The Ariadne Project

Ted Polet

Sounds like a guided missile, doesn't it, but it really was about building a goods loco for the Craigcorrie & Dunalistair Railway, using the Chivers Hudswell Clarke kit sent to me by Klaus Olschewski because it was to big for his layout! Well, thanks to Klaus I now have a long boiler type loco which looks like nothing ever to run on narrow gauge rails, but is a beautifully polished loco which might have been suitable for an Edwardian railway.

The Hudswell Clarke locos were built for the Queensland cane fields and rather more modern than the loco I have made out of the kit. Klaus sent along a battered Fleischmann 2-8-0 tender engine which proved to be a very sweet runner and could just be matched to the kit. This made the loco an 0-8-0 instead of the outside frame 0-6-0 it should have been, but who cares? The photos include one by Ian Turner made during his recent visit to my house, showing his own Hudswell built as it should be, alongside 'Ariadne'. Building the model took me about two months and it was less work than one might imagine. My own photos were captured from a video tape which I find a very suitable alternative to a digital photo camera if you don't look at the picture quality too closely.

The kit parts set up 'dry' in Rae Bridge station:

The whitemetal boiler has been replaced by a plastic tube to save weight. The motor is in the tender:

The end product in service on the railway:

More photos