Following a brisk bit of hillwalking to blow away the winter cobwebs, I spent a couple of hours soldering up the final cylinder assemblies. I was a bit puzzled by the kit's intentions, but after some head scratching I worked out how the slidebars were meant to function, and once "trapped" by the cylinder end castings, the final design seems pretty robust and quite neatly thought out.

I tack soldered the cylinders in place and tried a simple running test with the connecting rods loosely in place. All was good - no binding or shorting, and there's bags of clearance behind the crosshead.

Unfortunately I hit an apparent snag as the crosshead assembly is required to be bolted together with an M1 bolt, and the supplied bolts aren't nearly long enough to fit through the crosshead and two layers of outer etch. In past I've used both rivets and dressmaker's pins for the crosshead connection, but in this case I'd rather continue with the intended method, so I've ordered some longer M1 bolts and nuts, which I hope will suffice.

In the meantime I carried on with the bodywork, assembling the cab and boiler into place. This (and the cylinders) was my first go at white metal soldering, so I'm pretty pleased with how it's all working out. I've had the flux, solder and temperature-controlled iron for years, just never had the courage to actually try it! But it's a remarkably fast way to assemble parts,and minor corrections are easily made. Of course I've still got to file those casting blobs from the footplate.

Apologies for the rather repetitive nature of these S15 posts, but I thought it might be fun to document the build in small installments. I might tackle the tender next, depending on how long those bolts take to arrive.