More slow progress...

Having gotten to the point of having a decent rolling chassis, I made the frankly unwelcome discovery that in changing the wheels I had completely fouled up the pickups. The original chassis has cast metal wheels, and the chassis block is electrically live, but the new wheels have metal tyres and plastic centres.

So what I had to do was to buy a pickup block from a later Patriot chassis, and I was able to glue this directly to the bottom of the cast block (of course, I had to remove two of the phospher bronze pickups first, as it only has four driving wheels). I'm now looking at how to wire this up to the drawbar- having tired of mixing and matching I've decided to follow up the newer pickups block with the newer style of drawbar too.

Meanwhile work is progressing on the body work- the thick fusewire handrails have been removed, the original split pin handrail knobs have been pulled out and a new handrail has been fashioned from thin brass wire. The intention is to use split pins as handrail knobs as this is what the kit was designed for and originally supplied with- and at £2.50 for 100 from an internet auction site they're much cheaper than the last pack of knobs I bought.

The frames and splashers have been painted crimson and a few more coats of brunswick green have been applied to bring up the colour- this just needs, I think, a drybrush coating or two of gloss enamel now to really bring up the finish.

Then I can move onto the tender.