After a good deal of last minute panic I now have a working Baby Deltic, and here is a picture of it on the rolling road to prove it:

The Mk2 stiffened chassis also developed bend, and I stiffened it with two short lengths of brass bar araldited in place. It is now rigid and more or less straight

Fortunately for me the Hornby Ringfield motor bogie I had in stock is the final Chinese-made 5 pole unit with 8 wheel pickup. Not only does this pick up better and run better, it is also not live to the motor casing, meaning that it is within my capabilities to install a decoder. It has accordingly received a TCS MC2 - the last of the 5-pack I bought

The superglued traction tyre has given no trouble and shows every sign of being secure. However there is a noticeable wobble on one wheel of the motor bogie

A certain amount of tweaking of the decoder settings was needed to raise start volts for a reliable start, and hold down mid and top volts. Acceleration and deceleration are perhaps a little too slow for a short terminus to fiddle yard layout

I'm not convinced the body sits absolutely square on the chassis, but that may well represent the inside of the resin bodyshell not being totally square. Given my fear of resin dust nothing will be done about this until next spring.

Running has been a touch erratic. It's perfectly fine on the rolling road, but has an odd habit of sticking on the layout. As this was happening in specific places I set about chasing raised bits of ballast with a screwdriver - the problem is almost certainly deep flanges catching on any slight obstruction . Running this wheel profile on code 70 bullhead is arguably sticking my neck out, and I may need to look at how the flanges could be reduced

Otherwise it seems to run smoothly and reliably enough. Some extra weight has been added in the form of the off-cut from the 155 ballast weight to hold down the unpowered bogie. Waste not, want not (and I am almost out of sheet lead)

I have also weathered the underframe suitably with multiple washes of Humbrol Dark Brown wash, AK Interactive Light Dust deposit, mixes of both, and a final wash of AK shaft and bearing grease in selected areas, and I'm reasonably satisfied with the results

As can be seen, the wretched Tourist Brake Third is also effectively finished. As a result I'm starting to get very ambitious about new projects again - though really I ought to finish off a few more things that have already been started.