While my fiancée is out for the evening, I've taken advantage of a nights un interrupted modelling. So after taking the dog on a very long walk to ensure she passed out, I dug out the 4575 conversion to try and finish it off.

I will come back and add some photos tomorrow, as the paint is currently drying...

Starting off with the slide bar, The original pin on which the connecting rod (please correct me if I am using the wrong terminology) is linked to the slide bar was a larger diameter than the thin end of the Mitchel con rod and hence had to be removed. So after carefully cutting off with a cutting disk, I switched to a milling bit and smooved off the inside.

Next a .4mm hole was drilled through (matching the hole in the end of the con rod). Into this was soldered a length of .4mm brass wire, cut to directly fit across the inside of the slide bar once the con rod had been fitted.

Moving onto the centre driver, a long crank pin has now been glued into position, after which I gave all wheels a coat of black paint

While the paint was out, I also painted the new plasticard frames and the Mitchel pony trucks

Re checking the dimensions on the cylinders, it looks like with a reversed crank pin nut and some washers on the axel to eliminate any sideways movement will work. Fingers crossed.....

So, the next job is going to be putting it all back together once the paint has dried, and all being well it should work...

Not exactly looking forward to making the brake gear...

I have some more spare Mitchel bits from the ebay frets, which will provide the 'flat bits', and will then build up a removable sub assembly ala High Level

One thing that worries me with an etched chassis is the risk of the brake shoes shorting against the wheels. One way round it I have been considering is to have half the brakes in plastic and the other half with the etched (using half on the Bachmann chassis, and the other half on the etched chassis which will be going under my next 4500)

Will have another think once I have the rolling chassis working...

Edit:

Photos attached,