A very , very busy week so nothing more on the barn but did manage a play with the Baldwin. The more attentive amongst you will have noticed a subtle change in the ECI (Estimated Completion Index).

As I have not yet acquired that inspection camera I resorted to a sheet of glass and found that on close inspection the chassis was rocking badly . Well, I knew it was straight and level when I built it so what has gone wrong? Pushing the pony truck off the glass settled it as the six wheels of the chassis were then fine. It turned out that the pony truck was resting on what remained of the frames and was lifting the front end on one side. So, out with a grinding burr and frame was soon sorted - except for two problems.......

Firstly, there was now no pressure on the pony truck so just wouldn't run through the points - solution - a light spring on the pivot stud. Great! it now runs better than ever before and goes through the points OK, only problem is.....

Messing with the frames has made the front buffer beam fall off which, as it includes the coupling is pretty important that it is secure and at the correct height. Just have to work out a way of fixing it now without melting everything in sight.

The other two points that I dropped on the ECI were that the sound does not sync very well when starting off. I suspect that it might be due to the the rather huge fly wheel and know that a chuff sychroniser would sort out the problem nicely but seems like a lot of trouble right now!