Just a very small update as long days at work finishing year end reporting are not leaving a great deal of time in the evening for myself….

However over the past few evenings the chassis for 7316 has started to come together.  I started off chopping the original P4 spacers in half, this was done to assist in getting enough heat onto the old spacers one at a time (whilst ensuring that solder did not fill the slots).  With that done the chassis was rebuilt in OO, although I didn’t find my Poppy’s Woodtech jig as helpful as I had hoped.  I was expecting that buy buying an 8 coupled version I would be future proofing the tool, however rather than a “one size fits all” approach the slots are too short and wouldn’t accept the rod positions for the 73xx.  The solution was to elongate the centre axle slot  (which will need further modification in order to accept the rods for my 2251 build.)   

The chassis has been tested on a set of Gibson P4 wheels, but I can’t progress with the brake gear until the new (Gibson) OO wheels arrive.  Why Gibson rather than Markits? I am fed up with paying a premium for wheels which won’t fit on the axles without significant fettling!   I haven’t quite worked out how I am going to solder the brake gear into position yet as I don’t want flux getting near to the steel wheels.  One thought is to regauge the P4 wheels to OO, and use those as a guide for soldering the brakes into position.

Once that’s done I still need to regauge the tender (for which I haven’t got spacers) and add the pony truck, for the tender I think I have a few Comet frame spacers available…

Test fitting the body and chassis together has highlighted some additional work that will be required, there are 3 locations towards the front of the loco where components are soldered through the footplate.  With P4 spacers these fell between the frames, but with the narrower OO spacers they obstruct the frame.  I need to find a flat angled file and remove the obstructions.

Speaking of the body, thanks to John for the kind donation of some outside steam pipe castings the body is now complete (bar the fitting of number plates which will wait until I have enough to make a Narrow Planet order worthwhile.

The other outstanding task is going to be the repair of the varnish damage to the tender rear, based upon the repairs to 37403’s bonnet top I should be able to fix this with a combination of sanding, hand painting and a new coat of varnish.