The LNER Encyclopedia

any ideas for a suitable doner for a J17?

or where i can buy a reasonably priced kit

PDK kit 23, http://www.pdkmodels.co.uk/PL%202.htm, £90 for the kit without wheels, gearbox and motor. I bought the kit earlier this year and will be starting it shortly, don't foresee any problems with it.

Anyone got any thoughts on whether a Hornby B12 cab could be modified to suit a J17? The B12 tender has the same likeness as the J17 but others should be able to advise.

I reckon you could possibly hack a reboilered J19 out of a B12, for quite a lot of effort, but the problem of finding a really suitable chassis is tricky owing to the wheelbase. I'd imagine a J17 would be a bit too much to be a reasonable conversion, but then nothing is impossible if you are prepared to go to enough trouble. I think N2 to N7 would also be difficult. Even if you could get most of the "look" right, I suspect you would struggle to get scale dimensions.

Many years ago BEC kits did a whitemetal kit for J17, which frankly wasn't brilliant but it would glue together if you don't feel up to soldering, and it should more or less drop onto a modern Hornby 0-6-0 standard chassis, having been designed to go on the old type Triang "Jinty" chassis. BEC J17 kits, both built and unbuilt have continued to crop up un eBay or at toy and train auctions, though I'm afraid there are often too many people prepared to pay high prices for such mediocrity.
Speaking of the old Jinty chassis, I believe it began life under the Triang 3F tender engine. If you could get one of those and you are not too particular, that might dress up as a J17 of sorts.

Quite a few years ago now there was a series of articles in one of the 'comics', either RM or MRC, where the chap produced several ex-GE types on a budget. ISTR a J17 was one and a D16 was another, and the donor locos would have been Triang-Hornby at the time - with the easy availability of spare mouldings and the then acceptability of 'it looks something like' some reasonable results were obtained. Given the degree of standardisation employed by the GER loco engineers (Holden onwards) this was relatively straightforward.

PDK kit, without hesitation. Mine was built from the Crownline version which has evolved into the PDK one. Almost built itself, a real pleasure.



Tom, you might like to have a look here for some ideas as to where you can get typically GE region locos.

Wasn't there something in the Railway Modeller awhile back about making one of these out of a 4F body and B17 boiler?

Atso wrote:Wasn't there something in the Railway Modeller awhile back about making one of these out of a 4F body and B17 boiler?

Didn't you read the post above the post above?

65447 wrote:

Atso wrote:Wasn't there something in the Railway Modeller awhile back about making one of these out of a 4F body and B17 boiler?

Didn't you read the post above the post above?

Oops! No, sorry about that!

There's a built-up and painted BEC J17 on a Jinty chassis on Ebay at present, oddly enough, if you don't want to build one yourself. It does however appear to have the sadly usual features of lumpy edges to the castings, poorly fitting joints in places and very wonky boiler handrails, plus some unrealistically small numers on the cabsides for good measure! I don't have a link for it, but I'm sure a search engine would find it for you.