T6 No. 682 gave me my fifteen minutes of fame ... winning the Chairman’s Cup and the Carlson Trophy in the Gauge O Guild 2004 competition. As a result Tony Wright took a nice picture (under better lighting conditions than I’ve been able to manage) which appeared in a show report in British Railway Modelling in November 2004. The picture was also published in The South Western Circular Vol. 13, No. 7 when the editor appealled for pictures of LSWR models. This was the accompanying letter, which I did not write but the editor constructed from our email correspondence and published under my name – as a publisher I’ve done worse than that. The letter tells the unfortunate story of the engine number.
“Thank you for inviting me to write a few words to accompany Tony Wright’s stunning photograph of my 7 mm scale model of No. 682. To me, all the Adams 4-4-0s are beautiful engines, but the T6 with the larger driving wheels just has it over the others. The Adams livery suited them so much more than the Drummond. Bradley has a photograph of No. 682 newly outshopped in Adams lining and records the colour as photographic grey rather than Adams green, but as our Editor has pointed out to me, I have chosen the awkward one to model – No. 682 was completed in December 1895, the same month as Bradley records the first locomotive (newly built X6 class) being painted in Drummond livery leaving Nine Elms works. At the time of building the model, I was misled into believing that they did run in Adams livery for a short time, and by coincidence I have just come across a photo of No. 679, dating from about 1895/6, very definitely in Adams livery not works grey, and with the crest on the splasher and LSWR on the tender, so at least one member of the class was so finished. I should have researched the question of livery more thoroughly before choosing its number and, if no further information emerges, I might just have to renumber to model at some time.”
Well, I still haven't got round to renumbering it!
Some technical details for those interested:
JH motor with my own gearbox comprising a helical gear and two sets of spur gears, the last gearbox I made or am likely to make as long as ABC Gears exists
AGH wheels throughout, purchased as castings and turned by me (AGH sells a very useful profiling tool)
The so-called American pickup: engine and tender are opposite polarities, the drawbar pivot on the engine is insulated and connected to a motor terminal. That eliminates any rubbing pickups and avoids having additional wires to connect the engine and tender
Weighted tender bears on the rear of the engine, increasing the weight on the driving wheels
Fully working inside valve gear (I wonder why I bother, when you can hardly see it? I suppose I like to know it is there) and all the other details you need to turn the engine over to see
Everything was scratch built except for some Shedmaster castings for the cab fittings
No. 682 pulling its train of five Eagle saloons and two passenger luggage vans, representing a London-Southampton boat train of the 1890s.