Roxey Mouldings 'Howard'

Another old build, this time from the early nineties.

The loco is a whitemetal kit from Roxey Mouldings and sits on a Tenshodo Spud that's been converted to EM gauge. 

Unlike my other Roxey kit, Minnie, this one was destined to be used on a layout. My late friend Mark Franklin and I planned a modern image layout in EM, with a couple of industrial sidings coming off a freight only line. We had boards, track was bought, but the boards warped before any track was laid and that was that. This loco was to be sat on a small headshunt for occasional use.

It was built long before I owned an airbrush, back then such tools were considered a luxury only used by the most skilled and serious modellers. I'm actually still quite pleased with the finish, I remember painting it with the base colour then going over it again with the same blue but adding some white to fade it down. Weathering was a mix of washes and subtle use of powders. I carved off the works plates from the cab sides and painted rusty patches where they'd been as if the plates had been removed and sold or stolen. I also added some extra detail in the sandbox linkages.

I'm rather pleased with the broken window;

It just adds to the forlorn appearance of a loco at the end of its useful life.

One thing I like about the kit is that the body and chassis are separate, held together by screws, an approach also used in the Judith Edge range of kits;

Having the two parts separate does make painting easier. There's a bit of cab detail in there, along with a couple of air tanks at the rear;

I added extra weight in the form of spent indexable turning tool tips, these are normally discarded once blunt but they do make for useful ballast.

This is a nice little kit, parts fit is pretty good and the prototype interesting. I'm pleased with how it turned out even after all these years.

Paul.