With the locomotive now practically complete, attention shifted to the tender.

With using a Hornby Patriot for the chassis, the intention had always been to use a tender drive unit for this model, so a Hornby 8F tender was bought. I had been expecting to be able to use only the motor and chassis from this, and to have to completely scratchbuild the tender tank, however comparison with a scale drawing suggested that this may not be the case.

The tender chassis itself is around 4mm too long, and although this could be reduced by shaving off the odd mm or two from the front and rear the tender itself still would not be right as the tender tank could not be built to scale dimensions, due to the weights cast into the chassis at either end of the motor. You would end up with a scale length chassis fitted with an overlength tank, which I reckon would be as bad as, if not worse, than a flat-out overlength tender.

So I compromised. I accepted an overall length of 4mm too long, but by cutting out 3mm of the moulded tender tank I was able to get the tender tank to look about right in length in relation to the chassis. I had to reduce the tender tank in height down to the level of the flat tank top to the rear, and then I was able to reinforce the two halves of the tank by filling the joint with milliput and gluing a decent sheet of 0.5mm plastic over the joint on the inside.

A new front bulkhead and coal space was then fabricated out of the plastic sheet, using the GBL 'Butler Henderson' tender as a guide. This same tender was also used to trace around the coal rails- a much neater result than my usual tracing over a drawing, then transferring that tracing to plastic sheet.

It's probably about three-quarters finished now, much of the actual fabrication work is complete and the challenge I expect will be getting the finish, tone and sheen of the paintwork of the plastic tender to match that of the whitemetal locomotive...

Aargh, the cruelties of a close-in shot...