Work continues on this wagon, somewhat slowly at the moment but I try and put in an hour or two a day.

The small end bracing plates have been soldered up and fitted;

I'm not going to say much about them apart from to assemble them I used my RSU and 179 solder cream and I swore rather a lot... To attach them to the chassis I tinned them with 145 and again used the RSU to solder them in place.

I've been looking at the clearance, or lack of, for the wheels. With the bogies set to the correct ride height the top of the innermost wheelsets rub against one of the cross ribs on the chassis, necessitating some work with the file, as arrowed below;

To obtain more clearence for the bogies to swing I've done more filing, this time to the baseplate cut-outs;

Left hand side modified, right side untouched. It may need the body to be set slightly higher than normal to allow the bogies to swing even more.

The triangular brace plates are now soldered in position and needed very little fettling to achieve a good fit. I tinned these with 145 and again used the RSU to solder them to the sides of the hopper strengthening ribs as well as to the solebars. A nice straightforward job in the end;

Note that on one side the brace plates have holes etched in them for the vacuum brake pipe, the word 'pipe' is written on the correct side (both sides are not the same due to the brake wheel being offset) to save me making a fool of myself...

Personally I would have prefered it if the plates had an etched dimple rather than a hole as the Summers wagons in their original condition were unfitted, meaning that when I build mine I'll have to fill all of the holes.

Needs cleaning up but its coming together;

Paul.