KATIE FROM SCRATCH

PART 1

Introduction

 

I live, as most of us do, in a house that’s a bit too small, with too much furniture in it.  The garage is in an even worse state and although it’s a double, you would have difficulty in getting even a Dinky toy in there, let alone a car!  So I have a garden line  - 75 feet of LGB track and 4 Radius 3 points, plus an Edrig, 4 Accucraft wagons, a pair of LGB feldbahn trucks with opening sides and 3 Binnie skips in various stages of construction.

You will have guessed by now that live steam has banished electricity to the sidelines, and there the wiggly amps must stay – for now at least.  With retirement imminent, and having sampled Accucraft, I felt it was time to try Roundhouse, so on the inauspicious day of 13 March 2006 I ordered a Roundhouse Katie kit direct from the factory.

I hope that the record of my experiences will (a) spark a few helpful (to me) comments here and there and (b) encourage others to have a go.

 

Paint

Harking back to my Airfix days, I remembered that it’s wise to paint the components before you put them together.  Accordingly, I contacted Phoenix Precision Paints Ltd of Chelmsford to ask their advice, which was:

  • If you want the best finish, buy a spray gun and compressor @ circa £300.  (For financial reasons, I haven’t gone down this route, but I’ll talk about the economics later.)

  • Don’t use car cellulose on a hot boiler – it will eventually craze over.

  • Use gloss rather than satin or matt – it’s a more hardwearing finish, and you can always cover it with matt or satin varnish.

I’ve ordered £50-worth of paints in various useful hues, mostly in aerosols.  Being a Geordie by ancestry and upbringing, a North Eastern colour scheme attracts, so I’ve picked Darlington rather than Doncaster green; they tell me Darlington is a bit darker than Doncaster, but no matter.  (I would have chosen Gateshead had it been available!) Green was a popular colour with railways as it tended to hide the dirt better than other colours.

[There is actually a better reason for this: the two railways that shout ”Prototype!” at me are the North Sunderland Railway, which I travelled on behind a Y7 0-4-0T in the year it closed, in 1951; and the Brampton Railway, an early colliery line in north Cumbria that was in part re-engineered by George Stephenson during the building of the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway in 1836.  Both of these otherwise narrow-gauge lines were 4 ft 8 ½ in gauge, though the North Sunderland directors actively considered 3 ft gauge and got their powers to build under the same Act of Parliament as the Irish Narrow Gauge, although, not being in Ireland, they didn’t get Government dosh.  Both lines being run on a shoestring, they adopted their full share of “quaint” operating practices.  The NSR sponged shamelessly off the NER and LNER for a spare loco, second-hand rolling stock, and major overhauls, hence the choice of North Eastern paint. ]

As I haven’t got a heated workshop I am going to have to wait until the garage can be warmed sufficiently with an electric fan heater to do some painting, which probably means waiting until the weather is warmer.  I have an old cardboard box to contain the paint spray.

 

Economics

A brand new ready-to-run Katie with insulated wheels and radio control costs £1,135.  The cost of a kit is as follows:

 

Chassis kit                             £290.00

Boiler Kit                                £305.00

Body Kit                                 £100.00

Radio Control Fittings          £  28.00

Insulated Wheels                   £  10.00

Delivery Charge                    £  10.00

                                                ------------

                                                £743.00

Paint                                       £  50.00

Radio Control

(Hitec Ranger 3)                    £  65.00

                                                ------------

            Total cost                               £858.00

                                                            =======

 

The saving vs. a ready-to-run loco is therefore £277, but the loco will be worth commensurately less on the second-hand market and the finish won’t be as good. Buying a spray gun and compressor would have resulted in the enterprise costing more than buying a loco ready-built. When the job’s done, I will have learned a lot about steam locos and will have the satisfaction of having had a hand in creating my own.

Richard Stamp 2006.

 

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