As you may remember I started a blog a month or so ago about my new project in 2mm Finescale, in which some of you may be wondering how it is progressing.

Well apart from a few small purchases, not to much has happened. Some more thought has gone into the baseboard design and construction, along with how to model the gradient.

Anyway, I recently purchased a LNER J39 kit on eBay, the model had been built out of a combination of whitemetal and brass, and includes one of the latest Farish 0-6-0 chassis's.

Now as I have not been able to find a suitable LNER/M&GN loco kit to dip my toes with (With the funding I want to spend on my first attempts), I thought this might be an ideal alternative to my first proper footsteps in the scale.

So the small package arrived a couple of days ago in which this was concealed this:

Upon closer inspection, the kit has not been built to a bad standard. I presume that it is a BH Enterprise kit or something similar. However, with the addition of some handrails, reversing gear, Westing house pump, turned buffers and different safety valve arrangement, In my opinion it won't be to far from looking like a half reasonable model.

So the next step was to take the chassis apart and assess the modifications that would be needed to get it to 2mm Finescale standards.

After 10 minutes or so I had managed to remove the wheels & coupling rods - The actual loco chassis appears to have been 'built' into the chassis which looks like it would cause trouble/unwanted stress to remove it completely.

After assessing the removed wheels, the drivers (excluding their thickness) do not appear to be to far off the standard when taking the flange size into account, so I am unsure what modifications could be made to these without completely rebuilding the chassis with a brass alternative.

I therefore propose to put the chassis back together with the addition of the associations back to back gauge, conrods and crankpins.

As for the tender wheels, these really do show the signs of the huge unwanted flange, I therefore had planned to post these off and have them turned down to the correct size (however, I believe that they can not be thinned as they are spoked wheels?)

I would appreciate and bodies comments or ideas on the Farish chassis and what I have mentioned above, as mentioned and suggested; these are my very first steps into converting/doing something in the scale so a point/nudge in the right direction maybe needed . . .