MODEL A WATER FEED PUMP

George Dent ruins the clean lines of a Gresley ‘A3’ by adding the unusual ACFI water feed pump, with the help of a conversion kit from Niu Models.

Few can argue against the grace and beauty of a Gresley ‘A3’, but there’s a part of me that does love a more workmanlike appearance, with pipes and bits of machinery visible on the outside. Indeed, there’s a steampunkesque attitude about the two LNER ‘A3s’ kitted out with the experimental ACFI water feed apparatus during the late 1920s.

I can never resist a bit of ‘plumbing’ work, so I thought I’d have a go at recreating one of the modified ‘Pacifics’ and a handy set of parts is available for the task from Niu Models. Consisting of an array of finely rendered resin components, the modeller is left with the task of fitting out the boiler with pipes of varying diameter, running between smokebox and cab.

Shaping the brass wire accurately proved one of the major challenges and I soon began to wish I’d used copper wire instead, which is far more malleable. However, my reasons for choosing brass were sound, especially for the long, straight pipe runs, which are impossible to achieve with soft copper.

The finished result isn’t perfect, not least as I couldn’t find a Hornby ‘A3’ with the correct round (not streamlined) dome in the correct livery at short notice. Moreover, I was loathe to mess around with a new, high-spec Hornby model, so I opted for a bargain pre-owned tender-drive version instead.

However, the exercise has been valid, revealing how the real Shotover and The White Knight looked while festooned with the ACFI feed water heating gear. It has certainly produced something a little different for an interwar-era layout, a model that’s sure to generate a healthy debate on the idea of form versus function!