I'm feeling rather pleased with myself this afternoon, as it all appears to work! I've spent the last few modelling sessions constructing the axleboxes and their stirrups and fettling the equalising beams to fit.

After the test assembly appeared to be successful, I couldn't resist plonking the body on top to see what it looked like, and it looked rather good IMO.

Everything appears to be OK in terms of width across the bogie - nothing looks out of place there. There is an issue with one of the springs being slightly out of alignment (obvious in the pics), but a careful bit of work with a file on the mounting stud will sort that out. I've resigned myself to lightly gluing the springs in position, instead of relying on a friction fit anyhow.

The ride height appears to be ok, in as much as in its current state the distance from the ground to the bottom of the body is less than I had allowed for the overall height of the bogie, so by the time the secondary suspension is installed it'll be at the right height. I just need to find out what that height is, as I don't appear to have written that down anywhere...

What it has highlighted though, which I did kind of expect, is that I'm going to have to add a fair bit of weight inside the model to get the springs to ride at the correct height. In the photos above, the model is sitting at pretty much the maximum downtravel of the axleboxes, the idea is that the normal position will be at half travel, so the wheels can go up and down with the undulations in the track.

It needs a bit of tweaking, but at least I've proved to myself that I haven't been wasting my time!