In between eating, drinking, partying, visiting, more eating, more drinking, more... (I shan't go on because I imagine we've all had to go through the same thing) I've wangled a day off and managed some time at the workbench. I really wanted to get the underframe finished on this milk brake van so that it was at the stage for painting. The roof and details will be added after the body has the base colour on. This allows me to easily paint the inside - essential where there are windows present.

Last time you saw this vehicle here it had little more than the contents of the kit assembled. After sitting idle for about 5 years I had just rebuilt the W irons with some spares that included the brakes and added the trussing. This used nickel silver strip. Next on the list were the lower footboards. I wanted to devise a method that would allow easy and accurate spacing of the stirrups for soldering whilst ensuring they were upright. An off-cut of Tufnol and a few hours on the newest addition to the workbench (a Proxxon MF70 milling machine) produced a simple jig to do just that. First I drilled a series of holes down the centre of the edge spaced according to the stirrup positions. Afterwards I ran a milling cutter to form a groove down the centre for the upright of the step board to sit into against the wire inserted in the various holes. I hope the picture of the jig mounted in the vice explains it better than I can in words.

An short length of the reduced angle used for the footboard is sat in place ready for the stirrups, bent from nickel silver wire, are inserted into the holes and soldered up. The ends can be trimmed to length once the soldering is complete. The holes are drilled vertically in the mill and ensure that the wire is upright when soldered on and the spacing will be the same for every one. Various additional holes exist so that I can use it again for coach bogie footboards and horse box steps, which are shorter and have different stirrup spacings.

Before fitting the assembled footboards I fixed the whitemetal axle boxes (2mm Scale Association 2-473) and looked at the springs (2mm Scale Association 2-464). I realised that I couldn't fit these around the trussing, and on further observation of the line drawings in Slinn & Clarke to ascertain the size and position of the longitudinal tank I realised that the vacuum cylinder was on the wrong side and that I had soldered the floor in the wrong way around all those years ago (the instructions turned up as a page marker in one of the Russel volumes and were found to be misleading). Major surgery was needed! I unsoldered some items to enable a chunk of floor to be removed for re-insertion with the correct orientation. Before refitting on a new section of 0.010" nickel silver, making a complete floor for the vehicle for the first time, I added the footboards followed by the springs. Lastly the cylinder was added. I had some dowel the correct diameter so it was cut from that. It is cross drilled in two positions and slid onto a U shaped 0.5mm wire. This makes adjusting the vertical position easy. You will see the ends of this wire cut and filed flush in the underside view below.

The model is now rested off the workbench with various other items awaiting the arrival of warmer drier weather so that I can get outside with the spray cans whilst I get on with the next item.

Greetings of the season and all the best for 2012.