Garden Railway Forum

Despite having a number of Gauge one models for a while and a number of small shunters to run, I've always been longing a steam engine of my own. Thanks to selling off one of my 16mm engines and some birthday money, I was able to afford this! A Aster Schools.



Plans are to take off the smoke deflectors (make it relatively unique in that regard) and a repaint into SR Maunsell Green in time. The perfect engine to run with my current and future rolling stock. When it gets repainted it will end up as 928 Stowe which I'm told has run without smoke deflectors in preservation.

Just need to come out of lockdown and get it to the model engineering club so I can get it running with their help! Rolls very freely though which is a relief.

Hopefully it won't be long until it has a pair of others joining it (A H class and a M7)!

Jon

Lovely, big fan of a schools class!

Garethh wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 5:32 am Lovely, big fan of a schools class!

Me too, ever since an eponymous 5" scratchbuilt model was donated to my school back in 19.......! To my mind they never look right 'naked' ,without the smoke deflectors, though.

That's a beauty! It'll look wonderful at the head of your carriages...

philipy wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 6:51 am To my mind they never look right 'naked' ,without the smoke deflectors, though.

Yes, I've always thought that too. For me it's the same with any loco that usually wears them - I think the Bluebell's S15 is running without them at the moment, and it just doesn't look quite right to my eye...

Oh Wow! Looks terrific. And it wears its smoke deflectors really well, I reckon.

At least they look like British smoke deflectors, unlike a certain preserved loco

Having finally got some more running out of it, I'm slowly learning how to work it. Although more practise is needed to get the fire being drawn without the blower on. I suspect I need a heavier load (7 plus coaches) to get it properly working. Hopefully a week today I can see if that thoery works. Although at some point the 16mm fleet needs some running as none of it has run since the schools arrived!

















Jon

That really looks the part, particularly like the long goods train! Need to get myself down to guildford soon!

Does it run better in reverse rather than forward? I ask because many of your pictures show it going tender first. Sadly, it seems a lot of steam engine models run better "the wrong way"!

scoobster28 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 27, 2021 3:00 pm Does it run better in reverse rather than forward? I ask because many of your pictures show it going tender first. Sadly, it seems a lot of steam engine models run better "the wrong way"!

All of my engines run better backwards for some reason. The reason in the earlier images it ran constantly backwards was because it would derail almost instantly going forward. Since pinned down to being a dodgy front bogie. Now repaired it goes both ways! Hopefully more images soon once I've taken it back to the club for more running.

Jon