Garden Railway Saturday; the first 32mm loco.

As mentioned in the previous GRS post, the plan is for a smaller garden railway at the new house. 32mm gauge this time instead of 45mm. To test the feasibility of it (bearing in mind this build was from last summer, when the move was on the cards but not finalised) we acquired a few items of stock.

So, the first loco. An I.P Engineering "Dan/Danny", based on an O&K Shunter, and effectively a modern version of a budget Fendyke Locomotive Works model originally released in the 1990's.  That Fendyke model really appealed to me as a 12 year old, and had I the budget to buy more than the catalogue, it might have marked my entry into garden railway modelling some 25 years early.

I always wanted one, and this kit was as close as I was going to get, so I bought it as my Christmas pressie to myself at the end of 2023, and finally got around to building it in the summer so we'd have something to trundle around the test-track when we eventually moved house. 

First thoughts... it's a minor one, but this is a bit of a weakly-designed kit in places. As an ex-Product Design Technician, I'm not keen on butt-joints for materials, particularly on pieces that need to be square, strong, and secure.

Relief-detailing was also lacking, being mainly engraved representations of the rivets, and some thin card panels for the engine doors. Though there were some rather lovely white-metal castings for the axleboxes and chassis weights, as well as representations of the controls and starting rod.

The thin MDF was given a coat of sanding-sealer, and I went a bit mad adding relief details to the model, principally some (probably too chunky and overscale) rivets, from gem stickers designed for mobile phone cases. Some nail heads formed doorknobs, the chimney was a spare part from a Warhammer tank I was building at the same time, and the fuel filler-cap was a rivet with paper-clip metal hinges.

For the livery, I wanted basically the Fendyke loco I fell in love with back in the mid-1990's, so black frames, grey roof, dark green gloss body, and hazard stripes.

My loco, with the original article. Mine has a few differences, but I'm very happy with how it turned out.

I made a light weathering pass of the model, before gloss-varnishing it.

Shooting on location in Wales in the summer; I wanted some beauty shots of the loco, and lacked a garden railway on which to photograph it at this stage.

And in the mag, effectively marking the start of the new saga.