On with the Urie S15. I've eliminated shorting from the front bogie against the frames, with a lot of filing and grinding, and now the loco traverses all my pointwork (including a couple of reverse curves through Peco curved turnouts) without hesitation or sparking.

I test-fitted the cylinders, and had to remove a lot of material from the front profile to avoid shorting against the bogie wheels on curves. A similar amount will need to be removed from the rear cylinder plate casting when I add that. However, it's not too bad and this is meant to be a layout loco, not a showcase model.

The footplate and body fit nicely over the DJH motor and gearbox with only minor modification. On the real things, the tops of the cylinders were tight against the lower part of the footplate, so something isn't quite right as it stands. I'm not sure if the cylinders are underscale, or need to be mounted slightly higher.

Once I've resolved the cylinder issue, one way or another, I need to work out what to do with the slide bars and crossheads. The supplied crossheads are white metal castings. I'm not against them per se, as I've used white metal ones on my 1366 and that's been a superb runner. However, it's not clear to me how the crossheads are meant to fit onto the slidebars. The crossheads only have one flange, rather than a U-channel on the top and bottom, if that makes sense, so while they'll slide up and down, there's nothing to retain them. But perhaps it'll work in practise.

As for the slidebars, there's little guidance in the instructions - it just says "assemble the cylinders and slidebars" or words to that effect. As far as I can judge, the material supplied for the slidebars is two U-shaped lengths of flattened wire, rather than castings or etches. Presumably the wire is formed to the right spacing and fitted into the cylinders.

Anyway, no rush and we'll get there in the end.