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SleeperAgent1 — Pitstop to the North
#duck #awdry #railwayseries
Published: 2017-11-24 23:44:44 +0000 UTC; Views: 7646; Favourites: 144; Downloads: 9
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Funny how Dalby's drawings of Thomas were made into a model for trainz! XD
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Okay, seriously and honestly, that face is honestly creepy. Nice work though!
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Funny that's actually one of my favourite Dalby faces Hard to define why per say but it helps portray his adultness over the NWR engines back then, while the following two images of him are back to Dalby's minimalistic style.
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Yeah, a kinda knew Dalby's illustrations where closer to mid 20th century metallic tin toys than actual 1948-65 era BR liveried engines which the books he illustrated where written in. Plus Duck seem to be allot more socially tolerable engine in the Awdry's families eyes than Thomas of the same size smaller than Edward.
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Too right, choose a non-Spong face for just that reason
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There are two ways of illustrating; the Great Western way and the Spong way.
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Dalby's illustrations may have been rather simple, but the facial expressions he gave the engines spoke volumes. In fact, I loved the way all the illustrators made the engines' expressions happen. They had their own uniqueness.
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A few are missis in my opinion but that is true for all the artists in fairness. Credit due though many are crackers and I think Dalby did a really good angry Gordon, can't help but see a bit of Megatron in several of his examples
ttte.wikia.com/wiki/The_Three_…
pre00.deviantart.net/850c/th/p…
ttte.wikia.com/wiki/The_Three_…
www.dadsbigplan.com/wp-content…
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Lovin' the edits as ever Sleeper; I'm gathering that this engine is a 5700 class with round windows they gained during the 20's and 30's.
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Cheers as always Fredd 
The engine is actually Montague himself while en route to Sodor, not sure if Dalby can actually be blamed here but officially he turned up in BR livery and 1955 predates when the panniers started getting repainted in Brunswick.
As for the cab while the older engines were otherwise updated to match the later batches they never gained the taller type with the large square windows, had to change that aspect to this painting by Baldwin.
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Ah yes of course, I'd actually seen a little earlier that upon his arrival to the NWR, the Fat Controller allowed him to return to his former GWR green livery while still retaining the number he arrived with. I was originally going to comment on how this was a nice little prequel, you might say, of Duck's journey to Sodor in '55, but I wasn't too sure since I noticed the round windows and thought "ah, that must be one of Duck's brothers filling up on water before going back to shunting work or something". I suspect, though, there may have been a reason as to why Dalby didn't depict Duck in BR lined black when he arrived.
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Duck's given number is a separate discussion but to quote IoS's directly '....and since Sir Topham had been trained at Swindon, and admired things Great Western, he allowed Duck to revert from BR to GWR livery.'
I may actually be getting an O gauge model of Duck in BR black which would be nice for a pre-Croven's Gate overhaul but with my moving into SM32 (and even G3 with two cattle wagon kits I bought the other day ) funds have taken quite the hit over the last few months and i'm going to the NEC for the big model event tomorrow so that will be more money gone!
Famously Dalby appears to have based Duck on a 64xx but i'm not sure if anyone knows why as Awdry's model easily predates Percy the Small Engine but it may explain why he was in GWR livery, perhaps Dalby got some photos of the wrong class....
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Well, I wish you the best of luck with the pre-Crovan's Gate overhaul Duck model (and the cattle wagons that we are keeping quiet I see), and I hope that the NEC model event you're going to is enjoyable; kinda wish I could go, but I'm on the other side of the world.
Oh yeah, that's true; and Dalby wasn't that experienced with locomotives if I'm not mistaken, so he must've seen the 64xx class and thought "yeah, that'll do".
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With international differences this gets a little confusing so don't worry about it but basically the closest thing to SM32/16mm scale is 'G gauge/scale' and Gauge 3 (in the UK, G2 to others). Ignoring narrow gauge G is not really a UK thing but if one wanted you could more or less get away with using Bachmann's G Thomas range next to SM32 stuff (think it's close to 1:22, but the freelance nature of the engines makes it hard to quantify). Anywho G1 (what the show used) is 1:32, which is too small against 1:19.5 but G3 is 1:22.5 and while slightly under par is close enough and the wider track is closer to true standard gauge than with G from what I believe about the mostly American scale.
While G1 and G3 have some UK prototype support, engines and a lot of rolling stock (particularly coaches) have to be built from scratch other than some available castings and wheels etc. I came across complete kits of the GWR Mex B cattle wagon which happily is what the show started using in S2 (the Tenmille kits Ed pulls in Cows) so i've got two to build now plus a 12 ton LMS Ventilated Box LMS I picked up today (checking the TTTE wiki the brown one I was thinking of is an LNER design apparently, but i'm not sure if that is actually correct-need to do some research).
I don't plan to model much in G3 as it's not practical and also very expensive but will give the above a go as I want to eventually make the Neilsons and some S&MR rolling stock to go on the opposite side of an early Croven's Gate exchange layout outdoors.
Getting back to Duck it's possible Dalby was working off photos after Awdry complained once more but he picked up or was given ones of the wrong pannier class (well that's my theory anyway 
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I see. Funny thing is I've heard it said before that you could probably get away with using Bachmann's G-scale Thomas & Friends models as TV replicas with some substantial modification to them which seems reasonable enough as they're roughly the same size (though, on a personal note, that kinda takes away from the satisfaction of building them from scratch/by hand); anyway, I'm still hoping to be able to create TV replicas as I'd mentioned in a comment on the pic of the Fowler tenders you've been scratch-building so I'll be keeping a watch on the Tenmille site to keep track of what's in stock and what isn't, and at the minute I'm trying to see if there's any kits of the LB&SCR coaches used for the branchline coaches on the show as well as the SR Maunsell express coaches that were used on the show as well, but haven't had much luck. Anyway, all that's for another day.
If you do ever have a go at modelling Neilsons and some S&MR rolling stock as well as an outdoors early Crovan's Gate exchange layout, I would absolutely be interested in seeing it as I don't think it's something anyone has ever attempted before, so you'd have something quite unique on your hands.
Yeah, that might be the case actually; though, still, it wasn't to last for Dalby as we know.
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I know what you mean, have tried gold plating plastic spoons before when in retrospect it would of been easier and better to start from scratch I know a few people have recycled Percy's chassis into other prototypes though and have seen a few Emily conversions, including this impressive one along with her special coaches.
www.gscalecentral.net/threads/…
Basically if you're creative and happy to ignore true accuracy you can get some miles of salt out of the relatively cheap range and they would run on the same track as G1 anyway
www.tenmille.com/PRICE_LIST.pd…
while my G3 ones are £166. As you live in the US though I have no idea how much the postage would be but that's another thing to consider if you're planning to trickle order. Regarding the Stroudley coaches you could probably scratch the bodies in styrene sheet as with some experience on simpler projects larger scale modellers have done amazing things with the cutter friendly material.
letsgoloco.co.uk/an-arm1g-in-p…
A good halfway house to get you going though could be to modify Bachmann's A&C,
ashrail.com/pics/2011_01_08-DS…
and other rolling stock such as the trucks and Spiteful, as they would need little more than a repaint.
I'm not sure about the five S1 Maunsells but I think the longer ones in the later seasons where manufactured in-house so to speak, definitely the simplified ones introduced around season 7 with the yellow strip. Tenmille currently sell Bullied coaches but they are different of course.
Croven's Gate won't happen this year at the very least! I have got a few TR kits either on the go or inbound though and i'm planning to build a simple roundy-roundy in a large house room, was thinking of doing Dolgoch station perhaps and a generic stretch of greenery on the opposite side. Promise to take pics when anything materialises but expect to see the CGI gunpowder van shortly.
All the best.
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I have to say, that conversion of the Bachmann G-scale Emily into a GNR Stirling single this user did there looks bloody brilliant, really does show that, with enough time and effort, you can get some serious mileage out of something like that; and the coaches suit the model very nicely. But, the only thing to bear in mind when creating stuff like this is the cost of the kits, in the case f the S2 cattle trucks, or the models, in the case of the G-scale Emily.
Ah yeah, that's right, I believe you did mention before that I'd have to scratch-build the Stroudley coaches rather than go on the hunt for any kits that may be left on Ebay or something (though, just a side note, I actually live over in Australia, but I'd still have to bear postage in mind as well; I should probably check what the postage would be to get it to Australia before I get too carried away with buying the kits. But, that'll be for another day when I can put some money aside for them.) though I guess a modification of the Bachmann A&C would be something worth considering actually.
With regards to the Maunsell coaches, I actually came across these pretty helpful 'guides', for lack of a better word, that a user by the name of cudak888 (think I may have mentioned him before) was showing to Jam Filled as part of a discussion in terms of widening the CGI renders of the express coaches to match their model counterparts.
pbs.twimg.com/media/DPXH0HiUQA…
pbs.twimg.com/media/DPXQoqWVQA…
pbs.twimg.com/media/DPXhXDTUQA…
But you'd be right about the coaches that appeared from S6 (and I think Magic Railroad as well) which were indeed just simpler in-house replicas of the Tenmille kits they used to use.
Well, regardless of what you do for now and what you do in the future, do be sure that I'll be very interested to see them as I said; and I look forward to the CGI gunpowder van as well.
Cheers, all the best to you too.
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Sorry I speak to a few people either here or on SiF etc and it can be easy to blur their nationalities sometimes, still though I imagine there are a few retailers out in your neck of the woods that sell the G Thomas stuff as we get a small amount imported here. I did come across a yank selling two Tenmille vans the other day on eBay so it's possible those old kits will surface someday but i've no idea how long they've been out of production now, might be worth asking on their website to see if another run could be produced.
Beside plastic and brass wood is a cheap possibility on some boxy projects. Actually with the natural grain it can be extremely effective in larger scales. Something like Elsie or a regular van would be a good prototype and it's easy to scribe wood planks, but you would still need some castings here and there. Not sure what Oz produces in terms of buffers, draw gear, W-irons etc but perhaps you could get away with them instead of paying excess shipping from the UK.
Thanks for the links. I'd looked into the SR prototypes so can help you in that regard if you ever need along with a lot of other prototypes but that tops my research of the show's counterparts. Its amazing how short the S1 coaches are for bogie designs but I never picked up on it as a kid and it's a good layout compression trick as 4-5 of them still look better than say Henry pulling just two in Cows.
Ta
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Oh no, don't worry about it, it's all good; but yeah, I'll certainly check some of the model/hobby shops over here and see what's what really. I'll still keep an eye out on Ebay to see if any of the older kits do pop up and how much they're going for, either that or I'll get in touch with Tenmille and inquire about another run of the Stroudley and Maunsell coach kits; failing that, I'll have a go at custom-building them.
I guess I'll just have to have a look at what we have out here as I said and, if needed, I'll buy from the UK or US.
No probs at all, and thanks for the offer to help, I'll certainly DM you if I'm in need of it.
Yeah, it is actually; wasn't really practical to basically leave the coaches as they came from the box in S2 leaving only room for a three coach maximum on the sets as opposed to the 4-5 (maybe even six at a stretch) you could get from the S1 and S3-5 coaches.
Anytime.
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