Part of the plan for Brettell Road is to have an off scene steel works, the real Round Oak was (is) just down the line from the sidings at Moor Street. I plan to use the sidings at Brettell Road as an exchange sidings for this and I like the way that a lot of the uphill workings on the old Earl of Dudley’s railway had the loco pushing trains up from the bottom of the hill so I want to replicate this on the model. My choice of motive power for these workings is the Yorkshire Engine company DE2 0-4-0 diesel shunter, of which Round Oak had a fleet and would be pretty new at the time of the model. Not that the loco’s in such an environment stayed new for very long mind you.  Luckily Judith Edge do a kit and this week I set to work.The kit breaks down into 3 sub assemblies. The chassis, the footplate and the body. It all goes together pretty easily due to the good design of the kit. It has a simple rocking compensation built in and I decided to use it as supplied. The above picture shows the main soldering work complete with the fiddly details stage to come next. Losely assembled but not bolted together, I will be getting the chassis running with a high level gearbox and Mashima motor. Rear view. The kit provides a resin bonnet top and sandboxes along with a little cover for the handbrake which is mounted on the rear of the cab on the right hand side under the window. I cant find any evidence for this being on the Round Oak examples so I filled the recess for it with a bit of scrap etch and filed it smooth. You can just make it out in the picture.

There was a suggestion that these loco’s first appeared at Round Oak in a plain Yellow livery but I cant find any evidence for this being the case. If anyone has any it would be much appreciated.