Having reached the limit of what I can do on Clan Line (at least until the con rods and tender chassis arrive), I've got on with finishing off 37667 'Meldon Quarry' in EWS.

The first job was finishing off the fitting of the sandite port. The etch isnt great, being far to overly simplified at the expense of detail, but I am getting somewhere from it...

First the half etched centre was cut out and discarded, then a hole to match was cut into the locos body side. Given the thin brass frame attempts to press the bolt head detail on just destroyed the etch (I cant stand this method, much preferring to just half etch the detail on!) Anyway, having got it glued into position and the hole filled with a piece of plasticard it was out with the paint.

The Bachmann shade of EWS gold is a bit more orangey than the prototype, so I mixed in a bit of EWS red to match before painting the panel. Its still slightly lighter but this will be sorted with weathering. Once the sandite port was in place it was a quick job to add the final set of numbers to the side.

Moving to the ends, the headcode boxe plates were filed off (its getting a set of etched ones to save having to mask off the black panels), scratch built headcode clips were added, as were a pair of Vi Trains lamp irons and a replica high intensity headlight. This is now awaiting a new can of railmatch warning yellow so I can get on and finish it.

A little more chassis work, finally getting a set of Hornby Class 60 buffers fitted.

The final area of work was the cab windscreens, a simple case here of gluing the Shawplan reinforced window etch over the centre frame.

So now all whats left is to replace the nose grills with the correct type (once the parts are released), add a Shawplan roof grill. then paint them (Again mixing colours to get as close a match as poss) and finally a bit of weathering (particularly to the areas repainted) to blend everything together. Its also going to need the usual work of fitting DCC & P4 etc but that can wait for the time being...

The loco is annoyingly slightly out of period for me now, so sadly may well end up having to go on the forsale list Will see when I make my final decision on when my upper limit will be...