Things are really starting to come together on the 47xx, at the current rate of progress I would say there is less than a week’s work remaining until it will be finished (so I should certainly achieve my main aim of beating the Heljan model.

The first task last night was to finally get those top feed pipes added to the lower boiler, these were formed from L shaped lengths of 1mm brass rod glued into the resin boiler and then soldered to the footplate. There is a certain logic which says I would have been better off fitting them post painting and leaving unpainted, however I wanted one end soldered into place.
With that complete I dismantled the chassis, then gave body, chassis and tender tank a good wash (before drying in the airing cupboard).

While the completed assemblies dried, it was out with the soldering iron. The first job was soldering a screw coupling in place on the back of the loco, I see no point in building a kit built loco to an intermediate standard. Unfortunately during the process I managed to brake off the buffer beam and had to reattach. While cleaning up the parts I spotted the missing bolts between chassis and frames, so these were chopped to length and soldered into position on the chassis (before removing excess solder to ensure a good fit with the tank.)

The frames assembly was folded to shape before having the spacers soldered into position. The axle holes were opened up to match the bearings, which were then soldered into position (using a spare Gibson axle to ensure each pair was aligned. This was followed by fitting the wheels, in order that I could fully align the breaks which were next to be soldered into position. This just needs wheels removing in order to paint.

At this point I figured the other parts would have dried so took them outside for a coat of grey Halfords etch primer (it’s a shame they don’t do it in black!). While I was out there I also gave the tender tank a coat of white primer, I am a little concerned as to how the etch primer will work with plastics and resins, with the former I have some scrap coach to test on but the latter was more difficult. The solution, prime before assembly and then I am just applying etch primer over the same brand of regular primer. It seemed to work well enough on the loco body at least so fingers cross will also work on the tender.

The final task achieved last night was the fitting of buffers to the tender. My usual preference is to glue in place after painting (as I like to fit buffers as a complete unit), however the clearances between the frames and housing looked tight, so I assumed some soldering adjustment was needed. This leads me to one of my biggest bug bares with etched kits, If you supply buffers with your kits with a 3.2mm boss on the back. It would really help if the holes for fitting them were etched to the same diameter! In this case they were etched to less than 2mm, and while opening the holes out to match the buffers I managed to brake off the buffer beam (again!).
Taking advantage of the beam off model I opened up the holes (and repaired the soldering after the half etched front piece delaminated), then soldered the buffer housings into position. After reassembling the buffers I then soldered the beam into the correct position on the model

The Plan:
Tonight: Spray loco body green + chassis black. Finish remaining soldering on tender (steps / end)
Tomorrow: Fit castings / hand rails to tender, work out loco to tender fitting (missing from loco chassis). Paint inside of frames red. Prime tender
Thursday: Paint tender body / chassis, reassemble loco chassis
Friday: Finish tender painting, build cylinders, test run
Weekend: Apply tender crests, buffer beam numbers, detail painting.

At the moment I see two potential hold ups, running out of Rover Brooklands Green tonight and the fact that I seem to be missing the washers to solder the conrods into position. For the former a trip to Halfords at lunchtime tomorrow will resolve, the latter is a bit trickier and may be resolved by buying new crank pins.

The other outstanding question is the chassis wiring, the model will need a DCC decoder but currently has a live chassis. I am worried about the risk of a short circuit between a pickup or wheel and the live chassis killing a decoder. The solution would be to buy 4 more wheels that are insulated and to sell the 4 live ones, I could also replace the crank pins with the ‘deluxe’ screw version that I prefer at the same time….