Custom Catch up 1: Hit era characters (plus Marklin)
I spent way too long thinking of a title that fit the theme of this batch of customs. Ah well.
Murdoch:
For a long time I didn’t do anything to my Murdoch, but always wanted to try and give him moving siderods. So a few years later, I gave it a go. I plan to explain this more I depth (and probably in a better way) in a video on my YT channel, T&H, but to summarise how I did it:
I replaced the front and back wheels with TM2 ones, with the wheels having little cuts in them to act as traction tyres (like the tomy Harvey). The rods were reused from the original, but with the connection part replaced with ones from TM2 siderods. He was raised up a little on his chassis to make him slightly taller (inspired by Tidmouth River Studios’ own Murdoch custom) and new cylinders were made out of clear plastic (cardboard wasn’t smooth enough). A lot of weight was added inside to help the wheels roll, with the front part of the chassis being cut so the wheels could be narrower so they wouldn’t interfere with the siderods, as seen here:
It works surprisingly well, but the downside is that it can’t go round curves or points as easily, so I actually didn’t use the original Murdoch chassis and instead used the spare one I had for experimenting this with.
So I now can interchange Murdoch’s chassis for filming and when I want to run him normally. The tender was also reshaped and cut down to make it a little shorter (I didn’t like the overhang at the back). I had to cut the switch a little to make it all fit, but it works fine now. Also I’ve decided to give my sodor engines numbers, just so they all fit in more with one another. I did a few other small mods but I’ll mention them as we go through other engines as this is a very long paragraph.
BR Standard 7:
This is where the spare Murdoch chassis came from. This guy doesn’t have a name yet, or is even finished as I’m waiting on getting a tender. But for now here he is. The bodyshell was cut into alot to allow the motor to fit, and he runs alright but I’d like to replace his rods with 3d printed ones in the future (when I get a 3d printer things are gonna change). I plan to paint him in BR green when the time comes, and any name suggestions (from real members of the class or just random ones) are welcome!
Molly:
I have made Molly loco driven, kinda. Its still a big working in progress as I need to cut inside the running board a little more so the rods can work smoothly but besides that she’s getting there.
This is actually my second attempt at this, as I originally broke the runningboard and couldn’t repair it fully. This time however I was more careful and was able to only break one part, but that was fine. The motor was heavily cut down, with the back of it using the same method as Murdoch’s tender. Her tender is a 3rd party Donald/Douglas one fitted to a standard tender chassis. I’ll go more in depth on this process with 2 other customs I’ll talk about in the future but for now that’s everything I have to say about Molly.
Neville:
Finally something simple, all I’ve done to Neville is touched up his face a little, given him a white runningboard and added a new number on his tender. Like with Murdoch I want to try and make all the engines relatively fit within the same style as each other, so added numbers was an obvious choice. These numbers are from my own take on the series, as will be evident with the next character.
Rosie:
I’ve already shown Rosie but she has gotten several updates. Notably she’s gained lamp irons, water caps on the tanks, cab windows and new stickers. I chose to give her only white lining as, again, I felt her TV series livery didn’t flow as well with the other engines. I also updated her face to better match my own interpretation in her (My title for her is “Rosie the energetic engine”) which I plan to write about someday.
Marklin:
Last by certainly not least is Marklin. Based on the “stage hand” engine from season 1, I made them out of a Rosie but with major mods. I reshaped basically everything, with the only original parts being the smokebox, the chassis (kind of) and the bottom half of the cab, everything else was either scratch-built or sourced from something else (the big domes are actually cut off from the ends of wooden spoons, thank my Mum for the idea!) The face came from a 2018 plarail Edward, with the nose reshaped using miliput. The siderods were also modified using matchsticks, card and cocktail sticks to represent actual valve gear, which looks really good in my opinion (again, 3d printer is gonna be a game changer mark my words.) I actually finished Marklin back in 2021 or so, but starting redoing them in 2023 and only finished them this year.
That’s some of the things I’ve done, next post will cover all the diesels. Until then, stay safe and remember to occasionally go on walks outside!!! (unless it’s raining which in that case don’t because that isn’t too fun)
