Well progress on my attempt to produce a reasonable representation of an Ivatt class 4 (Flying Pig) for Foster street has managed to get to the stage of me actually thinking about slapping a little paint onto it.

The majority of the work on the project this week has seen me working on the tender, and attempting to get the complex shape of the cab tender correct. This has not been helped by my stubborn insistence on using the over length farish chassis (yes if the Domestic Overlord ever reads this it is me admitting to being stubborn, well only slightly).

I know using the over scale tender length with have the rivet counters out there baying for my blood, but we all have to live with a few compromises unless we go down the FS route. I mean I have a few Fowler locomotives in my collection, all of which have the farish stretched tenders, and as long as you don't put them near a scale length on they don't look too bad with a little detailing. I have a couple of tender kits in stock, but I would need another 20+ to cover the fleet.

Anyway I digress I think I have managed to produce a passable version of the cab tender, from the use of 10 thou plasti-card my trusty superglue and some files, without it looking too stretched I hope

So to make the height of the Locomotive cab matched that of the tender I added a another shim of plasti-card to raise the locomotive up a little more to the correct height, and to provide the gap above the cylinders. I also changed the profile of the cab roof by adding strips of plastic to it then sanding to the correct profile, I must admit I quite enjoy this part of modelling

So it was off to the paint shops, with N gauge sometime you can get a good finish with a brush, but for this locomotive I though I would get a can of satin black from its hiding place, I mean what could possibly go wrong?? From the locomotive point of view not a lot, it needs another coat, and there are a few areas that could do with sanding, but she took her first coat quite well, but not as good as my hand or my white shirt.

There is still a lot of pipework to add to the locomotive, and I need to add some frames ahead of the cylinders to fill the gap, and of course paint them. Then I need to look at adding glazing to the cab, and a crew, and then make a new locomotive/tender coupling. That's before I even add its final coat of black, oh and paint the cab roof, and smoke box matt black, and some more real coal to the bunker.

I suppose I better think about what number she is going to carry, and order the transfers, and then maybe this "pig" of a job will be complete????

As ever until next time Happy Modelling