NG15 news

The FR have published the below drawing as the likely look of a restored NG15:

At the Shepton Mallet show this weekend (review coming) I saw this:

Scratch built by Paul Windle, this is clearly a very nice model, although of course it is constrained by the availability of a decent N gauge chassis. Ignore the tender on the model as the FR version is considerably remodelled from the originals than ran in South Africa.

I liked the look of the model and half considered asking for another for myself (backwoods have promised a kit at some point but not for a while and ceratinly not before one of the WHR NG15s are restored).

However something else doesn't look right to me - the boiler looks too short, rather like it has been cut down to fit the chassis a bit too much.

Below is another NG15 built by Ian Turner [who kindly sent me these shots] which looks right to me (again ignore the tender):

I think that is pretty conclusive, I am not sure therefore whether the Paul Windle project was meant to be shorter for some reason or whether it was a necessary compromise for the chassis. Let's hope it was the former.

Colin