A Swift Sixteen Owain body mounted on an Accucraft chassis. It came here in scruffy black and was repainted in Bronze Green with appropriate orange/black/orange lining.

You win some, and you lose some, and here is one with which I failed... It is a Tolhurst Model Engineers (TME) model of Welshpool's COUNTESS. Beautifully made, coal-fired, and exquisitely detailed, it came to me with a suspected fault with its water injector clack valve and for a general check over. My first task was to steam it up and see what happened, but I fell at the first fence as I could not get any water in to the empty boiler. Although it has water tanks (and an axle pump), it did not have a hand pump but instead expects use of the usual pump bottle but fitted with a connector that I did not have in my arsenal of such things. Enquiries soon revealed that I should have received a lot more than just the loco and I was missing the various tools that came with it when new. Scared to death of breaking something, I filed it under "question too difficult" and it went on to somebody who has all the gear and knows what to do! Still, it had some interesting features: a working injector (maybe) and a working hand brake perhaps being the most unusual on a loco in our scale. (Cab photo courtesy if Derek Pollard)

This Ragleth initially came for a repaint along with reports that it would only run in reverse, and that the burner was noisy and tricky to light. A minor adjustment to the reversing piston and use of the correct radio control settings cured its running issues. The burner issue was more complicated...

There was nothing visibly wrong with the burner itself, but examination of the boiler revealed that the flue tube had collapsed around it, squeezing it and preventing the correct air and gas flow. This was almost certainly caused by adding cold water after the boiler had boiled dry and got VERY hot. I managed to source a replacement boiler (the original one is scrap) and fit it. Burner problem gone!

This was all followed by a repaint from Accucraft drab green in to maroon with simple yellow lining.

The MBV Schug - Accucraft Europa Decauville 0-4-0T models were delivered with blue bodywork and wheels. The blue did not fit in with the owner of this one's railway, so it came to me for a repaint in to satin black, and received replacement and usable couplings while here.

The bodywork and boiler of this 0-4-4-0T Mallet were sent to me by builder Graham Duncan-Smith for painting and lining. The photo shows the loco after reassembly by Graham .... the first time I had seen it in one piece. There was some indecision on my part about the matt black ` smokebox, but I think I made the correct decision in the end.(Photo by Graham Duncan-Smith).

Very much in "as new" condition when it arrived, the owner of this Sammy asked me to de-gloss the shiny black paintwork and make a few cosmetic changes, including painting of the wheels and the eccentric rods. While here it also gained a Roundhouse Jennie tender (holding the radio control equipment), cylinder covers and crossheads, and a more UK style of front buffer beam instead of the wooden "plank" it had before.

The owner of this Victory had built and painted the loco but was not happy with the paint finish he has achieved. The body and cylinder covers came to me for painting and lining. (Photo by Richard Hay)

The body for this loco came to me for painting and lining. Reassembled by its builder Graham Duncan-Smith, it is a delightful model of the Cape Town Table Mountain Waterworks 0-4-0T locomotive constructed by Andrew Barclay (Photo by Graham Duncan-Smith).

The Simply 7/8ths "Arthur" body kit is designed to fit on a standard Roundhouse Lady Anne 0-6-0 chassis. However, having acquired said body kit my customer decided he wanted something a little different, as usual. The initial thinking was to convert a Lady Anne chassis in to a 2-6-2: certainly achievable but a lot of work. I countered his suggestion knowing that a perfectly acceptable 2-6-2 chassis already existed under the Roundhouse Russell. A Russell chassis kit was obtained and I set to work constructing it and then modifying the Arthur body kit to fit. There were a few head-scratching moments, but it was still easier than modifying a Lady Anne chassis to have two ponytrucks. The boiler came from a Roundhouse Fowler, and the (unusually fabricated, not cast) Roundhouse smokebox was modified to have a flat-sided "D" profile. Radio control was installed and the job was finished with the owner's standard stealthy paint scheme.

This Pearse Countess was in plain scruffy green when purchased by its present owner. It came to me for lining and a general tidying of the paintwork. It had also suffered from a common model steam loco disease: crooked name and number plates held in place by copious amounts of glue oozing out from behind them. These were carefully removed and the consequential paint damage was repaired. It now carries a lining scheme carried by Earl in the late 1960s/early 1970s but never, my research suggests, by Countess.

This unusual loco was built by Peter Angus and is powered by a 2-cylinder oscillator steam motor. Arriving in bare brass (third photo) my task was to paint it to its owner's detailed specification.