Freelancer EM

Seen this thread rather late in the day. There is an easy way to relieve the "flatness" of many brickpapers and stonepapers. Tools needed are a full sheet of Really Coarse sandpaper, a flat firm surface, and a hard rubber ball. (a new hard rubber dogball for larger dogs is probably best) If hard rubber ball not available suggest a used cricket ball. Place sandpaper rough side up on level firm surface. Place brickpaper on top with printed side uppermost. Firmly work ball around the whole sheet until desired amount of relief is present. Suggest try a plain paper of similar thickness as a trial first. It hardly needs saying that this procedure must be done before layering or cutting to size for assembly.

Hello. 4mm unmade kits for the 517 appear occasionally on ebay, it is worth putting up a search. The big turn-off for a prospective new kit is possibly that there were so many variations that there were scarcely two the same by 1930 or so. Some of the differences were fairly minor, but the fitting of outside frame trailing wheels on some to overcome the ongoing issue of hot running bearings, roundtop vs. belpaire fireboxes, and lengthening of the frames from the early version, presents a challenge. So far as I'm aware and as previously said, there have been just the M&L and Gibson ones in recent years - not sure if the Mallard one became one of these. All depicted the locos in later years, if anyone wants to see one in Victorian era, they'd probably need to revert to scratchbuilding. See how many differences there were by taking a look at the RCTS GWR locos partwork.