Duke the found engine: Restoring his Grace!

As most of you reading this are probably already aware, we've had the honor and privilege to acquire the Duke the Lost Engine prop used in the fourth (and technically fifth) season of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends. To us, this is a very special model having only appeared in 4 episode of season 4 (Our personal favorite season) and one episode of season 5 masquerading as Bertram, a simple repaint of Duke using Smudger's face. That means it never appeared outside the classic era of the show and a larger narrow gauge scale model of Duke was never made. He seems a product of his time, and most fans associate Duke with the best era of the show. He was never tainted by the mediocrity of the later model era or modernized with the advent of CGI. He remains a time capsule of sorts, taking us and many other fans back to the golden era of Thomas, a time that many of us hold very close.

We felt truly honored to be able to present Duke to the public once again after being MIA for 20 years, but he didn't come to us looking the way he does now. He was missing various parts that either had to be rebuilt, found, or replaced for him to return to his former glory. We feel that that because Duke and items like him are held so dearly by many and were a part of so many people's childhood's, it would be a disservice to show him or any other prop in a disheveled state before being restored. It's sad to see something you loved and meant so much to you as a child incomplete, and not how you remembered it. This is why we wait to restore any items we purchase before revealing them. We always try to use and salvage as many original pieces as possible and try not replace or change original things we don't have to. We want people to be transported back to when they were a kid by looking at these items, and experience those feelings they had decades ago.

However once' that restoration is complete, we think it's worthwhile to show everyone what went into it, and how it was done. I know we personally love to see the work that went into things, whether it be progress on a model being built, or a prop from another franchise being restored. we feel we owe it to the fandom to show the process of what happens between when we get these items, and when we finally reveal them, which is exactly what we're going to do here with Duke. We hope you enjoy!

A little background 

Before we ever had any idea we would be able to purchase Duke one day, we assumed the model was not in his original paint. This is for several reasons. 

The first and most obvious reason is because the original livery was painted over to make Bertram for the season 5 episode "Toby's Discovery". Obviously the original paint could not exist if he was seen on screen with a completely different paintjob. This 2001 photo shows he was still in "Bertram" livery shortly before the filming of season 6. Photo courtesy of Tom Jedski. 

So Bertram proved that the Duke model could not be in it's original livery, but who was to say the model was still not painted as Bertram? The last time them model ever appeared on screen was as Bertram back in 1997 so it would be easy to assume that's how the model was kept. However... 

This promo proved to us the model had been repainted back into Duke by 2004. This style of promo matches the ones first seen on the 2004 official web site, and the color definitely did not match the the season 4 livery or Bertram. The eyes also match the type only used from Thomas & the Magic Railroad onward. This was a giveaway that this was a newer promo indicating that the model was repainted back into Duke at some point. 

From Humble Beginnings

Here you can see Duke basically in "as received" condition. The only difference is that he actually didn't come with a face! We were extremely lucky to already have a Duke face in our collection, otherwise Duke would most likely still be faceless today. You can see from the photo he was pretty bare bones, missing the handrails on his left-hand side, all side rods, black cab pieces, tender, and coal load. There was much work to be done! 

Luckily, he did at least have original handrails on his right hand side. Also note the servos have been removed from the cab. It appears Duke was mid way through being refurbished when work was halted on him, leading to various parts being missing.

Work begins! 

The first work we did on Duke was replace the missing handrails. We purchased these from Slater's assuming this was the part used and although they are close, they are not an exact match. We're still on the lookout for the perfect replacements, but these do look leagues better having nothing at all and are close enough to not really notice without further inspection. 

For anyone interested, pieces we used were "7951L 7mm Loco Fitting: Turned Handrail Knobs long" from Slater's. 

Love me tender 

Probably the most glaring thing missing from Duke when we received him was his tender. there's no denying missing the tender is almost like missing 1/3rd of the character, he was never going to look right without it. At this point we just figured the original had been thrown out or lost years ago and we would never have it. So we decided to do the next best thing: Build a replica! 

We had enough reference material that we felt we could confidently and accurately figure out the dimensions and had enough modeling skill to build an accurate replica.  

Here you can the buffer beam upside down shortly after being completed. It doesn't look like much at this point! 

The tender body was cut from .032 inch brass using a Dremel metal cutting disk. Here you can see the pieces for the body have been cut and are being held together with blutak to make sure they fit before they are soldered in place.

Here we see the body has been soldered to the buffer beam, but it is still missing the trim around the top. 

In this shot the trim had just been added to the top of the tender body.

Here are the tender solebars before being soldered to the body. The excess solder was cleaned off with a fiberglass pen.

Here we can see the beginning of building the tender chassis. The holes for the axles to go through have been drilled out on one side.

The sides of the chassis have been assembled. The screws in the middle will attach to the tender body. 

Finally here's the chassis fully assembled with the wheels inserted. You can see the corner has been cut off to create a slope, which is accurate to the original. 

We used Slater's 7832GN 2'8" 10 Spoke Bogie Wheel (LNER 02) (1/8" Axle) wheels. 

In this photo the tender body is nearly complete with coupling hook and solebars. The chassis has been primed. 

The body is finally complete with the addition of round axleboxes on the solebars cut from perspex rod. 

Here we can see how the chassis screws to the tender

Both the tender and chassis here are primed and ready to be painted. Also notice the hole has been cut in the front of the tender for the drawbar. 

A test fitting with Duke before painting. 

And finally done! We had it professionally paint matched seeing as we'd probably never be able to match the color perfectly on our own. We used trimline yellow lining tape for the lining. 

Here's a recent photo of Duke with the completed replica tender. Not bad if we say so ourselves!

A fine job, but unnecessary

 Shortly after we finished work on the replica tender, and were just starting to kick back and enjoy it,  something unthinkable happened. We ended up being able to get a hold of the original, which we thought was lost for good. It was a bit frustrating having put all the time and effort into making a near perfect replica only to find the thing we were trying to replicate in the first place, but overall we were absolutely thrilled to be able to actually have the original, which we thought would never be reunited with Duke. As much as we loved building the replica, nothing can replace the original!

Here we see the original tender (left) next to the replica tender (right). The main giveaway is that the wheels on the original are rusted while the replica's are perfectly clean. We were shocked how close we got to the original once we were able to put both together! 

The replica (left) had slightly smaller doors then the actual prop (right)

The backs matched up surprisingly close. Also note the round perspex axleboxes on the replica (left) stick out slightly more then on the real thing (right). 

The placement of the screws that hold the chassis to the body were significantly different on the replica (left) when compared to the original (right). 

Here we see Duke doing his best impression of the Flying Scotsman in early preservation. The real tender is closest to him with the replica at the back. 

No steam without coal 

We made the coal load by casting one of our narrow gauge wagon coal loads. Normally we never cast screen used painted pieces, but the fact it was black made it easy to touch up any damage that could potentially be done to the paint from the moulding process. Luckily no paint came off the original. Once we had a cast of the coal load, we cut it to size so it would fit inside Duke's tender. We then cut risers from perspex for it to sit on so it would be the correct height.

The coal load fits in both the replica and original tenders. here we see Duke with the original tender. The replica coal load looks right at home. 

Replicating the siderods 

As shown in photos from when we first received Duke, he did not come with any of his rods and all had to be replaced. 

The outer rods that go into the cylinder were an easy fix seeing as the original prop used a stock piece from a Triang Princess model. The part is inexpensive and readily available on sites such as eBay. 

The inner connecting rods were much more of a challenge seeing as they were custom made on the show and a stock piece to replace them could not be bought. We enlisted the help of Cudak888 of Twitter.com to help us laser cut these pieces at various lengths to find the one that fit the best. We told him they were being used for a replica as to not spoil the surprise. We owe him a big thank you and the reveal would not have been possible without his help getting these rods laser cut. Please check out his twitter if you're into modeling like this, he has a lot of really cool projects going on. 

This is the first photo we ever took of Duke with his new rods. Note his cab has not been blacked out yet. We used Slater's O gauge crank pins to screw them on. 12BA countersunk screws could also be used and were frequently used on the show as well. 

Black out

Evergreen 0.75 mm polystyrene sheet was cut to shape and used to black out the cab and windows like they were on the show. The pieces are simply blacktaked in so they can be removed if they ever need to be. 

That's all folks! 

To date, this is all the work we've done on Duke. You can see how much preparation was involved in getting him ready for the big reveal, although the biggest chunk of work technically didn't even need to be done! It was still a really fun and informative experience and we hope you had as much fun seeing him as we did working on him. In the future we'd like to put servos back in him to complete the eye mechanism once again. If we do, we will update this page. 

Duke will hopefully be in perfect shape for generations to come so all who watched the golden era of the show can enjoy him. We're currently planning a display for August 2019 and we will be sharing details with you guys when everything is confirmed. We hope everyone will be able to see this piece of Thomas history and enjoy it like we have. See you there!