I recently had a near disaster with the Caprotti Black 5 when I accidentally knocked off and nearly lost part of the rather delicate lubricator drive mechanism at my local club meeting. Fortunately, a colleague spotted the missing parts under a table - I was convinced it had come off at home whilst packing the body up, otherwise quite a bit of extra work would have been necessary. Anyway, it turned out not to be as hard to put right as I had feared and, indeed, the repaired drive is both stronger and actually more realistic than before, as I have added an internal stiffening rib missing from my original effort. Silver linings and all that.

Buoyed up by the success with the lubricator drive repair, the chassis has been completely disassembled and given a coat of Precision Paints single pack grey etch primer. The instructions stress the need to be sparing with it, but the paint in the (brand new) tin has the consistency of syrup, so constant dipping of the brush in thinners was necessary to get a thin coating. Here are all the bits, except the motor and screws, laid out after priming. Mating surfaces and parts invisible on the finished loco have been left unpainted.

Dave.