With that doomsday clock on the Tracks to the Trenches site ticking down rather uncomfortably you would have thought the last thing I should be spending my time on is a loco from 1928. Well yes, but there is some logic somewhere. I bought the basic etch from A1 models at the Burton show on a whim and for £12 I think and had a DCC ready Bachmann chassis so thought why not? What I wanted was something that would actually work for testing the track and which wouldn't look too out of place if my worst nightmare came true and all my kit built locos fail!

It describes itself as a basic kit and it is certainly not wrong there but does seem to be of very lightweight brass indeed. Unfortunately the box for my calipers is empty so don't know where they have got to but it seems sub 10 thou to me. I was almost going to just slap it together but just couldn't resist my primal urge to make a meal of it. I found some very nice drawings in Narrow Gauge and Industrial Magazine which I scanned, reduced to 7mm in PhotoShop and then printed out. It was blatantly obvious that I was going to have to add rivets as none were included on the etches. Not wanting to mark them all out I got a bit clever and cut out my drawings, double sided taped them to the etch and then used this as a guide for where to attack with the GW rivet press.

Didn't take too long (which is obvious in the slightly wonky lines!), and had myself a fully riveted etch. I then used my piece of Nickel Silver sheet to use as a base to which I tack soldered the sides for strength and straightness and ended up with this;

After releasing from the base it was ready to meet its chassis;

All I have done so far is saw off the splashers from the foot plate but need to work on the buffer beams and a method of fixing the body to the foot plate. Yes I know the wheels and just about everything with the chassis is completely wrong but the body is far from accurate so it is in good company there and hopefully will prove to be a good little run arround.