Afetr a bit of a hiatus while my attention was focussed on getting Whitborough Quayside ready for its exhibition last weekend, the Empress Van has been on a back burner. Now, however I can revisit it and hopefully make a bit of progress!

The bogies have gone together, and there is quite a bit of sideplay between the bearings but they aren't too sloppy. The cross-members are in place and need a little trimming flush with the sides.

Some fettling was required to get the bogie mounts to sit parallel to the floor of the underframe. From an initial dry run, it looks like the screw holes for mounting the ends need elongating sligtly.

I've also made a start on one of the duckets, however when I offered it up to the end-piece the shape of the former doesn't match the end so a bit of modification is required again!

Here are a couple of photos to illustrate the above pregress/discoveries...

A

n initial test of the ends on the underframe, just to give myself an idea of the overall size. The sides seem to be about 1mm longer than the underframe, so the holes that the screws to hold the ends in place go through will need extending slightly.

The bogies, which are now awaiting their whitemetal castings and a coat of paint. The couplings will be fitted later, once I've got a few more items of stock to gauge heights with (although somewhere I think I've got a Greenwich coupling heigt gauge, I'll have to dig it out!)

This shows the difference in the shape of the two ends of the guard's duckets, and how much will need to be trimmed off in order for it to fit properly. Until these are sorted, the body construction acnnot continue, so this is task number one!

Lastly is the underframe and ends resting on a warflat from my SG layout Whitborough Quayside, as I wanted to see if it would fit under the bridge to the fiddle yard (just!) I'll have to check again once the footboards are fitted as I suspect it will be a bit taller then! I thought it would make for an interesting load if it appeared at an exhibition, with the coach being transported either to or from a works visit somewhere other than on the IoM!

Cheers

J