Well, a royal wedding and the father-in-law in hospital - but progress has been made...

Friday night I 'tweaked' (another technical term) the tender flare misusing a pair of engineers clamps, then assembled the rear bufferbeam (overaly & backing). Soldering that in place led to a certain amount of headscratching. The instructions state something like 'solder the rear bufferbeam in place leaving a slight overhang' Slight overhang? How 'slight' is 'slight? Eventually, using drawings and photographs I hypothesised (guessed) a position and soldered it in place.

Next came the valances. Lucky I didn't file off the side-tabs - the valances locate against them

A fairly straightforward job - fixed the rear end to the rear tab, ensuring the valace is hard against the buffer-beam, the work forward. Seemples. It's here that the earlier comment 'leave a slight overhang' can come home to roost. Luckily my valances came to the front face of the tender, providing a mounting for the draw-bar beam which again is sweated together & then soldered in place. Again the instructions are not clear about this - the drawing shows the drawbar being soldered to two small brackets on footplate part 22. Unfortunately mine is using part 23 - no tabs... Once again an 'guesstimate' and it was soldered onto the front of the footplate and the valances.

Finally, it was time to marry body with chassis

A 'test fit' to ensure the mounting points coincide'. They don't. The chassis is about .75mm to far forward. Maybee that 'guestimate for the rear bufferbeam was wrong. Anyway tommorrows first job will be to remove the requisit amount off the rear of the chassis. Ain't blacksmith engineering' fun??

Regs

Ian