Steve Johnson    Modelmaker

HOME WORKBENCH BRITISH RAILWAYS IRISH RAILWAYS FRENCH RAILWAYS OTHERS CONTACT

 

Back to BR Locomotives

No.1 L&YR

No.2 L&YR

BEL 1

BEL 2

EE1

EF1

ES1

 

 

North Staffs BEL 2 Bo Battery Electric

Completed Model

B.E.L. 2 was a wheel battery electric locomotive built to an industrial design by the North Staffordshire Railways Stoke Works as No.1 in 1917 for shunting at T. Bolton & Sons copper works. It was taken into LMS stock upon grouping but was considered Departmental Stock. It was renumbered to B.E.L. 2 by British Railways. It was withdrawn 1963 and is now preserved at the National Railway Museum.

An obvious candidate as an unusual model on my layout, High Level Kits produce a complete kit excluding wheels.

Assembled chassis and gear cradle

Having purchased the kit, I started construction. The instructions state that this kit is definitely not for beginners, which I would agree with. It is a very small locomotive etched in nickel silver and includes the motor, gears and bearings. It is built up as the chassis and body. The four wheel drive chassis is compensated by having a rocking gear cradle at one end. Tolerances are very fine and extreme care needs to be taken assembling the unit to make sure everything is square and fits.

The chassis is tackled first and is quite straightforward in construction. Care needs to be taken though in getting everything precise and square. The chassis is compensated and this is achieved by having one fixed axle whilst the other mounted in a laterally rocking gear cradle. Having built up the chassis, priming and painting it are next before moving on to assemble the gears. Assembling the gear trains is fiddly, but if you carefully follow the instructions, it does all go together. When all assembled, I powered it up and was pleased to find I had a nice smooth running chassis. All that remains here is fitting the pickups, but I will leave that until the body is finished so that I can see how that would be best accomplished.

The assembled, painted and working chassis

The body is built up on the footplate in the conventional way, paying careful attention to locating the tabs in the relevant slots. It is all very well thought out and everything does go together very precisely. The body is finished off with various lost wax brass castings such as buffers, springs etc. The only odd part to me seems to be the cab roof. This is located by four tabs, two on the cab fronts and the 'guide ears' above the cab doors (these are filed down by this stage). The instructions recommend fitting the roof after painting to allow access to the interior for painting. However, this would leave the four tabs on the roof slightly visible.

Completed body on chassis

With the bodywork completed, a little bit of fettling is required before priming with grey primer.

Primed Body

One thing I noticed was the lack of the horizontal handrails either side of the vertical ones. I duly added these, re-primed and then sprayed the main body gloss black. The buffer beams were picked out in buffer beam red. The two lights at either end are painted white (right) and red (left) as per usual shunter lamp display. The cab inside was painted with Humbrol Tan, to try and replicate the varnished wood finish of the prototype. Transfers were next and I used Fox Transfers throughout. The early BR crest was used on the left hand bonnets and the number, B.E.L. 2, was reproduced using FG1001, 2mm Gill Light. This seemed to be as close as I could get. Happy with the model, it was then sprayed using Phoenix-Precision Satin Varnish.

The next items to be added were lead weight in the bonnet ends, glazing, from acetate sheet. Exactoscale three link couplings and Alex Jackson Couplings.

Adding a DCC decoder was tricky. The smallest reasonable priced one I could find was a Digitrax DZ126, which I have used before with excellent results. Duly obtained, the wires were cut and soldered so that the decoder could slip in the small space between the chassis assembly and the body/ cab side. A bit of manoeuvring got it in and the decoder set up using Decoder Pro.

All in all, an excellent kit of a very unusual prototype.

As well as the High Level kit, a 3D body only print is made by Recreation 21 via Shapeways.