At last we seem to be getting somewhere. Since the last blog, the coupling rods have been fitted. I beefed these up a bit to look more like the prototype and to give a wider bearing on the crank pins. I had to modify the fly cranks for the centre drivers to take my new return cranks (see later). The bogies have also been assembled and fitted. I made a mounting on the chassis for the rear bogie as it is designed to mount on the body in the kit. Brake gear was then fitted and the whole lot received a couple of coats of paint. I was then able to assemble and fit the motion. This involved fabricating new fly cranks (nickel silver with 12BA nut soldered onto the rear face and filed down to a suitable thickness) which could then be screwed on to the crank pins that I had soldered into the centre fly cranks, I hope that makes sense. The rest of the motion was then assembled using pinned instead of riveted connections. I also soldered a 14BA nut onto the rear of the slidebar support bracket so that I could hang the radius link with a screwed connection, which made assembly a lot easier! Needless to say, the chassis was tested for smooth running at each stage and I have to admit, it did need a lot of tweaking along the way. I am not overly happy with the 12BA nuts used to retain the coupling rods but, as the 12BA crank pins were cast onto the fly cranks, I didn't have much choice. They have been thinned down a lot particularly on the front drivers to get clearance behind the crosshead.

So, hopefully, that's the most stressful part out of the way. Boiler, smokebox and fittings next before it's back to the chassis to fit electrical pick-ups. This is turning out to be a very lengthy project!