Colour Scheme

The choice of livery for a locomotive can be controversial and the cause of much heated argument among railway enthusiasts.  Hopefully the proposed livery for Queen Anne will not stir up too much trouble.

As can be seen from the image at the top of the blog, QA has panels advertising Queen Anne whisky on a strange beige coloured background with white lining.  An earlier colour photograph shows the same adverts against a greenish background, but with subtly different lining, so the background must have been repainted at some point.  It is likely that the locomotive never ran at Longmorn with this colour scheme, but was painted specially for delivery to the Strathspey Railway in 1980.  QA was delivered to Longmorn painted in green with white lining and white buffers, and ran in this state until 1980 when the distillery’s private rail network closed.

Pure Ruston

While many industrial customers for Ruston & Hornsby’s locomotives would ask for their loco to be painted in their company colours, it appears that the distillery did not specify any such colour scheme, so the locomotive was delivered in R&H’s own standard livery at the time (1948).  This consisted of “Ruston Green” (also known variously as Lincoln Green or Verdigris Green, BS381C Shade 276) on most of the locomotive and inside the cab with white lining, red buffer beams (exact shade unknown) and a black cab roof.  There was a Ruston & Hornsby crest on the side of the cab, and RH monograms inside the cab.  The green background at the top of this blog is "Ruston Green".

There are sufficient black & white photographs of the locomotive at work at the distillery to re-create the white lining.  Some “paint archaeology” has exposed the original crest on the cab sides so that its size and position could be determined.  No colour photographs of the locomotive at work have been found so far.

The original Ruston crest on the cab side exposed

Some original Ruston transfers have been purchased for the cab

There are quite a few Ruston 48DS locomotives in existence, although only a few are in working order, and none are in pure Ruston livery.  This is another good reason to restore Queen Anne as closely as possible to its as-delivered state.The locomotive never carried a number or name while at Longmorn, but since arriving at the Strathspey Railway it has been known as Queen Anne because of its advertising panels.  For this reason it has been decided to cast Queen Anne nameplates to be fitted on the upper bonnet of the loco.  For those people wishing to take photographs in completely “Pure Ruston” condition, they could be removed temporarily in exchange for a £20 donation to locomotive restoration.

The Queen Anne advertising panels have been photographed and reproduced using desktop publishing software.  The artwork is in the form of actual size print-ready PDF files, so could easily be printed as self-adhesive vinyls or magnetic sheets at fairly low cost.  So it would be possible to temporarily create something approaching the “Queen Anne” of the 1980s if required.

Original Queen Anne advertising panel

Reconstructed artwork using best-match modern fonts

Hopefully reverting to the original livery will appeal to those who would like to see an accurate restoration of a distillery shunter as well as fans of Ruston & Hornsby locomotives.

Latest Updates

The reconditioned cylinder heads have now been put back on.

The Ruston 4VRH engine on 16th July 2016

The right hand side of the engine on 16th July 2016

Also, the GNSRA article on Queen Anne can now be seen on the "Queen Anne History" page.

Latest! Cab sheets arrive.

While the other posts on this blog have been recapping what has been done in the past, this post relates to progress right now (July 2016).

It would be feasible to make new sheeting for the cab in-house by plasma-cutting, hand-finishing with an angle grinder, marking out and drilling holes.  However this would require a lot of time and effort, and it would be difficult to get really straight vertical edges where the sides are joined on with angle iron.  It takes much less physical effort to measure up the old cab sheets and produce drawings in AutoCad.  CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing) can then produce new cab sheets with a high degree of accuracy an no hard work!

A CAD drawing of the cab sheets was produced after careful measurement of the old metalwork.

Upper & Lower Cab Front CAD Drawing

There are three main ways of producing metal sheets using CAM; plasma, laser and water jet.  Plasma cutting is the fastest, but is less accurate and requires some finishing.  It is not very good for cutting small holes (eg. 10mm), but you can use it to produce a shallow cross to mark hole centres.  Laser cutting is very accurate and requires little finishing.  It is also good for fine detail and holes.  Water jet cutting is often used for cutting thick materials, but is also good for sheet metal.  It is a bit slower than the other methods but very accurate.  Because there is no heat-affected area around the cut, there is no distortion and no finishing is required.  Water jet cutting uses a very fine jet of water at 60,000 pounds per square inch pressure, either with or without an abrasive (depending on the material).

Initial thoughts were to use plasma or laser cutting, and there are companies that can do this in Aberdeen and Glasgow.  However a recent volunteer at the locoshed is a machinist at Forsyths in Rothes.  While Forsyths traditional market was making and maintaining whisky stills, they also do specialist work for the oil and gas industry, and have a water jet cutter.  Jim took away a memory stick with the AutoCad drawings, and most unexpectedly a couple of weeks later the new cab sheets arrived at Aviemore sheds!

Upper rear cab

Lower front cab

Lower cab sides

The finish is truly amazing, and the cut edges are perfectly straight with no burrs.  They arrived as bare metal, so were immediately sanded and professionally painted with red oxide primer.  It is important to apply primer carefully (avoiding sags and brush-marks) to make life easier when applying the final coats.  Otherwise it would require a lot of sanding down to obtain a good finish.

Detail showing clean edges and neat holes

This slot (for the spragging lever) shows the precision of the cutting process

Lesson Number One

Assume nothing.  There are 4 "identical" handrails on the sides of the cab, and on the CAD drawing the fixing holes are all the same distance apart, based on the measurements of one old sheet.  However, it appears the handrails were not accurately made and differ in length by a few mm, so the original cab sheets must have been drilled to fit the handrails.  Some dressing of the holes will be required, but it won’t be noticeable when the handrails are fitted.  This is the first job using CAD/CAM, but there can be no excuses – what you get is only as good as the drawing!