Here's an interesting project which has definitely proved to be fun and satisfying so far.

As I mentioned on Tony Wright's thread, TW kindly offered me the chance to have a go at building a complete kit in a box for the Airfix Schools class, together with a Craftsman chassis and motors, wheels etc. As far as I can tell the kit (at least as packed) dates from 1986, so definitely a throw-back in some respects, but still perfectly capable of being built to a useful standard with little modification.

As far as I could see, the only things not present were crankpins, or anything to do with re-wheeling the tender.

My two concerns before starting were:

1) getting enough weight into the plastic body for adhesion, but without upsetting the balance

2) valve gear - this would only be my second set, and the design principles around the slidebar area were a bit different to what I'd encountered before.

The chassis is designed around a specific motor and mount, both included, so I went ahead and built it as per the instructions, trusting that all would fit where it needed to. The sides are located using slots and tabs around a single fold-up spacer piece which forms the underside of the chassis.

The chassis went together very nicely, and the coupling rods were a drop-fit onto the wheels, with almost no fettling being required, other than to tidy up a bit after I'd soldered the halves together. I've had Comet kits where very little opening out of the crankpin holes is needed, but this was pretty much bang-on as supplied and the basic chassis was very free-rolling, without a trace of any binding - nice one, Craftsman!

Pickups were added using PCB strip glued to the underside, followed by nickle-silver wire bearing onto the backs of the wheels. After some adjustment trouble-free pickup was attained. I then spent a bit of time fiddling with the motor mount, getting the gear mesh satisfactory, but it was still a bit "grindy". I reckoned it would be pointless to fiddle around with it any more until some decent test-running could be run, but for that I needed weight, and for that I needed to build the body!

Out with the plastic cement - a bit of a change from low-melt solder - and a basic body form was put together, and then stuffed with lead. I also crammed lead into all the available spaces in the chassis, while taking care not to make it nose-heavy.

Not having a tender yet ready, I bodged a connection that enabled the Schools to haul the Urie tender from my S15. With this in place, a train was tentatively coupled up. I thought I was being wildly optimistic in expecting this light 4-4-0 to start a 7 coach train, but to my amazement she walked away with it without a hint of hesitation. Blimey! Next I went up to eight, and then nine, which was getting silly, and still - other than a slight trace of wheelslip starting out - she had no trouble.

In reality my typical passenger train rarely exceeds 6 coaches, my layout being small, so she's well capable of handling anything required of her.

After some test-running, the gear grind began to die away and she started sounding smoother, as expected, so I turned my attention to the dreaded valve gear. The instructions are bit hit and miss here, but after much puzzlement I sussed out the assembly logic (while deviating from it as well) and found that it all went together with no major snags. A limitation for me, though, is that I've yet to master the soldered pin technique for valve gears, meaning that everything has to be riveted ... no problem in itself, but it means that the gear must be assembled as a single entity on the workbench, before being transferred to the engine, and thereby tested in one hit. In this case the slidebar had to be soldered to the mounting bracket with the valve gear in place, which was a touch fiddly but went all right in the end, and after a few minor tweaks smooth running was attained. The Airfix cylinders need a small amount of modification and are then fixed in place over the etched mounts, a neat bit of design by Craftsman. However, confession time - I've only done this side. One set of valve gear is enough for one day!

With the engineering/metalwork type stuff nearly done, I look forward to getting into the more cosmetic business of finishing the body. The loco will end up being in pre-Nationalisation condition but as I'm as yet undecided about the identity and livery, although olive green's likely.

Cheers!