Meanwhile work continues on the neverwazza!

Since last time quite a lot has gone on. The new boiler has been firmly fixed into the running plate (twice, as it happens- the first time I then dropped the model, and broke it).

I took a tracing of the Robinson cab cut-out from a drawing of the B5 class in one of my books of loco drawings, and then transferred it onto the cab sheets, which I then filed down to the new shape.

New splashers have been fabricated from 0.5mm plastic sheet- I've followed later Robinson practice in having one long splasher rather than the layout shown in the book which was an awkward combination of early (individual splasher) design and later (long splasher) work.

The cylinders have been altered too- usually I just buy these in as spares from Bachmann but at about £15 a pair they get quite expensive. This time I decided to have a go at altering the original cylinders- this decision was influenced not only by price but also by the fact that to fit entirely new cylinders would have been just as much work as to alter the existing ones. So I set to work. I had to cut away the tops of the cylinders, then file down the backs and remove a fair bit of material from the inside faces. Then on the chassis little lumps of cast metal had to be removed. Then I had to ue some plastic channel to reinstate the passageway for the piston rod, and then when I refitted the altered cylinders I had to fix a little pice of plastic sheet above them to get a good positive fixing.

Now the next big job on the loco is to sort out the new front frames.