The replacement etches arrived from Mr. Chivers very promptly and a couple of days later I set about a new chassis for the second Hunslet. I will point out for any new readers that the need for a replacement chassis is entirely down to me and my rather over ambitious attempt to compensate the first one. I have not given up completely on this but is going to be put aside in the interests of meeting my now less than a year deadline. I think the recent experience has helped and did various things like putting in longer crank pins on the front axle and making sure these were countersunk first straight away. Result is a really, really quiet and smooth chassis first time with no opening out of the coupling rods or any other such tricks.

Here it is in my slightly makeshift but very effective gig.

And in quite a brave move sprayed even before testing with the wheels but with some bits where future soldering is required masked off;

So here we have a super running chassis on the rolling road. I sat there just watching it completely mesmerised for ages!

Next jobs are fitting pickups and then valve gear - not sure which I am least looking forward to! Once these two quite unpleasant tasks have been completed I anticipate pretty speedy progress towards completing half of my planed steam roster, then it's sorting out a couple of Baldwins.