Apart from the wheel balance weights, the first Prairie chassis is now finished, and is now beginning running trials. I was expecting all sorts of bother with the pony trucks derailing, but so far - touch wood - they've been fairly well behaved, although perhaps a bit of extra weight in them wouldn't go amiss.

I didn't have a front wheel of exactly the correct diamete (3' 2" I think), or the right number of spokes, so it's running with a slightly too small 3' Gibson wheel for the time being. The next wheel size up I have is a 3' 3" one, which is slightly too large, but I think will be a better compromise. At the moment, at least, the wheel doesn't foul the front of the cylinder. In another first for me, all the brass and white metal bits of the cylinder were soldered together - the only glue that's gone anywhere near this model, so far, has been for the sandboxes.

I fitted the final brake gear, soldering the two main rods together and managing not to get into too much bother with the already-fitted pickups. To be on the sage side, though, I also added heat shrink insulation over the pickups, where they might touch the chassis parts.

Onto the body, and the damaged steps were transplanted with those from the Kitmaster/Airfix/Dapol Prairie kit, and I've got a replacement for the safety valve cover to go on next. The sandboxes were also sawn off the plastic frames and spaced out with plastikard blocks before being glued to the Comet chassis just ahead of the steps. I've now started adding weight into the body, but I'm nowhere near done with that - luckily there's bags of room in a Prairie! I also need to fabricate a cab floor and some suggestion of an interior, but I don't think I'll bother with a backhead as it'll be all but invisible once I've added crew.

Incidentally, I'm re-watching Tony Wright's DVD on loco kit construction where he does the SE Finecast Prairie, and it's clear that the kit's frames jog inward to allow the rear axle more lateral movement. So provided I don't cock it up, that model should be able to cope with my curves as easily as the Comet one, which is one less concern.

Cheers and thanks for reading again.