, more soon…

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