Meridian Models/Mosskito Narrow Gauge Billard T75D - part 1 intro.

Billard locotractors were built in France from 1939 onwards, initially for military and later for civil use. In military service they worked on the Maginot Line system of fortifications, later locos were built for industrial use.

This is a 4mm scale/009 whitemetal kit and was originally a collaboration between Meridian Models and the French company Duton Productions. Nowadays the kit is produced by Mosskito Narrow Gauge and is sold by Narrow Planet.

The fact that a kit for a French prototype, which never ran in the UK, is made to 4mm rather than 3,5mm scale is interesting, it seems that a number of French modellers use 4mm scale stock when modelling secondary and agricultural lines, 009 being a better scale/gauge combination than HOe which is more suited to metre gauge lines. This also means that our French cousins can take advantage of the range of ex-WW1 stock available in 009, which would have been used on such lines post WW1. Sometimes the 4mm scale stock runs alongside 3.5mm scale buildings and accessories, a combination which works surprisingly well.

The kit comprises of 26 good quality whitemetal castings;

Those pictured above are the main body and chassis castings, those below are for the smaller details and couplings;

The instructions are in French on my kit, these days they are in English, which Narrow Planet kindly supplied a copy of. Exploded diagrams work in any language though;

(Excuse the blue tint, the photo was taken in the garden on a very sunny day.)

Its designed to be used with a Farish motor bogie. These have been unavailable for a long time now, but the Mosskito MPD18 chassis is designed to fit using an etched mounting plate. I have one built up ready as described here.

The first job will be to assemble the footplate and  frames and fit the MPD18 mounting plate.

Paul.