I've gone as far as I can before delivery of the required decoder, here is the current state of production.

Being built as an internal combustion engined loco it needs a radiator. I finally decided that would be placed

alongside the supplied white metal exhaust system on what can be thought of as the rear. To start I've added

a beading from fine microstrip, I can see from the photo a little corner blending is still needed. Into this space

I intend fixing a piece of net curtain to represent the protective grille. centrally along the top I need to add a

radiator filler cap.

DCC conversion of a Tenshodo spud is easy enough, but I don't think I would want to try without a mini drill fitted

with a slitting disc. First is cutting & removing the lower part of the motor feed contacts from the spud sides. To achieve

this without risk of damaging wheels I opened by releasing the single securing screw and unclipping. There was no

factory lubrication so a miniscule spot of silicone grease was added to each gear set before reassembly. Here the

removed sections can be seen above the screw.

Short leads are soldered to the ground off track feeds and the top motor feed tags, then fed through the openings

drilled & filed into the footplate.

Finally an old but working decoder is soldered in to test that all is working as it should. To start with I had no response on

default address 3, then I remembered last used this had address 1 ......... and that worked fine !!

When my mini decoder comes this will be built into the model, no future access without pulling apart. It just has to be right

first time.

Dad-1