Another evening of minor detailing, and the Manor body is finished.

This included adding a Gibson saftey valve bonnet cover from the scrap box.  I would have usually used a better quality two piece set (as should have been in the kit) however as it will be painted I don’t need the separate brass part. 

The topfeed pipes were formed from some scrap wire from a Disney light up wand that one of the children stepped on and broke.  The other wire is copper coloured and will be used to detail the backhead.

The body is now ready for a good clean followed by a couple of coats of Halfords etch primer.

I have been thinking about the tender, I have a Mitchell tender with my 43xx.  I still can’t decide what I am doing with this loco, the cost of buying wheels, motor etc plus needing to build a new chassis makes me think I will keep it P4.  So my thoughts are tending towards building a new OO tender chassis and sharing the tender between the two locos.

Moving on to the finishing, I am struggling to find photos of 7808 in 1947. I have checked against the GWRJ no7 list, and it shows that 7808 was repainted into

GWR black in April 43.  Now I have no way of checking if it had been in the works again and been repainted back to green by 47, so unless someone tells me otherwise it will be going black.

The Manor alongside a Hornby Grange 

The next job job is to order the parts to build the chassis

This will need a Comet chassis (which will get the detail overlays from the Mitchel kit), a set of Markits wheels and a High Level gearbox.  Plus a comet tender chassis.  I have a suitable Mashima already along with a handful of Mitsumi motors from eBay to try out.