When visiting Peter Mantle's (PCM) Llanbourne layout for the monthly BRMA meeting yesterday, I took along two locomotives that were recently reblown with legomanbiffo sounds. One, 37 698, behaved perfectly (although I noted that I have at some stage lost the horns at one end, probably when transporting it to an exhibition). The other, class 40 D211, disgraced itself by dropping the bogie frame at one end. I was still able to run it and show off the sounds but it looked rather odd - like one end was floating on air!

The cause of the bogie frame falling off was the inner end transome actually breaking off. Unfortunately, the centre part of that transome is what clips over a lug on the end of the bogie's metal chassis.

I worked into the early hours of this morning fixing it, after thinking about how to repair it so that it would regain some strength.

The answer was to use a 2mm wide strip of 60 thou plasticard, reinforced with handrail wire drilled into the ends through the bogie side frames, plus more wire drilled and bent around the attachment points for the bottom part. This was then superglued thoroughly as well to retain all the wire bits and strengthen the joints.

It works perfectly on test and seems to be very strong. All that remains is to apply a coat of black paint, to be followed eventually by a bit of weathering on the whole underframe/bogies and on the roof.