Whilst scratching my head, I thought I ought to do something.

I made up the brake gear, this was fairly straight forward but quite basic. I will be adding some plastic to the rear of the shoes, one to give them some thickness and to insulate from the wheels.

Now back to the problem in hand. I needed to remake the cylinders. I marked out the new ones on a couple of bits of 0.030" brass. once cut out I made up a u shaped spacer and new wrappers.

As you can see there is quite a difference between the two.

The new ones need fitting properly at the correct angle still. But onward we must go. I split the slide bars so the top and outside were folded and the insde was soldered on after fitting the crosshead. Which comes a feeble whitemetal casting or an etch that would never work in a month of Sundays. I built new ones but I did utilize the etches. I put tube through the cylinders for the piston rods to run in, I still need to find something to use as a piston rod. added a little detail, then soldered the crossheads on. The motion brackets were added to the other end. I still need to figure out what or how these are supposed to frames. I need to fix the cylinders first though. Next problem are the valve guides. There is an etch and a casting for then but no covers for then to fit to.

The valve gear needs a little work as the holes are all a bit large. As you can see I am holding a 1mm wire in one of the holes and there is still plenty of slack around it. Hopefully I have something to fill them. I will also need to laminate all the parts up as it is all single layers. I like forked joints.

Food shopping day tomorrow so time is a bit shorter at the bench. But things are goingg better so hopefully a little more tomorrow.