Progress will initially appear exceedingly fast because I'm trying to catch up with this blog! But rest assured that I was doing this construction in about November over quite a few odd hours.

First up, here is the tender chassis assembled. The spacers are 6.4mm PCB with gaps filed in on each side, soldered on using the jig described in the previous post. The horizontal one is set slightly below the top of the frames so that there is somewhere for the solder to attach on top. The extra axle hole is for the body pivot, which I have yet to fit. It's designed to take a standard muff on stub axles, and my plan is to glue the body to the muff so that it can pivot up and down, resting not on the tender chassis but on the loco so as to put more weight onto the driving wheels. The Simpson springs are evident - made in the time honoured way from unwinding old Farish coupling springs. I don't know where else you can get thin enough phosphor bronze wire. They're soldered into the lower pre-etched holes on the frames.

The upper row of holes on the frames are for the brake rigging, which you see in the following photo along with the built up body. My etch included a jig for putting together the brakes - I'll try to take a photo when I come to doing the similar one on the loco. The brakes are removable and just spring into the frames. At the moment they're joined across by 0.3mm wire, but this will have to be cut in the middle for insulation purposes, and rejoined with some insulating sleeving.

Here's a better view of the body. It was straightforward except for the coal rail "gussets" (which were a right fiddle) and the flare. There are some gaps that need filling at the base of the flare, both inside and outside, and also I need to try and fill the corners. I etched the corners as a "fan" of separate spikes, hoping to fill them with solder. But that didn't work and the solder just wanted to wick down onto the tender top. Hopefully Milliput will work better. I etched holes on the rear vertical corners to hold the handrails, but haven't attached them yet.

The motor will fit inside the tender, and there is just room to squeeze a 7mm diameter can motor through the top. I'm hoping to squeeze a decoder in beside the motor and I think it should be possible. Not quite sure which yet. I unwittingly cut down the available space by etching a vertical support to hold the transverse coal rail that goes right down to the floor. I'm yet to attach the tender drawbar but there is a hole etched towards the front allowing for a screw for this. I haven't quite worked out how to make this rotate from side to side at the same time as transferring the tender weight to the loco, so I need to study other people's writings to see how they have done it.