DIY

As stated previously, my skills lie in electrical / mechanical and NOT artwork.

However, this doesn't stop me from having a go, so after pondering whether it would be possible to construct my own loco transfers from scratch, using only the resources that I already have, I decided to have a go and with so many spare bodies now, I really had nothing to lose.

To start off with, I took these two, rather sorry looking bodies:

Once scrubbed, sanded and cleaned, they were primed - no particular reason for using white primer, just that I'd run out of grey...

A nice, satin black, blank canvas (with the buffer ends painted red)

After many hours of experimentation and tweaking, I managed to produced a full set of liners and numbers, which I constructed using Microsoft Publisher! I found the British Railways logos and re-coloured where needed. After several trial runs with cheap paper had the dimensions near enough right, so time to print the graphics onto self-adhesive vinyl (left over from the switch panel) a quick dusting of lacquer to fix the ink and then once dried, the graphics were cut out ready to apply:

All graphics in place, two more coats of satin lacquer and this is the result:

Now for the 2-6-4, slightly more difficult here due to the shape of the boiler graphics. I actually ended up scanning another 2-6-4 body to get a template to work to. Again same process as above and this is the loco after applying the number graphic first:

More graphics printed at the same time, rather than waste the vinyl:

I also had another body that I had  recently bought and although the paintwork was immaculate, the graphics weren't up to scratch, so I carefully peeled them off, applied my new transfers in the same way and finished with two coats of lacquer.

So I now have 80053 and 80104 ready to be fitted: 

 This is the 2-6-4 after being left to dry and then reassembled:

There is some fine-tuning required to the main transfers, they were difficult to line up with the number graphics and this has been tweaked on the computer ready for any further body upgrades. This one isn't perfect but it's perfectly usable in this condition and far, far better than how it looked previously.

I still prefer the mechanical stuff though.