Haha I'm back. I havnt had the time or opportunity lately to be posting on here, partially because of holiday through the finer parts of birmingham on a canal boat, and partly the furious activity in the workshop!

Right, having few issues with upload, since the new servers max file size is down to just 2mb, and most of my pics were around the 3mb mark! so sorry if the text isnt fully illustrated!

Im scratching my head actually what has gone on in the time since the post. We had another very enjoyable trip to greystones, catch up with friends, good turn out and a good weekend with the social side in the evening was very enjoyable.

On the pannier front, visibly not a huge amount appears to have changed however a lare amount of work, cleaning reassembling painting etc has gone in, the largest part in the running boards.

Originally the running plates had a series of very large over scale rivets in it as per the orignal design. the detailer in me decided these would not do and so hatched on the plan to drill them out, file them flush and replace them with scale 1/16th ones. At the same time i would double the numeber up, and make it look far more realistic. of course, with this in mind you look at phots and realise theres more and more stuff, until you end up putting them all in. of course all the flat side of the runing plate there are more rivets, and bolt heads. so, in they went. And after teaching myself how to and how not to rivet, and about 180 rivets and 30 10BA bolts later, i'm sorta happy!

The last few days and tomorrow have/will be spent cleaning these running plates and prepping for priming. the difficult bit is to paint them finally. The top surfaces are black, but most thing facng out wards is maroon, except some steps, which will be very tricky to mask and get sharp crisp lines on, even before we line i in straw, including a lovely arc over the splashers!

Other things include a new set of springs to seat the valves in the chest when no steam is passing them. this means they remain seated when stationary and you can get a nice slow start to the engne when pulling away.

The bearing on the big end at the crank axle has been modified, it wa rubbing excessively, The vast majority of parts below the running plates have been cleaned and painted. For an engine that hasnt done 200 yards its was filthy thick with dried oils. But everything is now painted.

A new mushroom non return valve has been made for the lubricator. this was giving troule whn we last steamed it, steam was blowing back into the lubricator and condensing, no oil was getting to the cylinders and they we squeaking, running dry.

The loco is now back on its springs, this has allowed us to finally set valve gear and the balancing of the valves, though we have found that the loco doesnt achieve full forward or reverse as going by the gear rack, a problem we have yet to sort. it'll probably mean making new gear lever racks or changing th reach rod, it may be a little unbalanced as is.

Also brake gear has beeen painted and mostly fitted. i'm retaining the fairly crude looking arems for the moment, just get the engine rnning first, they can and will be changed for some nice cast items at a later date, when i order the kit for the new cab i may get some proper GW pattern brake arms. But for the moment, now that the valve chest is sealed down, and the cover soon will be, i can replace the drain cock lever arm, and get the brake gear back together.

attention is turning above the running plates. as seen last time, toolboxes are painted, as are now both the tank supports, now that i have some high temperature black paint. The smokebox was cleaned up, though that will not be painted until the tanks are done. these require extensive work, the original design uses horrific great rectangular fillers which need to be replaced by nice round ones, though we are having trouble tracing sufficiently good drawings, if anyone can help with a 57xx water tank filler i would appreciate it!

other minor jobs have gone on, i attempted an air test to prove the valaves worked, they do, but the loco was too stiff to turn over on the pitiful air supply! I'm contemplating a new blower ring, a combined blast pipe and blower arrangement, the current is a little basic i feel.

I also have friend doing a nearly identical build who is helping along the way, thanks to john if he reads this, him and his mate simon are detailing theirs, doing a few thiongs i'd like to, including a correct profile chimney with the slotted cap, something i'll do pretty soon, when i work out a way of holding the chimney in a chuck!

On other news,

We made a visit to Harrow and wembley society of model engineers with a few other members of GL5. We were welcomed with open arms and a warm reception, thanks guys. It was also a great opportunity for the first run of the complete set of the coaches! They've been done for a while now, but building the trailer took plenty of time, so that we can move them safely. But anyway, i hope you agree, my dads done a fantastic job on these...

Well that wraps it up really.

A trip to gilling for the august mainline rally is for this weekend, the coaches will hopefully be out once again, weather permitting, hopefully get a few turns in, a holiday meant we were late for booking in so have no offical duties over the three days, but there no doubt will be plenty of failures to cover!

And finally, GL5 now has a group on Facebook! we formed a group to have a little chat about things, so if you're interested in what we do, just click join group, have a look at our photos, no member ship required, though drop me (Mark Harding a message about it before hand, mention rmweb) and i'll let you in.

Any GL5 members reading i hope to see you this weekend at gilling, anyone just coming along,your perfectly welcome to come and watch, its always good fun, please say hello, make yourself know, i'll most likely be on my electric most the day, but please say hello!

Cheers

Mark