A trio of tanks this time starting with…… the LMS milk tank I featured last time.  Now ready for service.

The Bachmann 14t cradle mounted tank wagon. Very much of its time with a very generic (and pretty rubbish if I’m honest) chassis.

Luckily Justin does something a little more refined and very nice to build it is too.

Ready for the brass bits to be painted. The ladder is only loosely in place. The walkway is from my box of useful stuff (I think Stenson models) and the buffers are from Lanarkshire Models.

Still sticking with the theme of tanks but is a slightly dubious way, work in progress on a 96xx tank.  I originally picked this up quite cheaply with and idea to include it in my scrap train. Round Oak scrapped quite a few locos, but it didn’t take me long to decide to do it as a working loco instead.  Especially as a picture of this very loco heading a freight train through Brettell Lane cropped up in my facebook feed.

As far as I can tell this model by Bachmann is an evolution of the Mainline model I’ve already used to do my 57xx tank, with a later cab and other refinements.  All of the handrails are separately fitted but I felt the handrail knobs were way too big so I replaced them with Alan Gibson ones. I reused the long handrail but as its not so wide i had to cut it in half to lose a little from the middle. The sandbox fillers are too far forward as they were repositioned with RT Models linkages but not before the front splasher was cut down in height.  A compromise for the over sized flanges on the RTR wheels and something that has entered my ‘now I’ve seen it, i cant unsee it’ mindset when looking at model steam locos. Smoke box dart is also Gibson and the lamp irons are from Masokits.  I also replaced the pipes on the footplate. Some 96xx had a bracket half way along with i quite liked but unfortunately 9614 was one that didn’t.

Rear view. The lamp irons were too high up on the bunker. This is correct for a 57xx but on the 96xx tanks they were lower.  I was replacing them anyway. Buffers are Lanarkshire models.  I prefer a better detailed solid buffer over a less detailed sprung one.

Drivers side. The pipework just in front of the cab is the same on both sides of the model. Again OK for a 57xx but on the 96xx they were different with a somewhat more barren look on this side. The footplate pipework is also routed differently around the cab footsteps. Chassis will be a high level one with my working inside motion bodge as described here. https://p4newstreet.com/an-unremarkable-little-tank-engine-part-1/

Finally something that you will never see – Brettell road in the sun!  It was coming in the shed door and caught my attention.