Guinea Pig

I've got two or three items of rolling stock which have been bought very cheaply in the past because of the general state they were in; one of these was a Triang class 31 which looked like it had been left too close to a hot lamp, and the roof was warped and a bit melted here and there. It looked terrible but ran superbly.

Not being a very good or confident modeller I like to try things out sometimes to see how things go before taking the plunge properly. To this end the 31 has recently been subject of some experimenting. I have various tins of Humbrol No.3 gloss, which I think was 'Brunswick Green' in their old railway colour range before it bit the dust, and most of the colours ended up in the main range with different names and finishes. To my horror when trying the various tins, I found three distinctly different shades of No.3- no doubt this can be put down to early difficulties after Hornby's takeover of Humbrol and the moving of paint manufacturing to China. One side of the 31 is now multic-oloured green (!) and I have labelled the tins to save any future confusion

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Something I also have been meaning to do for a long time is put headcode boxes on a 31, so following some notes in an old edition of the 3mm society's 'Mixed Traffic' magazine, I made the plastic card frames for the boxes and glued them on; just need to fill the void to bring it level with the roof and make some headcode box transfers. Not before drawing the letters and numbers though, as they were 'freelance' and not a standard typeface- a fact lost on most transfer manufacturers.

Lastly I've never been keen on the shallow look of the boiler exhaust port on the roof; I shaped and glued a  large block of plastic square rod on the underside of the roof below the ports' position, and drilled out the aperture, and down through the block. I filed it out to shape, then bit by bit filed the block down so the roof sits down flat on the webbing between the bodyside where the motor bogie attaches. This way you can get the aperture as deep as possible.

The pic gives an idea of the mods, and now I've got the method I'll feel more confident and less guilty in butchering a 'pristine' 31 :-)

You can see the differences in the greens on the side of the cab,and the side of the body.

If I can find a suitably fine mesh, I'd like to replace the radiator fan grille, and maybe fit a fan below- that will be interesting trying to find a small propeller (maybe off a model boat, who knows?) I know I don't fancy trying to make one!