doilum

A successful hour. Trimmed back the tank tops having realised that they are not straight, but taper in two sections to match the profile of the firebox and boiler. Next step was to fold the tops back and solder up the tank fronts. The fronts bend easily giving the rounded edge of the prototype. I decided that this was a good time to fold up the cab doorways and add the handrails whilst everything is flat and accessible. Time now to quit whilst I am winning.

Having an hour or so with the scorpio bodywork. If our kits have a common parentage, this might be a heads up. Instruction 8) take body/cab (68) and trim one millimetre off the inner face of the tank to clear the firebox /boiler. Much easier to do neatly whilst still a flat sheet. There is no provision for inner sides to the tanks, so now might be a good time to make a pair in case the are needed later.

The "surplus" nickel silver cylinder ends on the main frame etch are 58mm overall and 46mm between centres.

Just had a chance to get back to the workshop. The scorpio brass etching gives an overall width of 60mm or about 8'7'' in old money. The cylinder centres are 49mm or 6'11''. Mocking up the motion brackets, they seem as if they will match the cylinder assemblies. This is all a bit hypothetical as I havent soldered up the frames as I await a birthday to cash in the IOU for wheels and pickups at Slaters. Meantime I shall look for some 25mm brass frame spacers to provide a temporary fixing via the plunger pickup holes before soldering up the chassis . Yesterday, I managed to punch the rivets on the cab sides and chopped out the bunker floor to clear a switch that will allow me to fit my first ever dcc chip for running on the club layout.

Looks like I will be binning the cylinder assembly I built at the weekend. The scorpio instructions lack a scale drawing and hint at a "make it fit" approach. What is the overall distance between the cylinder centres? Are the wrappers the correct width? I may be lucky. The scorpio kit uses parts from a brass etching leaving the ones on the nickel silver frame etch unused. Is this a correction?

Two sets of coupling rods? Thats the first step to scratch building a clone!

Hi, I have just rejoined the forum. Santa brought a class 3 tank kit via the Scorpio model stable. This is my first mainline loco in almost ten years having concentrated on breeding NCB Hunslets. I am interested in Jims progress with the cylinders and motion. Anynews yet?