A Tale of Two Kitties
Philip Worsfold explains how he "kitbashed" some Kitmaster models
Once upon a time, when even I was young, a range of plastic model loco kits burst upon the scene from a firm called Rosebud Kitmaster with great aclaim. Rosebud was a well known name in the world of dolls and this was a new venture for them.
For their time the kits were pretty remarkable and at first they sold well, but the firm made some silly commercial errors and overproduced so sadly some of the proposed range never appeared and the moulds were snapped up by Airfix when Rosebud went bust.
Airfix continued to produce some of the kits under their own name until they too went to the wall only to be scooped up by Hornby.
As you all know some of those kits – including the ones I’m going to talk about are still made, now by Dapol.
But to return to the original Kitmasters; it was the Prairie tanks that interested me. Although produced to be finished in British Railways livery, I bought a couple, deciding to finish them as models of the GWR 51xx class. So came 5140 (Newton Abbot) and 5172 (Taunton) onto the scene. I picked these numbers because I knew they were West Country engines.
Even before they took over the moulds, Airfix had seen the possibilities of these kits and went so far as to produce a kit to motorise them (using their own motor which strongly resembled one produced by Hornby). They had also done this for one of their own wagon kits, so it could push the little Pug loco in their range.
I decided that I should have a go at motorising one of my Prairies – because at the time, I had a layout based on a GW Devon branch line. I still have that layout up in the loft and since Newton Abbot was the appropriate depot for my imagined Farlacombe branch, it was 5140 that got the motor.
But as these things are, they don’t always work out very well. The plastic of the kits was not really strong enough to make a reliable working model, despite replacing the plastic crankpins using some rather useful brass flat headed nails.
Then Airfix Model Railways came on the scene with a better 51XX/61XX Prairie. So I got a pair of them instead and the etched number plates off the kits were transferred onto them. But I was still intrigued by the possibilities of the Kitmaster kits. I had by now built the ‘City of Truro’ kit and wondered if it might be possible to do some kit bashing. So I got one more kit of each to see if I could cobble up a 43XX mogul – and fit another Airfix motorising kit in it.
The model was constructed from a Kitmaster Prairie tank for the shortened chassis complete with wheels, cylinders and motion, smokebox saddle and steam pipes; and the rest from a City of Truro kit. The cab had to be deepened and the footplate beneath it formed from left over bits of plastic. I also extended the coal fenders on the 3000 gallon tender from the City. Whilst the motorising kit is the same Airfix one I used to motorise the Kitmaster Prairie, I had to modify the pickup arrangements to hide from view the connections to the motor - on the Prairie they are hidden inside the side tanks. They are, in fact just visible in the cutaway part of the centre splashers, which are not quite prototypical.
I achieved a model that bore a passing resemblance to a 43XX Mogul. It got a 63XX number originally but more on that in a moment. It worked after a fashion, but suffered from the same problem as my original motorised Prairie. Then Mainline produced their Mogul and the Kitmasters were forgotten, except…...
I had a spare City of Truro chassis and the top of a Prairie. How about a Bulldog? But that would need more than just the chassis and the boiler. It would require some parts from both kits that I had used already in building the Mogul. So instead I got another pair of kits and started work, using the City chassis, bogie, firebox and cab and the Prairie boiler and outer driving wheels (with extensions from the City ones to fit the outside frames.) So with a bit of cardboard to complete the underside of its boiler, No 3307 ‘Madras’ was born – un-motorised.
But life got more complicated with less spare time and the models I had made were boxed up and all but forgotten, except the original ‘City of Truro’, which stood in a showcase on the mantelpiece.
After several decades and a number of house moves, along came Covid19 and I started digging out old stuff to mess around with. Before the last house move I had disposed of a lot of British stock, including my pair of Airfix Model Railways Prairies, with their etched number plates. So out came a pair of numberless old Prairies, one motorised; and an unusual Mogul, in that, I now realised, it most resembled one of the first 20 of the class all but a few of which were withdrawn in 1937, so that parts could be used in the construction of Granges and Manors. Only three of this first batch (4303, 4316 and 4320) had received outside steam pipes.
I wondered if I could really get the two motorised models working, so did quite a bit of fiddling around, stiffening up the chassis and re-gluing some of the bits that had fallen off and eureka, I have a pair of locos that will, on a good day, take themselves round my layout – although I would not trust them at Tiverton Junction on public display.
I invested in some new number plates for the Prairies – still as 5140 and 5172, ordering the plates from Modelmaster Jackson Evans. I knew delivery would be slow, but they arrived in six weeks so I decided to re-number the Mogul, originally in the 63XX series, with a number within that first series that my model represents. The only number available from Modelmaster for a loco with outside steam pipes was 4316 – one of the locos that had been withdrawn in 1937, so would never have received the G W R lettering I had put on its tender. It would need to have pre-1937 lettering. Nothing daunted, I ordered those number plates in March this year, knowing I would probably have to wait at least six weeks for Jim at Modelmasters to supply them. I re-lettered the tender GREAT WESTERN, and began to wait patiently. .
More than three months later, I am still waiting and my patience with Modelmaster has run out.
But by then Martin White had alerted me to the fact that Fox Transfers also produced etched number plates and had some of the early 43XX series in their catalogue – including 4303! So I needn’t have re-lettered the tender after all.. I asked Martin to add 4303 to an order he was placing and at last I have received, thanks to Martin some appropriate number plates for my kit-bashed early Mogul.
So two kits had kittens and they ended up on a siding in some foreign place called Lusigny!
Philip Worsfold explains how he "kitbashed" some Kitmaster models
Once upon a time, when even I was young, a range of plastic model loco kits burst upon the scene from a firm called Rosebud Kitmaster with great aclaim. Rosebud was a well known name in the world of dolls and this was a new venture for them.
For their time the kits were pretty remarkable and at first they sold well, but the firm made some silly commercial errors and overproduced so sadly some of the proposed range never appeared and the moulds were snapped up by Airfix when Rosebud went bust.
Airfix continued to produce some of the kits under their own name until they too went to the wall only to be scooped up by Hornby.
As you all know some of those kits – including the ones I’m going to talk about are still made, now by Dapol.
But to return to the original Kitmasters; it was the Prairie tanks that interested me. Although produced to be finished in British Railways livery, I bought a couple, deciding to finish them as models of the GWR 51xx class. So came 5140 (Newton Abbot) and 5172 (Taunton) onto the scene. I picked these numbers because I knew they were West Country engines.
Even before they took over the moulds, Airfix had seen the possibilities of these kits and went so far as to produce a kit to motorise them (using their own motor which strongly resembled one produced by Hornby). They had also done this for one of their own wagon kits, so it could push the little Pug loco in their range.
I decided that I should have a go at motorising one of my Prairies – because at the time, I had a layout based on a GW Devon branch line. I still have that layout up in the loft and since Newton Abbot was the appropriate depot for my imagined Farlacombe branch, it was 5140 that got the motor.
But as these things are, they don’t always work out very well. The plastic of the kits was not really strong enough to make a reliable working model, despite replacing the plastic crankpins using some rather useful brass flat headed nails.
Then Airfix Model Railways came on the scene with a better 51XX/61XX Prairie. So I got a pair of them instead and the etched number plates off the kits were transferred onto them. But I was still intrigued by the possibilities of the Kitmaster kits. I had by now built the ‘City of Truro’ kit and wondered if it might be possible to do some kit bashing. So I got one more kit of each to see if I could cobble up a 43XX mogul – and fit another Airfix motorising kit in it.
The model was constructed from a Kitmaster Prairie tank for the shortened chassis complete with wheels, cylinders and motion, smokebox saddle and steam pipes; and the rest from a City of Truro kit. The cab had to be deepened and the footplate beneath it formed from left over bits of plastic. I also extended the coal fenders on the 3000 gallon tender from the City. Whilst the motorising kit is the same Airfix one I used to motorise the Kitmaster Prairie, I had to modify the pickup arrangements to hide from view the connections to the motor - on the Prairie they are hidden inside the side tanks. They are, in fact just visible in the cutaway part of the centre splashers, which are not quite prototypical.
I achieved a model that bore a passing resemblance to a 43XX Mogul. It got a 63XX number originally but more on that in a moment. It worked after a fashion, but suffered from the same problem as my original motorised Prairie. Then Mainline produced their Mogul and the Kitmasters were forgotten, except…...
I had a spare City of Truro chassis and the top of a Prairie. How about a Bulldog? But that would need more than just the chassis and the boiler. It would require some parts from both kits that I had used already in building the Mogul. So instead I got another pair of kits and started work, using the City chassis, bogie, firebox and cab and the Prairie boiler and outer driving wheels (with extensions from the City ones to fit the outside frames.) So with a bit of cardboard to complete the underside of its boiler, No 3307 ‘Madras’ was born – un-motorised.
But life got more complicated with less spare time and the models I had made were boxed up and all but forgotten, except the original ‘City of Truro’, which stood in a showcase on the mantelpiece.
After several decades and a number of house moves, along came Covid19 and I started digging out old stuff to mess around with. Before the last house move I had disposed of a lot of British stock, including my pair of Airfix Model Railways Prairies, with their etched number plates. So out came a pair of numberless old Prairies, one motorised; and an unusual Mogul, in that, I now realised, it most resembled one of the first 20 of the class all but a few of which were withdrawn in 1937, so that parts could be used in the construction of Granges and Manors. Only three of this first batch (4303, 4316 and 4320) had received outside steam pipes.
I wondered if I could really get the two motorised models working, so did quite a bit of fiddling around, stiffening up the chassis and re-gluing some of the bits that had fallen off and eureka, I have a pair of locos that will, on a good day, take themselves round my layout – although I would not trust them at Tiverton Junction on public display.
I invested in some new number plates for the Prairies – still as 5140 and 5172, ordering the plates from Modelmaster Jackson Evans. I knew delivery would be slow, but they arrived in six weeks so I decided to re-number the Mogul, originally in the 63XX series, with a number within that first series that my model represents. The only number available from Modelmaster for a loco with outside steam pipes was 4316 – one of the locos that had been withdrawn in 1937, so would never have received the G W R lettering I had put on its tender. It would need to have pre-1937 lettering. Nothing daunted, I ordered those number plates in March this year, knowing I would probably have to wait at least six weeks for Jim at Modelmasters to supply them. I re-lettered the tender GREAT WESTERN, and began to wait patiently. .
More than three months later, I am still waiting and my patience with Modelmaster has run out.
But by then Martin White had alerted me to the fact that Fox Transfers also produced etched number plates and had some of the early 43XX series in their catalogue – including 4303! So I needn’t have re-lettered the tender after all.. I asked Martin to add 4303 to an order he was placing and at last I have received, thanks to Martin some appropriate number plates for my kit-bashed early Mogul.
So two kits had kittens and they ended up on a siding in some foreign place called Lusigny!
Kitmaster Prairie 5140 with Airfix motor
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Kitmaster Bulldog 3307 "Madras" No motor fitted on this kit
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Early Mogul 4303 built from two Kitmaster kits and fitted with an Airfix motor
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Early Mogul 4303 with 5322 showing the different cab designs
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