The next task was to fix the boiler/smokebox assembly to the chassis. Before doing so, I made a chunk of brass to fill the inside of the smokebox saddle, with the aim of giving something to tap a hole into for the chassis fixing screw. I initially intended to make this from insulating material, but didn't have any "engineering plastic" of a large enough size. I tried to make it from a lump of tufnol, but I realised that the space is actually pretty small, so opted to go for brass in the end as something more solid. I first cut a rectangular piece, filed it to size, then filed the seat for the boiler with a round file. (Apologies, I didn't remember to take a photo of this!).

At this point I began a somewhat trying phase. Firstly. the saddle was soldered inside the smokebox, but the smokebox front shifted slightly in the process. On trying to fix that, the whole smokebox came off. So I had to clean it up and solder it all together again. Once I had this all attached, I did my best to file the base so that it sat flat on the footplate. But when I soldered the whole thing to the footplate, I found that the footplate was bent upward at the front, suggesting I had filed too much off the smokebox saddle. So it came off again and I inserted some shims of brass underneath, which then had to be cleaned up. Eventually I ended up as you see here.

In this shot, the boiler has also been soldered to the tanks and cab front, and the excess solder cleaned up as best as I could.

Next job was to drill various holes. Here you can see me drilling the chassis fixing hole through the smokebox saddle, from underneath. The footplate valance was useful for sitting on the jaws of the machine vice. I progressively drilled out the hole to 1mm, then used a pin vice to tap it by hand for the 12BA fixing screw.

The next photo shows me drilling the holes on top of the boiler for the boiler "furniture". I measured them from the drawing. Somehow the hole for the chimney wandered to one side a bit on the initial 0.5mm drilling, but I was then able to drift it to central when drilling out to a larger radius. (I forget what radius - I'll need to determine this when I come to make the chimney!).

The final step was to drill the holes for the handrail knobs in the smokebox and boiler side. This was also done on the Proxxon by holding the body sideways in the vice - I never have much luck drilling small (0.3mm) holes by hand! Here are some top and bottom views of the model in its current state. In the underside view I've left the body-to-chassis fixing screw standing proud. The screw at the rear end attaches the motor mount, and doesn't fix the body. I'm hopeful that a single screw will be sufficient.