Having picked up the kit today thoughts have now turned to what to model.

The prototype I want to model is going to be a Westbury based machine, for which there is a photo in one of the cheddar books dated 1949. This is an early build loco and would use the narrow footplate parts, fluted rods, however the photo is too grainy to work out which of the two fireboxes needs to be used.

As ever if anyone knows of a good source of photos of this loco please let me know.

I am going to be building the loco with CSB suspension and the full working inside motion (which looking at the parts frankly scares me!)

Construction is not going to start until after I finish building the Collett Goods chassis to make sure my soldering is a good as it could be.

Given the number of "spare" parts in the Finney kit, I am seriously considering building a second loco. Looking at the etches it appears that I am going to need a boiler, sub foot plate (along with the headstocks), splashers and of course a chassis.

The latter is the easy part, modifying the High Level parts from their chassis kit. The rest I am less sure about. One option I am considering is to buy a cheap Airfix shell, cut off the cab, fit the etched top to the footplate, finney cab, and then detail up. I will see how I get on with cutting out accurate parts based on the finney originals.

My intention is to model this second loco as 2462, which according to the 1948 list on railuk was the only Bristol based loco with the wide footplate, unfortunately haven't found a single photo of this one yet. so cant be sure as to what other details it will need.