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I had a packet today. The long awaited parts from Laurie Griffin. First up we have the Dome and whistle. Next it is the water gauge and the vents. Only trouble is the vents are wrong the should be tubes, these are for a 2MT tender, although the packet has the right number. Back to scratch build that I wanted to avoid. Then we have the tank stays and the chimney. Alao in the bag with the tank stays was this. Any ideas folks cos it bamboozled me!!!!! Now What to do, I want to build my G6 but now have no excuse to finish this one off.

The construction of a Comet GWR long prairie chassis continues. As mentioned in the last entry, I had to order a new wheel to replace the wrong one in the set, which had an incorrect crank throw compared to the others. The new wheel didn't take long to arrive (thanks, Wizard Models for the excellent service) but in the meantime the delay allowed me to crack on with assembling some of the other parts of the chassis such as the coupling and connecting rods, slidebars, cylinders, pony trucks and so on. With the new wheel in hand, I put the wheels on their axles and inserted them into the chassis, using Peco fibre washers to restrict the sideplay on the first and second axles to almost nothing, with more sideplay allowed on the rear axle. I also added the DJH motor and gearbox at this stage. Pickups were added using my normal method, using nickle silver wire soldered to copperclad pads (I use C+L sleepers, cut down to size) fixed in turn to plastikard mounts under the chassis. With a prairie, you do have the option of using pickups bearing onto the tops of the wheels, as the tanks hide all that business, but I didn't like the idea of having to remove the body to adjust the pickups, so plumped for the usual approach. As always, I dithered over whether to fit the pickups before or after the brake gear. There's no right or wrong way, in my view: if you fit the brake gear first, then you have to add the pickups in a much more restricted environment. On the other hand, if you do the pickups first, you may find that they get in the way of the brake gear. With the prairie, I've added the brake hangers and shoes, then the pickups, but I've yet to add the cross-links or the pull rods. Only time will tell if I need to tweak the pickups. At this point, I wired up the motor, placed the chassis on the track, applied power, and was rewarded with a high-speed whirring sound! This was due to my not having tightened the grub screw onto the centre axle. However, it was encouraging that the pickups seemed to be working, as when I pushed the chassis along by finger power, the motor kept whirring. Progress! I then tightened the grub screw, added the coupling rods - just placed temporarily in place - and gave it another go. I'm pleased to say that the chassis ran pleasingly well, even with no body on, sailing off without hesitation and being capable of a very slow crawl with no tight spots. I'd take credit, but really that's just down to Comet's excellent design, as well as the quality of the DJH gearboxes. Anyway, good news, and it's always a magic moment when something that was just some flat pieces of brass a few weeks ago gets up and moves on its own... I then soldered the coupling rods on, constantly testing to make sure all was well. Notice I've left the middle crankpin unsoldered, as I'll be adding the connecting rods next. The only snag is I don't have a set of crossheads, unless I open another Comet chassis pack and pinch them from that one. The trouble is I always forget I've done that, until I come to build the next kit... am I the only one who does this? The body, as you'll notice, is in a bit of a state, missing cab steps and the top of the safety valve - and that's before we get to the teenage weathering job. But fear not, I've got an unmade Dapol kit which I'm planning to use as donor for some of the missing parts, so there should still be life in the old body yet... Cheers, and thanks for reading.