It's been a while since the last post - been spending most of the time backward & forward to hospital, visiting the inspiration for this build. Without being overly dramatic, I don't think Jim will see the finished loco. An added bugbear was looking out of the bedroom window after a period of wind to see the shed-roof felt protecting the lawn! Fortunately it didn't rain before I got it fixed.

So, on with the build. It looked to be mainly a case of detailing parts - and the first to go in were the sandboxes. The righthand box is not a problem - it's a box...

The lefthand one is a different matter..

It has to fold round the top - and we're dealing with a piece of brass about 12mm square which has to be folded in two opposing rightangles and follow the curved contours of the top!

So far so good - then

problems - all the heat had hardened the brass and the 2nd fold snapped as I was trying to form the first rounded corner...

Solution?

Treat it as a separate piece, make the bends & then solder it all up again... It only took two hours - honest!

However, it got there in the end

and was then sweated into place

The front floor of the tender had to be cut to fit round the sandboxees, and soldered in at the correct height. Not having built the loco, I worked that out from the rail-footplate height on the drawing. Time will tell...

The coal plates front & rear went in quite quickly, using an engineers square to ensure squareness

Now it was time to marry the tanktop with the chassis.... Oh dear....

Fairly obvious that the footsteps which are supposed to fit outside the tender frames - don't. Back to the instructions, and yes I'd missed something. Do you remember thos tabs which slot through from the tanktop former and bend over?? I missed one important word - 'outward'. I applied the standard procedure and folded toward the etch line. RTFM!

At the mo' I'm busy stripping off the steps & valances to resolder them some 1 mm outward of their original location. However, I'll temporarily attach the two main units together whilst this is in progress - just to make sure...

Regs

Ian