Last night involved the following ingredients:

Soldering, swearing, excitement, disappointment, elation, a change of plans, melted plastic, flying plastic, adrenaline and a late night.

My Chassis arrived from Japan. Hooray. It was fantastically small and is a great runner. It has front and rear forward facing LED lights and runs fairly smooth for something that small. The main problem I had was that it was too tall to give my Draisine a scale height and therefore I needed to make it shorter in height.

I had seen on a French Forum that someone had clipped the non-motorised wheels off the chassis and resoldered them onto the top of the motor block to give a lower running height. This would make it longer but the Draisine is long enough to accommodate this extra length.

So last night I clipped the bits off the chassis (flying plastic was not something I expected...) and after much much much soldering and swearing managed to get the chassis with the wheels soldered into the correct position and bent into the right shape to allow the wheels to be reattached.

I then tested the chassis and to my disappoitnment I realised that when I clipped into the circuit board (very very very slightly) I must have broken a circuit due to the fact that the LED for the forward direction no longer works. I consoled myself with the thought that the soldering at this scale was difficult anyway and I should be glad that it is working in any way shape or form.

This meant a change of plan from having a nice set of forward facing lights. I am not considering installing LED lights in the bonnet section but I think the space will be too tight and I am wondering if I am really in the mood for any more soldering onto what is a very tight chassis to work with.

I tested the fit onto the bodywork and discovered the sides were too thick so I had to make some new sides with thinner Plasticard. Now the chassi sits quite snug in the space provided. However I am concerned that it might angle the bodywork to one side. I might have to file the chassis down a little to get this corrected!

After all that stress I had a go at painting some of the components tonight. This was quite relaxing and I am looking forward to doing some more on these over the coming days. Then I shall have a go at glazing the unit.

There is certainly plenty to do!