I finally managed the pilgrimage to the Spa Valley Railway — between covid and cancelled and/or rescheduled holidays and travel — for a solitary orgy of Thumper noise and Harvey’s Best Bitter. It was another quiet, lovely day but I was surprised to find that, sadly, my iPhone videos suffered from intrusive wind noise, so there’s not much useable audio from the trip (which had been a key reason for going). But parked in a siding, they also had a (particularly tired, scabby-looking) 33, the next project…
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Exquisite, distressed signage and typography
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Class 207: swoon! (According to legend, first years should travel in the luggage racks)
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Steam hauled, restored Mk1: fabulously comfy. Shame about the plastic glass
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Cabs under attack from filler-primer, plastic putty, several grades of sandpaper; roof parts, not yet. Motorblock artfully placed so you can’t read my notes
May 2021 and Angr607, on this very forum, introduced the 3D print & acrylic, Gauge 1, Class 33 kit from Bowaters Models and, a pleasant surprise, accepted my request to knock out a scaled-up version at 1:27 (to sit with my existing, oddly proportioned fleet).
It’s been my first experience of large 3D printed components and in attempting to deal with the characteristic striation, I’ll admit to being a little heavy handed with filler and subsequent vigorous sanding. I’m modifying the kit to accommodate Piko motorblocks and it will be battery powered with Loco Remote control.
Ideally, to sit with my green coaches, it should be turned out in the original, disagreeable dark green and off-white livery. I can’t face doing one of those, though. Trouble is, so many of the Class 33 liveries seem to have been specifically conceived to make them appear as ugly as possible — have you seen the Network SE effort? Wow! You’ll notice from the snap I’m toying with alternatives that may not be historically correct.
The kit offers a great opportunity for anyone up for serious, OTT weathering though. I particularly remember rail blue versions becoming especially grotty (as we would have said at the tIme) with tatty, dented, flimsy-looking, bodywork panels and miserably faded paintwork: fit and finish you might expect to see at the allotment. Even when quite recently overhauled and repainted they soon seemed to get offensively grubby, too. There are plenty of photos online of horribly scruffy examples.
However. Construction of the kit — which is somewhat semi-scale (that’s fine with me) — is very straightforward and offers plenty of scope to get carried away detailing it, should you so wish. I wasn’t wildly enthusiastic about the appearance of the real ones back in the day but I guess I’ll just have to learn to love them.