Jim smith-wright
Western Thunderer
For a while now Ive had this book (which I highly recommend by the way) featuring 6683 passing the real Brettell lane on its cover. Recently I stumbled upon a pretty cheap Bachmann 56xx body on ebay and realising that High Level Kits do a chassis for it another project, that if I'm honest I really don't need as I have enough locos anyway) has found its way onto the workbench.
56xx and 66xx - A super brief history
After world war 1 many of the locomotives that served Welsh railway companies were in very poor state. Most of the Welsh companies saw the GWR as a competitor and resented them taking over, so given they were going out of business anyway they spent very little on maintenance and overhauls. Charles Collett needed a fleet of new locos for the Welsh coal traffic, the 42xx 2-8-0s were too wide at a number of locations due to their outside cylinders. Thus the 56xx tank engines were ordered from Swindon, the last 50 locos would be built by Armstrong Whitworth of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
The class didn't get off to the greatest of starts when class pioneer 5600 was rolled out in front of all the works bigwigs and promptly failed on its first movement due to a flaw in the design of the inside motion. With 50 locos already under construction and to avoid embarassment to both the designers and the GWR it was all hushed up with the staff sworn to secrecy and the revised drawings for the valve gear back dated to look like they were the originals.
Not long after they were introduced the depression hit the UK and half of the pits in South Wales closed. The GWR had gone from not having enough 0-6-2 locos to having too many!
By 1960 they were no longer a south wales loco exclusively. Locally to me Stourbridge Shed had 7 of them and Tysley 3.
So the High Level Kits chassis. which accommodates the Swindon and Armstrong Whitworh builds Built as designed by Chris. I didn't go my usual route of complicating things by fitting working inside motion as you really cant see it plus Chris has powered the middle axle. The rear axle and trailing truck work together as part of the suspension. Theres a representation of the slide bars etc in the kit
Underside. The brake gear is designed to be removable. I will fit the representations of the springs after its all painted and tested.
Test fit of the body, which I will move onto in Part 2
