Found!

On new years eve, while looking for something else ( a model of an Indian mausoleum, but that's another story), I rediscovered buried treasure. My A and Ab, built on old Mehano pacific chassis ( the company recently went bust) that I purchased with my strawberry picking money nearly 25 years ago.


Back in those days, ordering stuff from overseas was a serious trial that was a hangover from the Spanish inquisition. One had to try to work out what the exchange rate actually was, and then go into the post office and apply for a postal order, fill out the amount you wanted to buy, pay for it up front, and then send the money off into the wild blue yonder in the vain hope that you had not only got the address right, but that they would be able to actually send your order back to you. I think each order took 2 months to arrive back in the country.
The construction methods were not quite up to that of the Bernsens of this world, but would get an A+ for ingenuity. The Ab tender is a toilet roll suitably covered in paper. The boilers were formed around Hornby tanker barrels ( the chassis had become la's probably by then), again with paper. The cabs were plasticard, the domes carved from balsa wood, and the funnels were from cut down PVA bottles ( Merv Smith would have been proud). The motors were not that good ( the A eventually got an athern motor), but they held their own against the converted English stuff we had ( my, Lima was crap wasn't it).
The scale was a bit on the large side (living in a small town, there was no chance to actually see real S scale models), but they looked the part for a young lad. I'll do some remedial work to fix up some of the lose bits, but they will not get rebuilt. It's nice to have reminders of what your skills were like and how far you've come. Not sure if I'll ever take them along to a area group meet. Maybe if I fill up on dutch courage beforehand.