Black Dog Mining O&K:
With my apparent lack of finishing locos, I grabbed the opportunity to buy two read-built locos when advertised on the NGRM Forum.
One of these (the yellow loco in the middle) is a cast resin O&K diesel body from Black Dog Mining on a KB Scale chassis. It had an exquisite yellow paint finish with beautiful black ‘wasp’ stripes on the ends. The driver wasn’t so well painted but as he (or rather his seat) had fallen off, it was a simple task to repaint him. The resin body was a bit light so I packed as much lead as I could into any available space, including the chassis to help improve the running. The loco ran nicely on the test track but was not so good on the layout and needed the wheel back-to-back reducing a bit. However, at this point I found that there was insufficient clearance left for the wheels and when the appropriate back to back was set, the wheels were too tight against the chassis for smooth running. With space so tight I wasn’t sure how to remove the wheels without damage to either them or the chassis.
I elected to replace the chassis with one of the 3d printed ones designed and used by Tim Crockford. This used 9.5mm diameter wheels from Mark Clarke (Locos n stuff) and is a very smooth runner and solved my gauge problems. However, with such a small body made out of resin, there is very little space for weight and its running is not as reliable as I would like on my track work (which leaves a lot to be desired).
Nonneminstre O&K:
The second loco was a Nonneminstre O&K diesel with a mediocre paint finish on both the body and the driver. I used some light washes to repaint the body in an attempt to give it a faded and distressed look. The driver was a bit harder to paint as he was firmly glued in position. This is a very noisy loco, particularly in one direction but it does run smoothly and being whitemetal is nice and heavy, so it is more suited to my track work.
It was only when I had built my own version of the Nonneminstre kit that I realized both seat and driver had been mounted the other way around on the second-hand model. The second-hand model had a new copper clad keeper plate fitted for the pick-ups but I found that there was enough room for some thin copper clad pads and phosphor-bronze strip to mount on the side of the chassis block for my own model. My kit was built as per the instructions although I realized afterwards that I had got the axle boxes the wrong way around – despite my best efforts! Luckily I found a photo of one in Germany with the same axle boxes, so I have proof that they got it wrong in real life too!