WEATHERING
TIM SHACKLETON loves ‘Deltics’ but didn’t think much of the blue-liveried version when it first appeared. He shows how to upgrade a ‘OO’ gauge version using painting techinques alone.
AT THE RISK OF SOUNDING smug, I wasn’t in the least bit taken aback when Accurascale announced its 4mm scale model of an English Electric ‘Deltic’. In fact, I’d been expecting it, and had even placed bets with my friends. From a commercial viewpoint a highend ‘Deltic’ had long seemed an obvious choice and my only surprise was that no other manufacturer had taken up the challenge.
I was considerably more startled when, on a visit to Gateshead depot in November 1966, I was suddenly confronted by D9002 King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry in blue. It had only been released from the paint shop a fortnight earlier and, standing beside green-liveried D9005 The Prince of Wales’s Own Regiment of Yorkshire, I thought it looked awful. The crude break between the blue bodywork and the all-yellow nose exaggerated its height and made it look slow and static, while the absence of the lime-green ‘cheat lines’ along the bodysides made ‘KOYLI’ appear much shorter and stubbier than its neighbour, a carthorse rather than a thoroughbred.
