Harvey the Crane Engine - OO Gauge

This was the first scratchbuilt model i had ever done, again using plasticard and a few useful bits and bobs from some donor locos.

This little locomotive was built by Dubs & Company at Glasgow Locomotive Works as their number 4101 in 1901 and was delivered was made to Shelton Iron & Steel Works Limited, Stoke-on-Trent. It was purchased for preservation in April 1970 and was transported to Cranmore in September 1973. Harvey is numbered 27 in the television stories and has proved to be one of the more useful characters as he can work anywhere on the Island of Sodor. Like Whiff, Harvey's main body was formed and made using plasticard and a printed off computer template, the same method to build Harvey can be found by reading through Whiff's construction log, gluing the bodyparts together and letting them set.

The Crane arm is the hardest part of the model to form, and it took some doing to get it to look right, it's not so much the modelling of it, it's trying to glue it and make sure that is does not start to form small gaps that is the hard part, if you choose to model Harvey in this way, i would advise holding the parts together with glue for at least 5 - 10 minutes to allow it to properly bond, once that is done and you are happy that everything looks right, then comes the painting part.

A suitable chassis to use would be the Hornby 0-4-0 Caledonian Tank or a Branchlines Chassis Conversion kit for the Hornby 0-4-0 Caledonian Tank. Either way the body should nicely fit with a few slight modifications to the chassis, i would reccomend gluing the body onto the chassis if you do not want to just leave it sitting losely incase you need to clean or re-motor the model.

Harvey to me, is one of my more successful models, although the crane arm only moves by hand, it can be turned in either direction, some parts like the smokebox and safety valve were taken from a Wooden Railway Harvey model and the boiler of the Caledonian 0-4-0 Tank.


Images copyright © Daniel Snell