Regular readers, and most others, will be well aware of Garrat locos in their various forms, both prototype and model. I have been lucky enough to ride behind some of these monsters in their natural habitat - the wide-open spaces of southern Africa. My main modeling interest is the Darjeeling railway and now Roundhouse have upped the stakes with the issue of their D Class, issuing a challenge which yearns to be answered. There remains the issue of cost, which is a formidable obstacle. However, I had a plan…

 

This did not, you will be glad to hear, involve anything as dubious as cashing in the pension pot, selling a vulnerable family member or remortgaging the domestic dwelling. If live steam was too pricey, I wondered if perhaps an electric version might serve. I recalled an article in SMT a while back describing a Garratt built using Essel chassis(es). This looked promising but it lacked any cylinders or associated motion. However Garden Railway Specialists market a four-wheel steam-outline chassis, perhaps a pair of those would do? I had one already, fitted to a Peckett loco, but easily re-assignable to other duties. The rear ends would need to be shortened but otherwise it was a possibility, despite the rather basic set of valve gear.

 

As it happened, I was due a trip south to visit Kentish relatives, so I deviated a little to buy a second chassis from GRS. In doing so I couldn’t help but notice a D Class for sale, resplendent in Darjeeling blue, a much better colour than the green in my view, and never mind authenticity. I turned my back on it resolutely, drank the coffee kindly supplied to me whilst waiting for service, and resolved not to tell the staff about my plan. They would probably have at least a half-dozen reasons why it was a daft idea, so to avoid answering the unanswerable it would be much easier just to keep quiet.

 

Back home I surprised myself by preparing a list of components needed and their possible source. Rarely do I go to such bureaucratic lengths, making it up as I go along is the usual method. Most of the body would be plasticard on metal frames and the boiler a section of 68mm drainpipe. I started off with filling-in the tops of the (30mm shorter) power units with plasticard, followed by making the central chassis from a rectangle of steel sheet and two lengths of aluminium angle to form the frames. The three parts were then joined with bolts and washers forming the pivots.

 

The motors were rated at 12-24v, so a cautious bench trial was arranged using a 7v supply. Both units ran OK, with only a little sticking from the aft bogie, readily cured with some gentle easing of a piston rod. An even more cautious trial on the garden railway was also successful, with the complete chassis running smoothly around 30” radius curves.

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The next stage was to source a boiler. The prototype’s was 4ft in diameter, and after a bit of searching I discovered that guttering downpipe was a good approximation to scale size. But not in length unfortunately, it seemed to come only in 2.5m sections. However whilst looking for somebody who could supply a length that would actually fit in the car, I came across a rack of pipe fittings in my local plumbers’ merchants. One of these was about 8 inches long with a narrower section at one end, which could pretend to be a smokebox, and a sealing clamp (clamping seal?) down part of one side, which could act as a support pedestal for the boiler. My apologies if the description is a bit vague, but you gutter aficionados will have already recognised it as an RR135 Black Access Pipe, by those masters of drainage Polypipe.

 

I bought two of these, and after a bit of trimming and filing they fitted together into some resemblance of a Class D boiler. The next stage was to construct the water tank and the coal bunker. The latter was a fairly basic rectangular shape, albeit with rounded corners, but the former was more intricate, with a large curved indent in the rear panel. Building that with even modest accuracy looked hard work, but to a 3D printer not a problem. What would potentially be a problem was creating the necessary CAD file, as I had zero experience of using such software. After a trawl through some of the options I eventually settled on SketchUp, as it seemed somewhat easier to learn than the others, and the free version looked to be more than adequate for my needs.

 

The learning curve was a little steep but not unsurmountable, and with the help of some Youtube instruction videos I gathered enough of the basics to have a go at the water tank. The first problem was sizing, as I only had photos to go on, and the overall model dimensions. Some guesswork and trial and error eventually produced a file that not only looked OK but also was recognised by the printer software as something it could work with. A trial print

 

Every new loco needs its train, and I spent some time wondering what my new loco should pull. I already had some old-style DHR coaches and wagons, but also a perfectly serviceable Class B to haul them, so something else was needed. For a while I toyed with the idea of a WWII train, perhaps taking supplies up the Teesta valley to bolster the north-east frontier defences. The Swift Sixteen WD vans looked particularly enticing in this respect. Now I have some slightly mixed feelings about modelling wartime scenarios, irrational though it might seem. There is a fine line to be drawn, my thinking goes, between showing respect for those who took part and glorifying what can only be some extremely unpleasant circumstances.

 

My logic tangles were just about being straightened out in favour of such a consist, when our postperson delivered the latest edition of the Impact Foundation newsletter. This is a charity that takes operating theatres and clinics to remote parts of the world, using trains and boats and for all I know, planes. They just rock up to a village, open the doors and set up shop, treating cataracts, cleft palates and the like with minimum fuss and maximum effectiveness.

 

A model of such a train would be a world first for me and probably most other people, so I looked further into how it might appear in reality. The sub-continent version, branded ‘The Lifeline Express’, uses relatively modern main-line rolling stock donated by Indian Railways, a mixture of coaches for the treatment rooms and accommodation, and vans for equipment and generators. Finding suitable commercial kits or ready-made items would be difficult, particularly in narrow-gauge. The nearest I found were Yatton Engineering’s Darjeeling stock, but these were on the short side for what I needed. For a brief moment I fantasised about cutting and shutting pairs of such coaches into single units, but both the complexity and the cost were beyond what I considered achievable. I began to wonder if scratch-building was the only option, not something I excel at (the building, not the wondering, I can do that all day).

 

Fortunately another thought occurred, to use Newquida stock as the basis. These looked potentially suitable, if viewed in a dim light with one eye closed, and if one ignored the end-balconies. Perhaps however the whole outfit could be time-shifted back a few decades to when the D Class loco (there was only ever one) was still operating, and such older-looking stock was more likely to be on active service. The coaches were inexpensive and could be dressed up a little to distract from their somewhat plastic look. I already had one example languishing in a corner of the shed, an impulse purchase carried out on the basis of ‘buy now, think of a use later’. Now, much later, the use had arrived.

 

A web search brought up Kent Garden Railways as a potential supplier. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that as well as coaches there were box vans and a tank wagon available. The latter could perhaps be used to ensure a supply of clean medical water when in remote country districts. Then another thought struck - I had some LGB stock not doing much, perhaps they could be re-gauged and re-branded as Indian look-alikes? Of course they could, so the shopping list was revised downwards by one coach, one van and one tank wagon, and upwards by several sets of 32mm wheels.

 

Whilst waiting for delivery I tried painting the existing Newquida coach, using pale blue for the body and a darker blue for the roof. The model had no end doors, so I made new ones with the printer. Now the livery of Lifeline coaches is, shall we say, somewhat cheerful in character, no doubt to make them attractive to would-be patients wondering what this strange collection of railwayana was that had turned up in the local sidings. So a visit to the local craft shop produced a variety of decorative letters and symbols, which were stuck on in a somewhat random but hopefully artistic manner. For consistency with most Indian stock the words ‘Lifeline Express’ should be bilingual, one either side, but regrettably I balked at trying to construct Hindi script from a blank sheet of shiny coloured paper. The windows were blanked out using curtains made from cleaning cloth and blinds from coloured wooden sticks.

 

Suitably encouraged by the outcome, I set about repainting the three LGB items in green and red, followed by the newly-arrived Newquida van and two coaches. Various types of transfers and stickers were then applied to match the spirit, if not the literal execution, of the prototype consist. Initially I kept the rolling stock in 45mm gauge, to run them on a friend’s garden railway during his birthday celebrations, using the Class B as motive power. This event was a considerable success, and not just because of the quantities of real ale on tap. The newly-relaid line allowed a reliable service to be run, including the Lifeline Express on its maiden voyage, although some untrimmed vegetation did cause a couple of significant derailments. Towards the end a breathalyser might have revealed significant contraventions of the line’s safety management system, if it ever had one of course.

 

Back home I scrabbled about in the loco parts tray and eventually found enough bogies and wheels to regauge all seven cars. Another trial run, this time on the Sutton and Segrave Light Railway (Southport Model Engineering Club) was marred a little by strong winds that took mischievous pleasure in blowing first one then another coach off the elevated track. Nothing however that couldn’t be dealt with by some sheet lead on the floor of each item.

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