Tattoo Locomotive

I was very fortunate to acquire a Five79 Tattoo locomotive kit for a very good price. I have set about building this little locomotive with aplomb. I have a special affinity for these little locomotives. There are three known examples of this locomotive in preservation. There is Stanhope, Edward Thomas and the Tattoo locomotive on the Corris Railway. I had decided that I wanted to model elements from all three of these locomotives to present a 'what if' example in service on the Bron Effans Railway. The kit lent itself to directly represent the bodywork and features of Edward Thomas. I chose the working gauge to be 2ft to match my railway and a red livery to emulate that of the Corris example. 

I decided to go all out for this construction and treated myself to a N-Drive chassis to give reliable performance. This also negated the need to search for a second hand Bachmann chassis that may not have been reliable due to their age. The N-Drive chassis arrived very quickly and I will be using these in future steam locomotive kit builds as the build quality is exceptional. 

The chassis needed some minor alteration to fit in the void on the running plate as it comes with bufferbeams on the end of the casting. I shaved these down and worked the running plate to fit the chassis. 

I then set about the construction of the rest of the bodyshell of the locomotive. It proved to be hard work as the motor intruded on the underside of the boiler. I had to remove quite a lot of metal from the inside of the bodyshell. 

I built the rest of the locomotive and altered the couplers by lowering them to a more suitable height. All in all I have found this to be my most challenging build so far. The N-drive chassis has got to be the best ready made example I have purchased. I need to give it a thorough run in but there are a few electrical issues on the line I need to resolve first.