This will be my last posting until after the festivities, so Merry Christmas and a brilliant modelling New Year to all my readers.

This week the pics are mainly about how I achieve belpair firebox shapes for ex-GCR locos. As you may have picked-up from recent photographs I initially make a round top firebox. This is easier to roll as part of the boiler/firebox tube and GC locos did not have the protrubent belpair forms of most other railways; simply flat sides and top but with curved top corners.

So after the tube has been rolled the side sections can be snipped and bent back to straight. All that then remains is to add some milliput or car body filler to form the top-edge curves.

The J10 utilized milliput because I was out of stock of body filler which, being more malleable, is an easier prospect than milliput. In either case I build up a hardboard side liner each side of the firebox. The secret is to include some silicon cooking ‘paper’ between the hardboard smooth face and the filler. This picture shows how I do it:

The next two pics show each side of the emerging shape. Some forming of the top curve is apparent but a fair bit of fettling still remains to be done.

The final pic is a full frontal.

Stay tolerably sober; - see you in 2012!