This little Ruston came to me via Noel Davies (Thanks Noel!). It’s an old KB Scale kit of a Ruston LBT. It’s a nice loco, yet when I buy a secondhand loco I always want to change a few things.

Firstly, to run on Thomas and Sons it needed to be converted to DCC. I didn’t want to do it myself because it’s an old mechanism and I didn’t want to break anything so I asked Coastal DCC to do the conversion. Kevin has done a great job of fitting a Digitrax DZ126 decoder above the motor. It fits inside the cab and is completely invisible. (Thanks Kevin!)

Secondly, I wanted to replace the driver. It was quite easy to prise off the roof of the cab to remove the driver. The seat came off at the same time but this can be stuck back in place.

I want to repaint the model. Rustons were usually green in colour (although later models were painted in other colours if the customer wanted) and I fancy a green Ruston!