My lack of blogs may suggest that nothing has been happening but that is only partly true! It is really just that nothing interesting has been happenimg but that has all just changed! Last Saturday morning I loked at a £2.50 sheet of 10 thouh Nickel Silver and thought ' I know what you shall become' and a week latter.....

Maybe not quite a complete whim as I had a second Mark Clark 3d printed Simplex chassis spare, the first working very well on a Wrighlines protected body, but needed something to put on it. Only real option was to scratch build something. I did, however have devious designs on the chasis.

So, withseveral copies of  a resized plan to hand I started to bend metal to size

This I did with aid of bending bars and and much bending until it sheered into nice straight lines.

The drawing was then cut out and double sided taped onto the metal and the trusty GW rivet press pressed into service again. Where several perces had to be identical they were solderd together in a sanwich, filled to profile and then seperated.

the pieces were then assembled on a piece of copper clad sheet to ensure everything was level. The uprights were soldered to the frame by drilling the reverse where it wouldn't be seen and then filling the hole with solder ib a kind of spot weld. thus keeping the edges solder free.

I wasn't looking forward to the curved end panels but a cardboard template made easy work of this.

Another bit I wasn't looking forward to was the roof but again a simple jig of 2x4 made a;igning the supports easy.

So her is the body with the power unit in place, That seems a simple statement but the self inflicted work to get it there took several days. Not wishing to make anything simple for myself, I decided to make the chasis split frame as I find pick ups to be one of the prime causes of poor running especially in small locos. THE 3s printed chassis was a great starting point and just needed the bearings to be connected together on each side with a bus bar. I then used Branch lInes 2mm split axles made up in thier jig for the axles. The wheels were a bit of an issue however so as they were all insulated with a plasyic hub. On one side I drilled a hole in the centre of the axle on the lathe and then sodered a wire from here to a hole in the wheel face. On the other side I cut a notch in the axle and oldered a wire into this and then into a drilled hole in the wheel face.

A brass strip was then glued to the bottom of the chassis to bolt to the body.

And then the detailing started and we all know where the devil is!

So one week later I have a passable 40hp Simplex and am just awaiting some etched chequer plate from Narrow Planet to make up the floors onto which I shall fitt the radiator, fuel tank and brake stand. Al that will be needed then is to fit the DCC chip and a bit of paint!