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North British Type 1 - Class 16 Locomotives
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Heljan Class 16 Cabside Windows -
by Paul James
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D8402 at Hornsey Broadway (Heljan).
Another view of D8402 at Hornsey Road depot.
North British type 1 D8404 on a departmental working. A detailed Heljan model from the Eastwell fleet.
Another view of D8404.
Canada Road Class 16 - D8405 is a Dave Alexander whitemetal kit.
D8405 constructed by Pete Johnson.
D8407 at Hornsey Road depot.
Type 1 locos awaiting their next turn of duty on shed.
The Class 16 locos received a couple of modifications during their service lives, one being the
removal of the cabside grilles on the external resistor cabinets to prevent water ingress, and the
other was enlarging the cabside windows.
The Heljan model depicts the original arrangement which only D8400/2/4 retained the smaller windows.
The first task was to remove the body from the chassis (2 long screws behind the buffer beams at each
end). The cab is easily unclipped and put to one side for later. The grills on the resistor cabinet,
just in front of the cab can now be removed with a knife and emery paper. When finished, a quick mask
off of the rest of the body and the bare patch was given a quick coat of green.
Side grills on resistor cabinets removed and awaiting a coat of paint.
Another modification made to these locos was the removal of some of the handrails / footsteps from
the front of the fan end of the loco, although not all had this carried out. Some short lengths of
0.33mm wire can be added to represent the stubs of the cut off handrails.
With the cab window mods there are no readily available measurements as to how big the modified
windows are, so I came to the conclusion that windows stopped just short of the door handle on the
cab door, resulting in a depth of 10.5mm. This was marked out on the cabside and a fine needle file
was used to file gently down to the right height.
Once the base depth was achieved, the corners were filed round, care being taken to file back to the
outer edge of the fine lip around the window so that a match could be made with the new beading that
would be added. Once I was happy with the new window opening it was time to add the new beading around
the bottom and up the sides to meet up with original beading. I chose to use Evergreen Plastic strip
to form the beading, the size being 0.25mm x 1.5mm. I found it best to pre curve the strip at the
required points and then cut to roughly the right length. This was fitted in position and then glued
to the bottom of the opening and then left to bond overnight.
With the beading done and painted, it now came time to put in new glazing. The prototype window was in
two parts, the front window as the driver looked forward from his seat was fixed, with the rear window
(nearest the cab door) inset slightly to slide behind the front pane. A vertical glazing bar is fixed
to the front window. The new windows are made from of cuts of clear acrylic sheet.
The finished loco with altered cab window.
One job worth before doing is to paint the middle part of the cab interior black, as this helps to hide
the model's transmission tunnel. This shows the loco weathered with altered cab window.
