Planet Industrials: the last Steam Sentinel…

Ever since I came across photos of the prototype at the Dormon Long steel works I was curiously drawn to the last steam sentinels. These heavy oil burning powerful, heavy but slow steam behemoths were the last hurrah of the concept before the adoption of a Rolls Royce engine and hydraulic transmission…Planet Industrials kits are always designed to entice the modeller away from ready to run and ‘have a go’ and making something. The cab conversions were the quintessential ‘easy’ project but even the Hibberd with its custom chassis was designed to assemble easily without expensive tools or complex skills.This latest design is the same ethos - taking a Hornby 0-6-0 Sentinel and removing 4 screws leaves you the chassis and drive that then is simply fitted under a brass footplate, to which various pieces are attached using either solder or superglue. Up top, a 3D core, largely featureless to allow the surface to be prepared and smoothed easily, has a series of etched panels and details…