Leamington Spa the Model

I’ve sent two locos over to Fred for some of his excellent weathering and he asked the question ”want to do you want” ? A reasonable request but not something I had given a lot of thought to. ”Well light I guess ”  was my response. Fred went blank at this. Let’s be honest what is light? For that matter what is heavy?  Fred referred me to the book GWR 4-6-0s by Derek Penney pub by Ian Allan in 1997 which I dug it out of my library to have a look at. I ‘d forgotten how good this book is. What you see is great photos, in colour,  of locos in their day to day life just before they were let go. And these would have been some of the last good shots in colour that show us what we want. The Barking Bill photos are fantastic but show a period that I dont wish to remember.

You must also think about the actual  film the photographer used as the films themselves change the colours due to the emulsions on the film -  some have a blue tinge and others yellow. The key is to  pick one thing in the picture that you know well and use that as your rule to blue or to green! One thing you will see on all locos in the 50s is a black sheen which was caused by the cleaners using parafin, it also gave a very satin finish. The smokebox was a matt finish and you will see that cleaning leaves a pattern in it. More difficult for us though is that you often see that the varnish in the paint starts to peel with the heat.  With all locos once there’s a fire put in the box they get dirty,  put them out on the track one trip and they’ll be dirty.