So we'd got as far as the chassis build, I worked out what sort of aperture to leave in the base so the worm on the shaft of the can motor would poke through to engage with the drive gear.The original metal retainer was too long for this body so couldn't be used, but I used it as a pattern to determine the angle of entry for the shaft and made up a motor bed/retainer assembly from 2mm plastic card and added 0.25 shims untill the worm engaged with the gear satisfactorily. This was quite a trial and error operation and took some considerable time to get right.

I was then faced with the task of how to secure the motor as I was unable (and unwilling) to use the monstrous Hornby wire clip from the original. I tried a rubber drive belt that came with a set of plastic pulley wheels this sort of held it but allowed the motor to slip sideways with the inertia. I finally settled for a strip of circuit board drilled either end and secured at right angles to the motor, through the base by 2 - 8ba x 30mm brass screws, not the prettiest sight but effective.I didn't take a photo but in the picture below the red line indicates the path of the screws.

Next came the electrical pick ups, these I made by soldering Phosphor bronze wire to a square of circuit board saved from a cannibalized computer. I cut a slot trough (as I thought) the copper layer to separate the two sides, this was super glued under the central frame spacer.

Time for a test run! urh! doesn't work? wonder why?! I immediately thought it was because maybe the romford bogie wheels weren't insulated but on examination I found they were. That eliminated I turned my attention to my solder connections I re soldered all these to no avail. After messing around for ages I tried enlarging the gap in the circuit board pick up connection and finally cut right through it, problem solved, it worked, but with the combination of the light weight chassis, metal wheels and an ancient Hornby controller the drive wheels just spun, fine if you want to do bleach outs but with a steam tram that wouldn't look too prototypical, I'm sure. Here's the pick up gubbins

Now the running gear was sorted it was time to attend to the bodywork, I made 2 fixing plates inside the body to screw in to through the frame these pictures tell the rest of the story.

I used Halfords red primer which showed up all the blemishes, these were rectified and primed again.

You may have noticed the appearance of a 'cow catcher' on the front, I made this by bending 0.8mm wire to 90° and glued them into a strip of plastic. I trimmed all but the 2 outside bars 2mm shorter and drilled the front buffer bar to accept the 2 longer bars, the whole thing was glued to the front.

Well that's all for now, I'll post the final pictures up when it's all finished.

cheers for now.