I've been backdating the J17 and producing more variants. You'd have thought that locomotives would get more 'different' as the fleet got older but it seems the G.E.R. did things the other way around and the further back you go into pre-grouping the more variants there seem to be.

The original G.E.R. F48 were built with a round-topped firebox, these were all replaced with Belpaire fireboxes by the early 1920's. Quite why some classes of G.E.R. locomotive designs went from round-topped boilers to Belpaire while others (e.g. N7s) went the other way is a mystery to me. This version also has a different cab front and firebox backhead which meant more etching and 3D modelling,

According to Lyn Brooks of the G.E.R.S. there are no known photographs of a J16 backhead so this was based on one from a Claud (D16) which has an identical boiler. For the very early pre-grouping period  the locomotives were built with a narrower cab. Modelling this one is going to require a bit of work on the footplate because it has been etched with slots to fit the much more common wider cabs. Being quite a large piece supplying both variants of footplate for the few modellers wanting a narrow cab version is just not economic.

The wider cab round topped boiler appears to have a version of the reserver more in common with the Belpaire boiler version.

There have also been some changes to the saturated boiler version. I had originally modeled the 'piano front' below the smokebox based on the later superheated version so it was the wrong shape. The improved version is going to be sent to the one person who had purchased that variant so far.

Also I was asked to produce the variant of the super-heated Belpaire boiler with flush riveted smokebox and the little covers over the boiler washout plugs. I've now printed out a few of these. Finally, to again cater for the pre-grouping lobby, I've produced an earlier tender before the coal rail extensions were added. Apparently these were added in the 1916s when the G.E.R. built a new coaling plant at Stratford which could fill a tender with coal in nine seconds. Obviously without the coal rails it would go everywhere!

I've noticed I made on mistake on the first batch of tenders. The tenders fitted to the J16/17s had a flat, not sloping, bottom to coal area. The slope was only present on the tenders fitted to J20s amongst others. Given that most modellers will put enough coal in to hid the bottom of the coal area and actually it helps with space for DCC chip and stay-alive capacitors in the tender I don't feel there is a need to swap these out for the existing models. If anyone really wants to model an almost empty tender then get in touch.

So you can have all the variants, any colour you want as long as it is black (or G.E.R. blue).

David