Warship class diesel

British Railways' (BR) Type 4 Warship class diesel-hydraulic locomotives were introduced in 1958. It was apparent at that time that the largest centre of expertise on diesel-hydraulic locomotives was in West Germany. The Western Region of British Railways negotiated a licence with German manufacturers to scale down the German Federal Railway's "V200" design to suit the smaller loading gauge of the British network, and to allow British manufacturers to construct the new locomotives. The resultant design bears a close resemblance, both cosmetically, and in the engineering employed, to the original V200 design. Warship locomotives were divided into two batches: those built at BR's Swindon works were numbered in the series D800 to D832 and from D866 to D870, had a maximum tractive effort of 52,400 pounds-force (233,000 N) and eventually became British Rail Class 42. 33 others, D833–865, were constructed by the North British Locomotive Company and became British Rail Class 43. They were allocated to Bristol Bath Road, Plymouth Laira, Newton Abbot and Old Oak Common.

Each locomotive bore a name: for example D825 was Intrepid. All except D800 and D812 were named after Royal Navy vessels, thus the "Warship diesel" moniker used to refer to the class. D800 was named Sir Brian Robertson after the Chairman of the British Transport Commission at the time. D812 was planned to carry the name Despatch but was eventually named Royal Naval Reserve 1859–1959. All except these two bore a subtitle "Warship Class" in smaller letters underneath the main name. A nice touch was that throughout the production series examples (including the NBL-built D833–865) the names were allocated alphabetically. This caused some difficulty when Swindon was unexpectedly given an order for five more locomotives (which became D866–870); a shortage of Warship names beginning with Z required some names for the higher numbered NBL examples to be reallocated.

The original livery for all D800s was BR green with a light grey waistband and red bufferbeams. In the mid-1960s the WR decided upon maroon as its new house colour for mainline diesel locomotives, this going very much against standard schemes imposed by BR's overall management. In November 1966 the first D800 (D864) appeared in the new BR blue scheme with D864 carrying an experimental 'Burnt Umber' paint scheme around the lower skirting (an attempt to mask out brake dust). Half yellow nose ends appeared from January 1962 and eventually two Green, several Maroon and all Blue-liveried locomotives received full yellow ends. Green livery was eradicated by 1970 when D810 was repainted, this being the last green member of the class in service, although D800 had still carried the green livery when withdrawn in 1968. A handful of Maroon examples, including D809, D815 & D817 remained in traffic until 5 October 1971, and were finally withdrawn in this colour scheme, although by now wearing full yellow ends. Three of the early withdrawals, D801, D840 and D848, met their end in maroon with small yellow panels. After withdrawal of steam in 1968, the "D" prefix was dropped from locomotive running numbers when repaints occurred – so for example, D832 became just 832 as there was now no chance of it conflicting with a steam locomotive number.

 This train is my first attempt at weathering and I'm quite happy with it.
I have used water base arts paints so if I'm not happy with the result I can rub it off  this off any gloss plastic surface which also included plastic windows