After a false start thinking the chassis was finished, yesterday I made a start on some modifications to the chassis in order to get it working.

The first job was to smear some epoxy along the joint between the two halfs of the gearbox, ​next time I will read the specific instructions for the gearbox that I am making to avoid this mistake!

​​With that done the second task was to secure the motor to the chassis in the correct position. For this I cut an inch length bar from an old hair clip, filed off the outer coating and tinned one end with solder. The other end was glued to the chassis with epoxy (in future I will solder this in place before painting and final assembly of the chassis)

Once the glue had initially set I soldered the remaining end to the gearbox (thus holding it in the right position). The solder for this bit at least enables an element of adjustment if it was required.

Test fitting the body I could no longer get the motor into place, as the angle of the lower front of the gearbox was now hitting the scratch built lower boiler. Fortunately the long splashers on the county obscure a lot of the lower boiler, so I carefully carved 4mm off to provide clearance.

Once the chassis was refitted to the body it was test ran multiple times up and down my short test track, working very well. It now needs a prolonged running in session before I install a decoder, I am changing jobs at the end of next month (and my new role will be 100% uk based. Net result I should be able to start regularly going to the railway club (good going as I don't think Ive been since March!) More importantly this will give access to a test track on DC in order to give it a good running in session.

So the remaining jobs:
Fit handrails, along with small details (whistles etc) to the body
Line tender
Paint cylinders (after adding the small castings)
Fit DCC