Upnor Castle Diesel Locomotive in 4mm Scale
Built by Roger Christian from a Worsley Works kit

I bought this kit off Allen Doherty some time ago and put it away in a drawer upstairs. You know the one, the bottomless drawer we all have where we squirrel away all those unmade kits. The trouble is that kits become available too quickly and take too long to make. Or other things get in the way like expensive birthdays. No, not for other people, for me! I had to go out to buy a new oven and hob after the old one 'failed'.

Now we have to go back to the beginning of 2012 when someone on the Chivers' Forum asked if anyone had put a chassis under a Worsley Works 'Upnor Castle' kit. I had an idea but wanted to prove if it was feasible.

The chassis I had in mind was the ubiquitous KATO tram. Would it fit? First thing was to see if the footplate, complete with bufferbeams, would fit over the chassis and decide if any modifications were necessary. I made a card template before attacking the brass. One end required some alteration and the other a fillet to take a brass nut for a mounting bolt.

The chassis, with couplings removed, slotted in between the bufferbeams with just a little easing with a file. The main problem is that the chassis is too low for the footplate to sit on, it needed raising. The real 'Upnor' has a prominent frame under the footplate.

Looking in the drawers upstairs I found some 3mm x2mm Plastruct channel. Two pieces were cut to length and one edge of each glued on top of the chassis each side of the motor housing. With the footplate back on I carefully measured the overall height which came out almost at scale. And that is how things stayed until October 2012.

This kit had joined the others that remained incomplete or unmade. Finally having the time to clear more of the backlog the rest of the kit went together in no time. But like other kits a little forethought does not go amiss.

One thing that does need doing first is fitting the four cabside grab handles and their recessed boxes. They were folded up first and the holes opened out with a broach. With the cab etches still flat each box was soldered into the half etched locating recesses. Some 0.45mm brass handrail wire was fed through the holes and secured with solder. Any excess was snipped off.

The engine bonnet and cab roof have half etched fold lines in the right places to achieve the correct shape. The bonnet has a former that is attached to the cab front. This sandwich of parts will need some filing on the bottom edge to clear the top of the chassis.

Apart from the chassis modifications that is the only compromise on the whole of the kit to fit the KATO. A second former is attached to the radiator mount, all three eventually soldered into a sandwich also. The three boxes that fit on top of the footplate have holes for grilles.

They require some etched brass mesh to be sourced by the builder. Fortunately I had some in stock from previous projects. The grilles were cut to size with strong scissors and secured behind each opening with high temperature solder. They were folded up as sub-assemblies.

The exhaust pipe is some brass tubing but what got me really thinking was how to represent the three air filters (?) on the bonnet top. Another rummage through the upstairs drawers found remnants of a PD sprue from their V of R coach kit lamp tops. On it are three small parts that I thought would be ideal.

The blocks on each end of the bufferbeams were fashioned from the plastic solebars from an old wagon kit. The real 'Upnor' has four prominent sandboxes. These were made from two layers of mounting card and are superglued to the chassis sides.

Handrail wire represents the sanding pipes. The cylinder on the left side of the frame is made from a cut down plastic axle from a Knightwing diesel kit.

After completion the model was sprayed with Halfords grey primer.

The loco has gone through a number of rebuilds and has emerged from Boston Lodge in differing formats and paint styles. Earlier it was black with green panels edged with red. When rebuilt to become the WHR construction loco it was in two tone green.

Recently it has had another livery variation and was photographed in Dinas yard during the Quarry Power weekend with dark green bonnet sides and lower cab with black above separated by a thin red line. Below the footplate has always been black with red bufferbeams.

This latest livery is how I have painted the model simply because it is much easier to apply. I painted the model green all over to begin.

To make painting easier on the cab rear I applied a black lining transfer to separate the the green from the black. The black paint was simply brushed up to the transfer achieving the straight edge from green to black.

The red and black lining transfers came from the Fox range. FR crests from Blackham.

Overall another fine kit from Worsley Works.

The KATO tram chassis with the Plastruct additions looks quite the part despite have a marginally longer than scale wheelbase. The finished model requires lead ballast as it is extremely lightweight.

Lead sheet was was glued to areas where it cannot be seen inside the cab and bonnet. Greenwich couplings complete the model with a loop on one end only.

Roger Christian

'Upnor Castle' in Dinas yard for the Quarry Power weekend in September 2012.