One of the things that the abandoned quarry Cloddfa Pedr was crying out for was a small locomotive that would have been used for shunting the wagons and skips. The answer came to me from re-reading one of the late Peter Jones' Garden Railways articles in which he discussed the merits of the "shoebox project", a modelling project in which all the materials and tools required could be kept in a shoebox and thus bought out whenever the opportunity arises whilst watching TV or on the dining table etc. I took this principle one step further and decided to build a generic little "Lister / Simplex type" IC industrial shunter using only bits and pieces left over from kits and collected in various spares boxes under the title "that might come in handy one day".

The result is "Byg" the name ironically looking like it should be pronounced Big in English, but actually being Bug with the Welsh use of the letter Y. Now pretty Bug aint and neither is she the Flying Scotsman.

Here's a list of the components used in the build.

* Axle boxes and wheels - IP left over from kits. I'm not a great fan of IP's running gear and have replaced these, hence the reason they were in the spares box. As Bug is a non-working model this becomes irrelevant - plus the IP wheels will go nicely rusty when it's parked in the quarry.

* Chassis / buffer beams - stripwood and various thickness of plasticard. Some of the Plasticard still has it's 22P price tag on it from Beatties, so you can tell that I've had it a while!

* Seat / toolbox - Plasticard box covered with coffee stirrers.

* Engine cover - A lump of wood covered in shaped plasticard. The air filter came in one of Back2Bay6's brilliant "grab bags" of various bits. It's domed top is a washer and Phillips screw filled with Araldite. The exhaust stack is a Hartland pick-up bullet removed form one of my trams during it's recent battery conversion.

* Controls - The hand control levers are from the wife's sewing box, the control panel from plasticard (the instruments have been "liberated") and the foot pedal is the rounded end of a coffee stirrer and a piece of garden wire. The brake wheel came from a Bachmann caboose.

* Lifting eyes - Hartland, courtesy of Matt.

* Chain - Purchased in bulk from charity shops for next to nothing.

* Step and coupling hooks - More garden wire.

* Oil / fuel drums - Back2Bay6 and Perfect World. The Esso decal is from a Tamiya LeMans Toyota racing car kit. It's the closest Bug will ever get to being glamorous!!

The only thing I'd still like to add is a radiator to fit on the end of the engine cover. The question is - do I have a look for something suitable the next time I'm at Back2Bay6, or do I make something in the spirit of the rest of the model???

Bug will now re-enter the workshops for a kind of reverse preservation - ie a generous covering of rust. After all, she is supposed to have been abandoned!!

Well the radiator issue has been solved following a visit to the local ironmongers/kitchen shop where (for the princely sum of £2.50) I bought a thing called a spice ball. This is a hinged mesh ball designed to be filled with herbs and dropped into the cooking pot. Taking it apart yielded a decent haul of mesh which can be flattened, as well as a small length of "might come in handy" chain. The radiator housing was built from plasticard and an Accucraft bolt drilled into the top made a cap. I thought that, as I had spent so much on a nice piece of mesh, I should make something to see behind it. So I made a cooling fan from a Pola bicycle wheel with plasticard fins. It can be seen, but only just.

By now the more observant will have noticed that Byg isn't as clean as she was in the previous pics. The (severe) weathering was achieved by airbrushing on my patented "gung" mix - this is a concoction of various Tamiya acrylic matt browns which I make by pouring the remains of a bottle of brown, khaki etc. paint into the gung pot when I'm getting towards the bottom of a bottle. While the first light coat was still wet, I airbrushed a second light coat of Tamiya red brown before sprinkling Modeltown Rust Dust onto the wet paint, varying the amount of dust where I wanted lots of rusty crud or just a surface covering. Using my old cheapo (£4) airbrush, the whole loco was then sprayed with vinegar before being left outside in the rain for the Rust Dust and vinegar to do it's magic.

You might notice that I've added a footboard to the back made from a coffee stirrer with brackets from plasticard and Cambrian rivets. The Esso oil drum has been further weathered using the sludge that settles on the bottom of the thinners bottle that I wash my brushes in.

The rust around the chains at the front is really crusty.

Close up of the "cockpit". I'm really pleased with the way the instrument panel has turned out. Also notice how the paint has worn away on the top of the toolbox/seat as a result of years of resting backsides.

The only job left to do now is to come up with a hasp, staple and padlock for the toolbox lid.

The above job is now complete. Hasp and padlock body from plasticard, staple and padlock arm from garden wire.

Due to a severe snow fall, the quarry is unreachable. So Byg has been re-assigned to providing loco coal skips for Gooey Depot. The Bennie skips have been emptied of slate and loaded with real coal - or at least, one has been loaded, the other two being depicted as being empty.