One of my secret projects can now be revieled although anyone who made it up to Mickleover last January would have seen it. Yes last January, the back burner has been very busy! I put the basic body together pretty quickly over last Christmas / New Year and this is what it should look like;

And this is what it does look like;

Body is Nickle Silver with various bits of brass section employed here and there. Am particularly pround of the air vent disc, for these I soldered some sheet onto the squared off end of some tube slightly smaller than the final disc, tin snipped it dwn a bit and then finished it off in the lather to size and then unsldered it. Number plate and start device are home brewed etches.

I have now turned my attention to making it go and have learned a lot - principally that my first effort won't work and I have to start again. Second lesson is that I really should have prototyped in thick plasticard as would have been easier and cheaper to find this out. The mechanics of this have been occuping my thoughts for some time and have amassed quite a pile of bits for it but in the end though the only way to make any progress was to just try it and see what happens. Two things that have worked are the roller bearings which the wagon wheels I am useing locate nicely into with thier pin point ends thus saving me the trouble of cutting new axles. The frame spacers - thank you for the good advice on where to get them - also work well and I have realised that by turning the hole horizontal I have a ready made location for a lay shaft bearing. Only trouble with this is that they need to be raised up a bit to provide the necessary engaement, hence a redesign of the frames. Other thing that I ned to do is to mount the central spacer above the current level of the frame tops so that it doesnt get in the way of the lay shaft. There is plenty of room out of sight in the body so this is not a problem. So that is two problems addressed next one is exactly how to get the power to the lay shaft. Again I think I will trial and error it but this time in plastic first!