Previously on S15..,

I'd struggled to get the chassis and body to play nicely together, with a whopping gap between the top of the cylinders and the underside of the footplate. After much examination of various photos - of both the prototype and other DJH models - I decided that the cylinders are correct(ish) but that body has to be lowered by about 1mm. The only problem with that is that something - either brass or white metal has to go.,,

Anyway, on with today's installment:

After a gargantuan session of filing, hacking, grinding and more swearing than Al Swearengen on a bad day, I've reached the point where the footplate of the S15 is sitting in an improved relationship with the chassis, although I still reckon it could do with being at least half a mm lower. But I think this is as far as I'll take it, as I don't want to carve away any more white metal from the underside of the footplate (thereby weakening it), or file much more out of the chassis. Sitting next to Hornby's exquisite N15, the match between footplate, boiler top and the top of the spectacle plate is acceptably close for my purposes.

Perhaps the biggest aid was achieving a better fit of the motion bracket. There are shallow notches in the chassis sides to enable it to sit flush with the top of the chassis, but they're far too shallow, so if you're not careful the bracket will sit too high, forcing the footplate up at that point. I had to file much deeper notches, no easy task given the thickness of the brass.

The good news is that despite all this brutal ironmongery, the chassis is still performing beautifully, so I'm rapidly running out of excuses not to tackle the valve gear.