Well that is what I thought I would treat myself to! Having already built one and a half Wrightlines Baldwin 4-6-0 kits - one had the chassis already built when I got it - I thought another would be straight forward. Am actually being a bit naughty here as probably ought to be rebuilding the chassis on the second one as it does not run particularly well and has the standard, and ugly, motor set up. Anyway building a new one just seemed more exciting.

So problem 1 - me being too clever! I always intended to build this with a revised motor setup to allow daylight under the boiler and a clear cab and will highlight the various modifications as I know there are a few people out there sitting on these kits and just need a bit of a nudge to get going. But.... I got a bit to cocky and decided to fit roller bearings to the front two axles (It is difficult - but not impossible, as I have proved, to fit out the driven axle due to the gearbox being in the way). I thought it would be a simple matter to just drill out the holes to 8mm but I don't know if it was the drill that was wonky or just that I did it too late at night but the holes ended up all over the place. Much filing and swearing later I had this;

I have not done it yet but pretty much all of the area circled needs to be filed away to make room for the bogie to swing but to ensure that the whole front end is strong enough I have soldered the frame spacer which should be at the back (but would foul the new motor), on top of the frames.

Next up a bit of bodywork. The cabs on both the previous kits went together with no trouble but not this one - nothing would line up at all, the castings just seemed to be completely different from the others. Got it sorted of course but but had to hack away quite a lot of metal. I have also circled the quite large amount of metal that needs to be removed from the front plate to make the gearbox fit. On the back plate I have cut off the supports for the full roof as I am making this one a cut down version and I have also removed the completely inaccurate coal bunker - this space will be useful fot speaker or decoder.

I then moved on to the boiler and again have circled the metal that needs to be removed.

No the gearbox. On my first Baldwin I used a Markits MM-3L-2346 of which I though I had another but it turned out to be the MM-3L-2338 - basically the same but a slightly shorter extension to the final gear which has meant a little more metal needs to be taken out of the front plate. The former is the best to use. Now here I made the mistake of actually reading the instructions for once - what evil genius came up with the idea of loose fitting the bearings first and then soldering them in once all the axles are in! This resulted in solder going everywhere, even more swearing and gears that would just not mesh. At this point I went to bed. This afternoon I dismantled it, soldered the bearings, assembled it (after packing out the shafts with washers to reduce side play - one of my least favorite tasks), and it worked perfectly.

So here it is fitted in the chassis and getting a bit of a running in on the bench.