So I got a nice sweetly rolling chassis after a little bit of trouble, it turned out one of the coupling rod pins had gone out the back of the wheel and was catching on the chassis block. That sorted, I moved onto the tender.

My my my, what a little minefield that is.

Turns out there are three different types of tender. The first 40 of the class were fitted with a Parker 3080 gallon type. Then the following 60, built across the way at Beyer Peacock, were fitted with a 4000 gallon tender to a Pollitt design. The last 40 then reverted to a 3080 gallon type, designed by Robinson. Things get more complicated in that some were fitted with coal rails, some were fitted with coal guards and some weren't fitted with anything.... and those not fitted with anything remained so until after 1923.

So before I could think about a tender I had to work out exactly what I had. Both of the engines I'll be building are, it would seem, of the 1896 Beyer Peacock batch. Which means a Pollitt 4000 gallon tender with neither coal rails not coal guards. Now, luckily, I have a couple of spare 4000 gallon tender bodies, which you might think would suit.

No! They're 4000 gallon tenders all right, but of Robinson pattern. Which makes them slightly too wide and gives them coal guards... surgery followed. I've removed the coal guards easily enough with brute force, a hacksaw and a dremel, but now I need to reduce the width of the tender body. Did I mention this model has a tender drive unit? So not only do I need to reduce the width of the tender, whilst doing so I need to make sure the cut-down body still fits over the motor.

Incidentally I now have a North Eastern tender (with only two axles) sitting in the spares box.