The Rocky River Models 720 class

Well, a post or so ago I mentioned I had picked up an IHC mechanism to eventually fit under the Rocky River Models 720 class body kit.

Having paid all my bills, and having enough spare cash, meant I could order, and thanks to David Vanderlinden, my kit was fast tracked (pardon the pun), in order to have it finished for this weekends Modelling the Railways of South Australia Convention. These kits are a relaitively simple affair made up of a polyurethane boiler/cab casting, a tender tank, oil tank, various castings for the water treatment equipment, tender underframe, bogie bolsters, bogie sideframes, booster truck and pony truck.

The purchaser needs to purchase some wheels for the booster and tender bogies, a mechanism and any other detail parts he/she wishes to install - all good.

So, I started the kit on a Wednesday evening at SARMA (this was simply cleaning up the boiler/cab castings), and then Sarah mentioned she had a heap of study to do (she's doing her post grad in Religious education...somewhat lost on me, but certainly going to help her in the long run), which meant I had a whole day of modelling time available. So at 10am on the Saturday morning I sat down to work - by 7pm, the loco was sitting on my bench, ready for paint.

I hit it with a coat of 70:30 Steam Era Etch Black/Etch Grey and picked out the bufferbeams in Floquil Oxide Red (for a weathered effect). These loco's weren't really looked after particuarly well in real life, so I wanted to go for a well weathered look.

I then spent last week weathering the loco - it looks well worn now, and will look great hauling a rake of centenary cars around the place, when I need a change from VR stuff.

All it needs now is a decoder, which I couldn't source, so I am waiting on the next batch of TCS decoders to arrive at my local hobby shop - suffice to say I converted a module back to DC operation for the purposes of test running it - which it did quite well!

It was then fitted with jewel marker light lenses and a LED headlight - all of which look fantastic - all in all a great kit, and one thats certainly enjoyable as it doesn't months of pain to get it on the track!