Another evenings work on the Manor chassis and it is finally complete and ready for painting.  The first job was adding soldering up the brake shoes and installing them onto the chassis frames.  With that complete, the wheels could be removed (marking the right hand side (looking towards the chimney) with black pen so that they could be returned to the same positions.  A slight error was soldering the cylinder assembly into position, as it makes removing the lead driver rather difficult.  I have had some problems with the (Gibson) bogie wheels rusting from coming into contact with flux, in future must remember to remove the bogie when doing further soldering to the chassis!    With the wheels off the chassis, balance weights were fitted (this is my first Comet kit of the new style which include the balance weights).  Once dry the wheels were painted with a mix of grey black, black and coach window mahogany to get a dirty track colour.)   The chassis now needs to be cleaned, primed and then painted in the same dirty black before reassembly.  At which point I really must get on and finish the backhead, glazing and handrails to complete the loco.   The latter being a job I really hate doing, getting the curve right for the front…

Given that I had a lot of paint left over, I decided to put it to good use on a bit of weathering.  Beenham Grange was the loco of choice, this was an experiment in improving Hornby’s GWR green earlier in the year (unfortunatly a bad reaction with the varnish which spoiled the finish.)  This had previously been sorted out with a lot of effort with a fiberglass pen getting rid of the crackled finish.  Weathering was a fairly basic approach, covering about a square inch with a watered down mix of the grey/red/black mix  before wiping most of it away.  This was repeated several times to build up the dirt, before repainting the black areas with a thicker mix.  More grey was added to the boiler /firebox top & roof, while the smokebox was picked out in grey black.  I ran out of paint before finishing the tender only having enough to do the sides, so the black bits still need more work…