nickd

7 mm Roy.

Client wants no. 325. If anyone has any pics of it in SECR livery I would be grateful. Thanks

On inspecting the etches I noticed that the footplate was continuous under the boiler to the rear of the smoke box and that the chassis was a one piece fold up jobby. The coupling rods were etched in brass(!) and not jointed, which is essential for a model with suspension. I roughed out some boss overlays from scrap nickel silver sheet and re jigged the rods to look a bit more realistic. The finished loco will be in SECR livery and feature inside motion IF the budget would allow. The cross members on the chassis etch would have to go therefore and be replaced with ones in the correct place if inside motion was to be fitted. Also I would have to cut a hole in the footplate to reveal the motion, and fill some random others. Here’s the chassis after a bit of a rework. You can see that I have made all the stays in the prototypical places and added the front and sides of the ash pan. The ash pan was scratch built as there’s nowt for it in the kit and you can see the gearbox through the lightening holes In the frames. I turned to the footplate and reduced the height and length of the valences and attached them to the underside of the footplate along with the buffer beams. I soldered 1.5 x 1.5 mm L section brass to the backs of the valences to keep them straight and aid with fixing to the footplate. None of the above parts have any registration slots or grooves to locate them. I then went to town a bit adding all the angle that would normally be under the footplate holding it all together. I cut the footplate away under the boiler where it shouldn’t be! You can see that I made and modified some CPL SECR couplings. The shank of the rear hook has been extended to fit the drag box and the front one shortened. I fitted the cast white metal buffer shanks with their turned heads. Tomorrow I plan to scratch build a cab and bunker as the etches supplied are dimensionally wrong….by a lot. I saw a thread elsewhere where the builder couldn’t fit the BR number onto the bunker as it was too short. The bunker should be 17 mm long from the rear to the door opening and the etch is 14 mm so I’m not surprised. The cab front and rear and the bunker rear are 2 mm too narrow and the cab should be 3 mm longer. I rang Warren Haywood and he said that he wouldn’t be able to paint all the correct borders and boxes of lining onto the cab sides and then fit the numbers and works plate. Methinks there won’t be enough in the budget for inside motion. Pity, it’s a cute little loco.

Well I have added quite a lot of detail to the model. This began by making one of those Masonic star thingies that appeared on a lot of pre grouping Scottish locos. There were no added traumas this week as I had finished all the scratchbuilding (apart from the valve chest cover, and......). The handrail was fitted round the smokebox with all the accoutrements. Some 3D printed springs were added to the chassis and bogie. I fitted up the Westinghouse pump and all the pipework. All the boiler fittings, both brass castings and 3D prints were fitted and that's where we are now. Just need to add some handrails and the whole cab interior. Should be done in a couple or three days.

First up this week was a scratchbuilt boiler. Worth the effort I think. I cut out a thick brass circle and radiused one edge to represent the cover thing that you often find between the boiler and smokebox. I soldered everything together with a couple of boiler bands and stuffed it with lead sheet. Further checks on the front and rear bulkheads revealed them to be too narrow and have an uneasy relationship with a right angle. I cut some more out that were the correct size. The tank sides were also not long enough! They were also etched in 0.6 mm brass which makes forming the tight curve an ordeal so I cut some of those out of 0.3 mm N/S too. The painter, bless him, asked if I could supply the boiler as a separate part to aid painting the lining on the front of the tanks and the cab. I built the front bulkhead with some holes to accept rods sticking out of the boiler rear. I also added some structures to the front bulkhead such that you can't see the motor and backs of the rear drivers under the boiler. Next the tank sides were formed and soldered in place. There was quite a lot of cleaning up as the etched grooves in the footplate to accept the tanks (and cab) are quite wide and deep and need a lot of solder to fill them. Big meniscus....scrape, scrape, sand etc. This job wasn't anywhere near as tricky as the tank/boiler top thing though. Back to the painter Warren. I obliged, but it did mean building the splashers onto the smokebox. The assembly slots onto the front footplate and is held firmly by a screw underneath. Don't think I'll use the dome, as it's a bit oval......well that and other issues.

I was sent some very nice images of 439s and went on to install the brake gear (and pick-ups.) I later got a drawing of an 879 and saw that the pull rods were slightly different, so I modified what I had made and added some sand pipes. I may add some dummy inside motion later but for now the chassis is complete. It ran round a 5' 5'' radius curve, which is brutal for a S7 loco, so I was happy it would run on a more orthodox S7 layout. The boiler etches in the kit are a cylinder for the boiler and two curved overlay etches to represent the smokebox. Admittedly the lower half of the smokebox is hidden by the sandbox and splasher but I just didn't like the idea of smoke and mirror modelling, so made a new smokebox. It was actually a fairly quick job to fabricate a new smokebox, and probably not much longer than sweating 3 kit etches together and making good, and it looks MUCH better. The assembly was made in the way I have demonstrated on GOG's YouTube channel; Next week I'll be making the short boiler and the water tanks. I did run a rule over the water tank front and rear (in the light of my experience with the cab/bunker sides) and discovered that the curve for the top of the boiler is different on both formers and they are different heights. Surely surely.......etc. So more of the Meteor kit in the 'Bin of Shame' keeping the ACE Atlantic company.

Hi Mr B, it's my full time job and I work 40 hr weeks! Nick

Thanks for your help Neil. The photos will be useful when it comes to building the body. I think that a GA of 439s doesn't exist anymore or the CRA or SRPS would have one. Someone sent me a copy of an 879 class GA and I think that had what I need. There's a GA somewhere of the Pickersgil version of the 0-4-4T, but that has a few differences too.

Has anyone got any information about how the brake rigging is arranged on this loco? The whereabouts of the brake cylinder and brake shaft/trunnions? How many pull rods, one central or two? Thanks Nick

Work indeed continued on the bogie. Everything was scratchbuilt as the two side etches and stretcher might have been acceptable in the 1980s but I didn't much care for the simplicity of them. There is a big gap between the equalising beams that will be filled shortly with some 3D printed springs from the Mickoo stable. All the frame stays were hand cut and the chassis assembled. You can see that the chassis has been soldered up on a couple of parallels standing on a sheet of plate glass. There is a sheet of graph paper under the parallels to help get everything straight and square. I assembled an ashpan using the side etches in the kit and added a rear and bottom to add some more rigidity to the structure. The frame stays are all a bit random as there's no inside motion. I might well add some cylinder detail as I build the smokebox and work out where all the inside motion would have gone. I used my tried and tested jury axle method to attach the horn cheeks and a smooth running chassis was the result. This is the chassis running round a 5ft 6 ins rad test track. It's a bit brutal for S7 but if it manages this it'll manage a more forgiving layout. The kit had no balance weights in the box so I made some. Here the body is fitted up and the horn blocks adjusted to achieve the correct ride height. I had high(er) hopes than the ACE Reid Atlantic for this kit but so far it's a bit hit and miss. The chassis adventure is just because of my choice to ditch the stoneage parts in the kit. This is the original Meteor version and I expect that the current Alba Models version has had a few updates. The body so far is sort of OK. It's very basic and because it's hand drawn it suffers from all the 'thick pencil' issues. The cab/bunker sides aren't mirror images of each other, one is longer than the other and the cab front back and bunker rear don't fit. Some are too wide (which is ok) and some to narrow, which is a much bigger problem and nothing is perfectly square. I don't think I'm going to use the tank sides or boiler/smokebox that are supplied. The tank sides are etched in 0.6 mm brass and its just too stiff to be able to get the curve near the top with any accuracy without a lump hammer. I'll replace it with thinner material. Likewise the boiler and smokebox. The smokebox ends at the top of the sand box in true Western-film-set style, and I never had much success at sweating 3 layers of cylindrical etches together. They always end up looking like a dog's dinner, so it'll be quicker and much nicer if I scratchbuild my way to the front. Maybe my expectations are too high, at least it would be possible to build something resembling a 439, but this kit is a bit meh in my view. The scrap bin will be getting heavier.

So here we go on the next commission. The kit is an original Meteor Models kit now marketed by Alba Railway Models. It seems to be quite a decent kit, but comes from the era when we had Triang Hornby X04 motors sticking inside the cab of our Wills J39 on a Hornby 0-6-0 Jinty chassis. Very old school indeed, all very 1980s. The chassis frames are designed to be held apart by square bar spacers screwed in place. I dare say that it would make a running chassis but I didn't like the look of it and decided it would be more appropriate to make a new one.....with the consent of the client of course. The model will be built to S7 gauge so I sent the wheels off to that nice Mr Dowling for an encounter with his wheel tyre S7 form tool, and in the meantime set off building the coupling rod and then the footplate. The first thing I noticed was that there's not much in the way of registration for the valences on the underside of the footplate. I cut some short bits of brass strip and tacked them to the underside of the footplate etch to butt the valence etch up to in the correct position. I noticed that the valences were slightly different lengths, and adjusted accordingly. This of course set an alarm ringing that, as with all old hand drawn etches, its a good idea to check measurements and for squareness. I moved on to the cab and bunker. I checked the sides for the above and noticed that one was slightly longer than the other, and that both were too long for the etched registration slots in the top of the footplate. I adjusted accordingly. The bunker rear was etched in 0.45 mm sheet and I thought I'd have a better chance of forming a nice flare at the top if I cut a new one from 0.3 mm sheet. I repurposed the bunker rear etch as a cab floor as there wasn't one in the kit. I also decided to make a new cab rear as the pre etched holes for the window bars were in the wrong place. Pictures show that the bars are attached to the beading round the windows and the etched holes in the kit part are above and below the beading. I just thought that it would be quicker to make a new one than modifying the etch. I also made the cab front and roof and added all the handrails and lamp irons etc. I didn't much like the coal rails etched onto the bunker sides and rear and made some new ones from half round brass rod. The model will depict no 452 when new. If there are any CR buffs out there who could enlighten me as to the positions of lamp irons I'd be grateful. Some locos appeared to have more than others, particularly in the buffer beam area. Also I guess the loco had only Westinghouse air brakes when new, and didn't have any carriage heating pipes at that time. If anyone knows differently please let me know. The next job was cutting out some new chassis frames. You can see that I also started making a new bogie as the etched one in the kit is just too old school. More next week. Massive thanks to Martin Shaw, Robin McHugh and everyone else that has chipped in to help a Caledonian Railway novice.

Here's 3 little jobs that I chugged through whilst waiting for parts for the Atlantic to appear. This is a Connoisseur J39 chassis that has had inside motion retro fitted and has passed through a few hands. The fella who was fitting the motion up to the chassis unfortunately died and I was tasked with finishing the job. The original kit laminated rods had been replaced with Premier Component rods. I think that someone had made the assumption that they would be a straight swap, but I had to take the horn guides off the frames and reset the axle centres using my jury axles and the new rods as a jig. It worked very well after that. The loco is fitted with AGH wheel sets and the insulated wheels had crept on their axles and the quartering was out on a couple of wheels. In my experience this is a common fault on this type of wheel, especially if the axle centres don't match those of the rods. Any consiquent binding can often force the wheels to creep on the axles making the matter worse. If your chassis is binding not at 3 or 9 o'clock that's a sign that the quartering is out or you have a crankpin issue. Check your AHG wheels all have the same quartering. Someone had designed some nice inside motion parts and had them 3D printed and cast at Shapeways. They had been assembled with lots of machine screws, but the screws couldn't be tightened up on the rod joints as they would prevent free movement. This meant they had a tendancy to unwind themselves and crash into the screw head next door that had become loose too. I soldered the screws in place and ground all the adjacent surfaces flat. A couple of other joints needed a bit of relieving to prevent binding and off it went. The next job was a loco bought off Ebay (I think?) by a client who wanted it converting to S7 and giving a bit of an upgrade. It has all the hallmarks of a Geoff Holt built loco but had been repainted quite badly. I stripped the paint and moved the large splashers outboard a bit to accomodate a S7 wheel set. Colin Dowling reprofiled the Walsall Industry wheels for me with S7 Soc form tool and added some S7 axles. They all dropped nicely back into the chassis and I had to rebuild the brake rigging. I added some new clacks and a new boiler handrail and it went off to Warren Haywood for a lick or two of paint. It came back to me last week and I have reassembled it and popped some coal in the tender. I think it looks rather resplendent in it's new livery. The third job was the reassembly of a GWR Broad Gauge Armstrong convertible I made a couple of years ago. It had been opened and inspected by customs agents on it's way to Australia. I suspect that customs had dropped it and it arrived in Melbourne in a very sorry state. Jeff Ennis of Scorpio kindly provided some etches for a new cab and I was able to make the loco as good as new with some new whistle turrets. The courier's insurance scheme did pay out to cover the cost (I would suggest that insurance is essential on all models sent by post.) Warren has made a fabulous remedial paint job on the loco. 3 happy customers I hope.

Hi all I'm about to start building one of these from a Meteor Kit. Does anyone have, or know where I can get sight of a GA for one? Ta Nick

I didn't quite finish the loco this week for reasons I will expand on below. The first task was fitting up the splashers. This was quite tricky round the firebox and boiler and less so on the front drivers. Bits of the top inside edges have to be ground away to clear the boiler, and the real thing has angle iron sitting between the splashers and boiler clothing this was made from annealed 0.8 x 0.8 mm brass angle. The next job was to add the pipes not yet fitted to the Westinghouse pump and fit up the handrail. It always seems to take me a long time to fit up boiler handrails. I always fill the pre etched holes as they are never in the right place, but of course the kit boiler was in the scrap bin and there were none on mine. I used the pointy measuring thingy on my vernier calipers set to the correct height for the handrail, upside down balanced on a sheet of plate glass and pushed the assembled loco past them . This scribes the height of the handrail, and in this case the handrail is in the boiler centre line so the knobs are embedded in the boiler clothing there too. I always let some tube that is the same OD as the knob shanks into the boiler to ensure the knobs can be held securely. It's always tricky making the rail pass round the front of the loco and over the smokebox door, remaining concentric with the door and smokebox. This run of handrail has a cute kink round the Westinghouse pump. I have stared at the cab side windows many times trying to convince myself that they are OK but they're not. They're not tall enough and the gap between the bottom of the roof and the top of the beading is too large, and it gives the loco the look of a Raven NER Pacific. I decided to sort it out and peeled the existing window beading off. I commissioned Mick Davies to etch me a new set of taller ones on the edge of his next set of etches. This was all a bit unfortunate for two reasons. The cab was the only remaining part I used from the kit for the loco, and it was wrong. Virtually every part in the box supplied to build the locomotive was useless. Secondly there'll be a delay of a couple of weeks while I get the new window beading etches. I should have scrapped the whole thing and scratchbuilt. It would have been quicker. I added some cast LGM lamp irons to the front of the footplate and one to the smokebox door. I have some lubricators on back order for the footplate area above the cylinders. So that's more or less it, cab window mods and lubricators to be added. Another day's work and it'll be done. Here it will sit on my window ledge until the parts turn up. If you really feel your life would be incomplete without a NBR Reid Atlantic, and there's no doubt it's a handsome loco, I would urge you not to buy this kit under any circumstances. It is a very very poor product and ought not to be on the market. Even if you're pretty handy at modifying kits, spend the £225 on gin and fags and scratchbuild one instead.

So here we are after a restful holiday back on the tools. During the holiday a nice bag of parts arrived from LGM so it seemed appropriate to finish the tender. I added the lamp irons, a shortened water filler casting and the reverser handle, the picture might not show all the castings in place! Laurie's bag of delights for the cab did not include a firehole door or a few of the other fittings. Can't imagine why NBR fittings aren't the top of everyone's wish list! You won't find any in the kit either. So here's the backhead detail as it was made. The water gauges are made from the top and bottom valve castings and some 2 x 2 mm perspex tube drilled down the middle. It is all detachable for painting. This is a picture of the backhead with the offering in the kit. And here's that backhead with the rest of the whitemetal parts supplied in the kit. But I did find a use for them.... ......as ballast. More comfort from the knowledge that some of the kit came to good use. Here's the finished cab. Pretty much everything is either scratchbuilt or castings bought in.....except the cab floor. I used the cab floor! The last job of the week was the Westinghouse pump. The kit had 2 identical castings for this item but both were wrong. Why supply 2 wrong ones? One correct one would have been better, am I asking too much? Anyway I modified one left over from the LSWR 02 builds I did last year. The pump is mounted on a stand and of course there's nothing in the kit for that either, or the regulator casting. So a happy friday afternoon was spent with the piercing saw out of it's box again. The ACE box is now mercifully empty of the items that are, laughably, described collectively as a kit. I used about 10% of it, or to be more accurate Graham did before he gave up building it. The description 'Misrepresentation' springs to my mind. I have enjoyed my scratchbuilding adventure so far, whether my client will enjoy paying my builder's fee remains to be seen. Should finish the thing next week.

This is my next project. Has anyone built one, and on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is ACE and 10 is F7 or MOK, where does it lie? Season's Greetings.

I have grown to like them. They have an interesting hstory and look very chunky.

I had a bit of computer drama this week which is mercifully resolved. The work on the boiler continued and I was able nail it all together and add the boiler bands and the boiler fittings. That nice Mr Davies printed me a lovely dome to replace the dome-like white metal lump in the kit. The painter got in touch and sent me a picture of a Reid Allantic with a star symbol under the smoke box door handles. I descovered that lots of these locos had such a feature and it was a Masonic thing, reflecting the membership of lots of railwaymen at that time. Anyway I accepted his challenge and made one. Apparently its a Masonic Blazing Star. The kit had two smokebox door castings (one decent one would have done) but I modified the casting to make it a bit more acceptable. Mick sent me a much higher resolution picture of one of the locos in works grey and I spent a lot of the week adding details to the footplate and some further pipework to the chassis that I hadn't previously noticed. I think this was just a strategy to avoid building the splashers. Finally I ran out of diversionary stuff and had to make them. The etchings in the kit weren't a total loss. The holes in the footplate for the wheels were in the wrong place and fouled the tyres, this also meant that the foldy up splasher sides etched into the footplate were also in the wrong place. I removed them from the footplate but in any event they were too small. The kit contained some parts to make the splasher inside and top (or maybe alternative splasher outsides and tops, we'll never know.) The curved top section was too narrow and long but the front (or rear) was spot on. Further unconfined pleasure that some more of the cost of the kit had been value for money. I made 4 splashers using some of the kit and that's where work for 2022 ended. I have got a bit lucky as the new splashers disguise the fact that the appertures in the footplate for the wheels are in the wrong place, or maybe they were designed like that. So the scrap bin did get a little fuller this week. Here's the state of play as of this morning. Here's the new splashers, the fixing plates with the rivets is a little longer than required to cover the holes in the footplate, but I'll trim as required. I hope to get them finished in early in January, but I'm pleased that there are mo more structures to be scratchbuilt. https://www.flickr.com/photos/144381574@N05/with/52582423412/

It's soldered in place with 90°C solder. The smokebox is soldered together with 180°C solder so is unaffected. The brass is getting a bit thick but the low melt will give good penetrative between the layers so will be strong enough. There's another 0.8 mm circle to solder in top of that and I'll probably use low melt for that too. The boiler will ultimately be screwed to the footplate so the joins won't be able to peel. It'll have enough sheer strength. It's difficult to know when to stop with the scratchbuilding. The kit is lacking in many areas. I used about half if the tender parts and very little of the loco. The loco footplate looked OK but the cut outs for the splashers don't line up with the wheels, so I'll regret not replacing that when I sort out the splashers next week. The cab is slightly out in pretty much every dimension so I might have to replace that too. Where did you stop though?

So I took some steps to finish the boiler assy. yesterday. I made a boiler (using the ACE former) and used 0.3 mm NS sheet for the wrapper. I also made the bits that are often forgotten between the front of boiler and rear of smokebox. The smokebox rear is a forged or cast (?) piece with the wrapper riveted to it. It sticks out slightly at the rear of the smokebox and has a radiused edge. This was cut from 0.8 mm thickness brass sheet, as was the polished cover between rear of smokebox and boiler. I think it covers the fasteners that hold both together? Here it is mocked up on the loco. The firebox has been relieved to fit the cab front and rear drivers. I'm happy with that. Next week I guess I'll be grumbling about the splasher etch bits in the kit.

Has a week passed already? This week I nearly completed the tender. I'm waiting for some castings to come from LGM for lamp irons, water filler and handbrake staunchion. when they arrive it'll be finished quickly. I had to modify the tender platform floor and make a new fall plate as the one in the kit was a) too small, and b) designed to be attached to the loco cab floor and not the tender as it should have been. I also had to make water valves and fire iron stands as there were no parts in the kit for those either. I made a coupling bar for the tender and loco as the one supplied on the chassis etch was laughably short. The cab doors in the kit were the wrong shape and size and blah, blah, blah..... I focussed my attention on the cab and fished the supplied backhead casting from the box. I must have fallen down a worm-hole and emerged in 1975 as the white metal casting was too small and had some blobs cast on it that were supposed to be backhead fittings. On my return from 1975 I made a backhead of the correct size and shape, and some cab lockers and platforms to go with it. The backhead was made by cutting out the correct shape from brass sheet, soldering a strip round the perimeter and soldering some stout copper wire round the inside of the join. In this way I could radius the corners with a file. I made the angle iron strip round the backhead from 2 pieces. An old bit of boiler band and some brass sheet cut to slightly bigger than the front of the backhead. I made some side sheets for the rear of the cab and some runners for the sliding cab side window. The job that pissed me off most this week was the etching in the kit for the sliding window frame. Now the designer had drawn appertures on the cab side etches for windows. He'd also drawn beading etches to surround the window openings, so you might expect the sliding window frames to have a similar, if slightly smaller dimensions wouldn't you? Well no, no they were not. It took me an hour to cut out a pair of sliding window frames of the correct size. FFS! I am also waiting for castings from LGM for backhead fittings etc and to preserve my sanity I decided to move on to the boiler assy. Now I'd already seen that Graham had had a go at building the firebox. He'd obviously realised that using the kit parts was a futile waste of time and had pulled it apart and flattened the wrapper, presumably to draw around it and cut another. This alerted me to the idea that the firebox, boiler and smoke box parts would be useless, and I wasn't disappointed. The firebox wrapper was to be commended for it's outstanding crapness. The dreaded fold lines again.......and the amazing inability to measure accurately. Subbuteo anyone? The rest of the week would be spent measuring and cutting out formers and wrappers for new boiler parts. To be fair to the kit the circular boiler former was useable....by chance. If you used it inside the preformed tube (0.45 mm wall thickness) supplied for the boiler it would fit but the boiler would be too big in diameter. If you made your own boiler skin from 0.3 mm thick NS.....bingo. I joyfully used the boiler former as it raised my spirits thinking that not all the £225 my client had spent on the kit had been wasted. It is much easier to make wrappers from 0.3 mm thick NS. They're much easier to manipulate by rolling bars or hand. 0.45 mm material is just too thick in my view. I can hear you say that 0.3 mm NS will make boilers that aren't stiff enough, but I say you should never use your boiler as a meat tenderiser. If you think you can stomach more pictures of the 'Nightmare on ACE Street' they're here; https://www.flickr.com/photos/144381574@N05/with/52565936995/

Aiscough clearly did not!

I have GAs.

So this week began with rebuilding the tender having taken a slice out of it. I reattached the diagonal flares and fashioned some corner pieces. The corner pieces were made out of the jigs for setting the angles of the flares. I just mucked about folding and cutting until I got someting that fitted the gap and had the correct curvature. The first one took a while but the second was easy! The next job was to reattach the tender top and make good. I also added beading round the top edge of the flares and down the front. This was bent from half round 1 x 0.5 mm rod. There's also a thin strip that goes round the top of the tender sides along the bottom of the flare. I found an undersized boiler band in the bit-box for that. There were no parts in the box for the beading, and the etches for the division plates at the front and rear were comically wrong but at least they were too big so could be repurposed. You can see that I have also added the coal rails. The kit parts reside in my scrap box together with all the parts for steps and treads. All the wrong shape and/or size, and there were no backing plates for the cab steps. The coal rails are attached to uprights made from scrap and are bent from half round with the same dimensions as above. They're quite tricky to get right, but I used 1.2 mm rods and drills as spacers to get them all parallel. The designer played a trick of the eye with the steps on the front of the tender and beneith the cab (loco designer that is, the kit designer didn't even bother with most of the parts!) The tender footplate and body is significantly narrower than those of the cab. The step backing plates are subtly different such that the treads of both co-incide. This took a lot of working out and scratchbuilding. Another job this week involved filling the pre etched handrail holes for the tender and redrilling new ones. I added the handrails for good measure too. The next bit then involved filling the pre etched handrail holes in the cab and redrilling for new ones also in the correct place. These are the tender sand boxes I quicky made earlier. There were no etches for these in the kit and, surprise surprise, the tender decking was the wrong size and shape! Now maybe I'm being a bit over critical here but, surely, if you're drawing a rectangle and you have got out your best pen, set square and ruler you might as well draw the rectangle the correct size? That way the interconnecting rectangle will fit nicely too, and the dimensions are all there on the drawing. The kit might as well have been a box of sticking plasters and fishing weights, at least they'd have been useful. The scrap bin gets fuller and fuller. Anyone wanting to see more of the horror show can have a peep from behind the settee here; https://www.flickr.com/photos/144381574@N05/with/52551279914/

It would indeed have been at least a tie.