The current situation, whilst I stay at home for the duration, has given me the opportunity to progress with many outstanding layout based projects.  One of the things that has been bugging me for some time has been the issue of clearances which I really need to resolve before I fixed platform and overbridge in place.  The most likely risks might be Great Western outside cylinder locos.  As my layout is pre WW1 one of the main candidates is the 4-4-0 Churchward County which were reputedly introduced for the North to West route upon which my station is located.   So ignoring my cabinet of shame of unfinished kit projects, I have started a County to help me to finally nail down the bridge and platform locations.  I might stop once I have a rolling chassis with outside cylinders but this is the start.

3828 County of Hereford was brand new in the Summer of 1912 (when my layout is based), so I don't need an excuse to finish it in outshopped condition.  I collected the latest SEF version of the kit as long ago as EXPO EM in 2012; it features an etched chassis:

I started with soldering up the coupling rods in order to set up the chassis jig.

I employ my now standard procedure which is to set the frames up initially as a fixed chassis in order to ensure the axles will end up all square.  This required temporally soldering in the bushes.  As can be seen, I pre-cut the horn guide cutouts in order to help removing them later once the frames have been set up.

One acid test is putting the frames on the chassis jig at this stage to see if the axle holes actually match the coupling rods.  As elsewhere in my blog, some other chassis have failed this test!  But chassis lined up fine.

So I proceeded by soldering in the spacers provided for which there are 00, EM and P4 variants.

Thus I came upon the first problem.  The kit includes compensation beams and half etch location points for the pivot on the frames but a centre spacer is in the way of allowing these to function.

I therefore had to fabricate a new spacer with a big enough cutout to allow the beams to pass through.  Fortunately the P4 spacers are the same width as the Alan Gibson ones I found in my spares box at 14.75mm

I also had to cut down the lower spacer that's intended to hold the pickup base to clear the gearbox.  Current plan is to use a High Level Road Runner compact with a Mashima 1424.  Next stage is to put the frames back on the jig and solder in some hornguides.