[Robert Woolley]

Here is the Imagenie d’Epinal no.1204 locomotive and tender. The quality of the image wasn’t great as I feel the scanning and reprinting process has taken its toll but it was still enough for an enjoyable Sunday afternoon build. I tried searching for the original train it was copied from but couldn’t find one. I have a feeling it is a generic vintage looking train model. The style of the train is from the 1830s and this would have been published 50 to 80 years after that. I can’t blame them for not getting it closer to reality considering the times they lived in with the limited references available. The closest train it looks like that I could find is called Le Belge, and they have made a more accurate and detailed model of this at some point so I think that was their intention.
It was pretty straight forward to build. I only had to do a bit of head scratching when installing the insert that has the coal into the tender. I’m still not sure what they intended. It seemed to sit very low in the tender and not look very good so I put it higher and added a filler piece at the front to fill a gap. I also was left with a box I couldn’t find a place for and three circles with a red mark that I think was intended to go in the chimney. I think they included three as all of the things that stick up of the boiler, such as the real chimney and steam dome are labeled as chimneys.