Last night, with the help of the Chief Mechanical Engineer of our little group, I got the wheels on the chassis of my D16/3. Once again the GW wheel press proved its worth in getting everything quartered though we had a bit of fun getting the first set on the axle as the holes in the wheels were particularly tight. So points to remember with Alan Gibson wheels:-

1) always make sure the rear boss on the wheel won't foul the counter sunk end of the crank pin, you often need to cut the plastic back a shade.

2) shamfer the ends of the axles

3) just tickle the back of the axle hole of the wheel with a large drill bit to put a slight shamfer on that too

4) apply spit!

Now I have had it pointed out that the Gibson wheels are not really curvaceous enough for a Claud and looking at the photographs I'd agree that they look a little 'thin'. However despite the best brains in East Cambridgeshire scratching their collective heads we can't really come up with a way to do much about it. The best I might hope to achieve would be to stick an overlay of about 10-20thou plasticard onto the middle of the wheel and crankpin boss and try to fatten up the outside of the wheel centre. Trying to do anything about the spokes seems like a non-starter to me.

I'm afraid I can't wait for Ultrascale (if they did them) and can't afford Exactoscale so will have to live with the Gibsons.

Now the front pony truck is obviously still fitted with an old pair of wagon wheels just to see if it would spring. More discussion last night centred on how to spring it/hold in place/make sure it gives a bit of sideways force as it goes around corners to keep the loco in the right direction. I likes the pivoted beam idea from the kit and copied an idea from said CME and decided to use an old sprung buffer as the pivot. The idea is that this will spring up against the bottom of the footplate but be able to move side-to-side on the end of the pivoting beam. I should be able to control the level of side play with some wire applying sideways force to the beam. This is a work in progress we'll see where it takes us.

Having made the chassis roll I now need to refit the motor and try it under power, I'll let you know how it goes.

David