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Haven't been able to sit at the modelling table most of the holiday until Friday afternoon when I managed to solder a couple of bits on to the body, then I knocked over the liquid flux and had to mop up the mess!! Firstly the roof vent and the whistle have been fixed to the cab roof, the whistle is actually a turned brass one from Markits which is a Urie type, but I like it better than the white-metal cast one: - Next we have the cylinder lubricators (little bits in the bottom of the smoke box), the hand rail knobs and the steam reverser cylinders (I am afraid that the depth of field didn't allow for it all to be in focus!): - Then the weekend has been "playing" with 12" to the foot trains, Saturday was a firing turn on 30053 and Sunday was a trip to Norden with this beasty: -

Castle Picking up on your information about Trojan reminded me that I had some photos of the restoration of the locomotive, Trojan's original boiler was in a sorry state so a donor boiler was used (I think it came from a greenhouse where is had been used for heating) to supply the inner firebox and part of the barrel, here is a shot of the barrel after the two parts had been bolted together ready for riveting: - The barrel suspended over the pit whilst being riveted: - The new outer firebox being put together: - New throat-plate being fitted: - Lastly a shot of the loco in the lifting shop at Didcot minus the boiler: - These were taken between Sept 2000 and Jan 2001, hope they are of interest; sorry to highjack your thread with my old photos.

Merry Christmas to everyone and hoping for a Happy New Year. As suspected a new thread will be required for the wife's present: - Just off to help finish the washing up after Christmas Lunch, an afternoon in front of the television beckons!!

Morning from Dorset, been raining all night and very overcast this morning, happily the wind is not as strong as it was yesterday. Not much happening on the modeling front, I don't think I have managed much more than going and looking at the kit for a few weeks now. I have a few days off over Christmas period so I will see if I can spend some more time on it. One thing I did look at was the Markits boiler feed pipe and clack valves, there are lots of small fiddly bits and looking at the drawing I couldn't work out how they go together, does anybody have a picture of them built (i guess would be better unpainted, but I would be grateful for any help)? I also have an suspicion that there may be an SEF SECR R1 0-6-0T under the tree from Mrs Hardwick. Thanks for reading.

Today I have put everything together and done something new for me, I have made a video : - As it says at the end, the coupling rods are only pushed onto the crank-pins, therefore only short runs in case they fall off. Also a couple of photos of the loco as it stands: - I have fitted the tank fillers, the front sandbox fillers and drilled the holes for the handrail knobs. I have also drilled the holes to take the Markits clack valves and some pilot holes for the chimney, dome and safety valves, I used the dimples in the casting as a guide and made sure that the drill was at right angles to the boiler. I have also fitted the Markits smokebox door handles to the door, I soldered (using low melt solder) the centre pin to the door and then superglued the handles to the pin; I did think of soldering it all, but realised that the solder on the handles would mask any detail.

OK, another couple of hours spent on the H, tonight trying to avoid The Apprentice!! I had a sudden thought whilst mulling over some things and realised that the bunker top could be fitted to the cab back rather than the main body, so first thing was to solder the bunker: - Then I fitted a couple of detail bits to the cab interior, the handbrake and cab seats: - Then I turned to the chassis again, I had fitted the crank pins to the wheels, then I realised that the wheel centres that come on the chassis etch are designed to be held in place by the crank pins, this caused me to question whether they are used, here are two pictures, one with the centres in place and one without: - I think as the centres do not really cover the Romford wheel centre boss and that they are slightly off-centre I will probably either go without or cut the centres about a bit and glue them next to the crank pins. I also folded the coupling rods and slid them onto the crank pins: - Other little jobs that have been started, I have drilled (where required) the buffer beams and filed off the cast buffer detail to take the Kean Maygib buffers, these will be Super-glued into place and the buffer heads & springs fitted after painting is finished. Thanks for reading.

Variable day in Dorset today, rained first thing and then brightened up later. I spent some time at the modeling table today and ended up not going for a walk to enjoy the autumn sunshine which is a shame, but progress has been made which I am quite pleased about. First off today I decided that I would try and get all the little bits and pieces attached to the frames so that they can be sprayed; still to be attached to the frames are the rear sand boxes, the hand brake lever, the front guard irons, the reverser operating rod & springs. Here is a sand box and the piece of 0.7mm brass rod that will make the sand pipe; I have already drilled a hole in the bottom of the sand box to receive the pipe: - I attached the frames to the body work as the sand box fits around the rear fixing and needs the two parts together to locate it, I used the low melt solder to fix the box to the frames and then the pipe to the box, the pipe bends towards the rear wheel and then solders to the bracket attached to the bottom of the ash pan: - Looking at the springs I realised that they will have to be left off the model as they fit just where I have fixed the electrical pick-ups, you can see the front pickup wire by the bearing where the centre of the leaf spring would fix, the rear coil springs have a similar problem: - Here is a picture of the hand brake lever on the end of the brake weigh-shaft, hopefully this will not foul the bogie, else this may have to go as well: - The reverser rod and lever, the H class have a Wainwright steam reverser, the cylinders are above the footplate fitted to the front of the drivers side tank, this also explains the "gubbins" on the drivers side of the cab on the tank top (see below), it is the drivers reverser control. The movement is transmitted from the cylinders via the vertical rod which turns the reverser weigh-shaft by way of the horizontal lever; also in the photo are shown the front guard irons: - I then turned to the body, I soldered in the bunker front and the two parts of the tank that protrude into the cab, I also attached the regulator and firehole door operating handle with superglue. Circled in this picture is the reverser control mentioned above: - Next I had a go at building the cab top (see conversation in previous posts), I soldered the cab sides to the cab back sheet and then soldered the roof to the assembly, the next two photos show the cab in place and then separate: - Here is a view of the body as it stands now, the bunker top, the cab top and the boiler top aren't actually fix yet, but you can get the idea: - As always, hope this is useful, any questions about the build please ask.

Thanks for the replies everybody. It is interesting that you've suggested leaving the cab roof off until finished as it has made me go and look at the cab and I am wondering if making up the roof, with the side & back sheets would be possible and lightly gluing on the whole assembly after painting, I may have a go and see if it is possible. Wouldn't work on all models but the Wainwright locos with the cab stepped in gives the option.

Morning All, lovely autumnal morning in Dorset. No pictures, but it was quite a milestone for the H class the day before yesterday as I fitted the wheels, motor, gears, bogie and a DCC blanking plug to the chassis and gave it a run (without coupling rods) on the rolling road; so far so good, runs OK on DC and seemed to be picking up on all wheels (although I still need to clean more of the paint off the back of the bogie wheels). Next I swapped the DCC blanking plug for the TCS MC2 decoder and ran it for a bit longer on the rolling road, this was successful; the only little niggle was that the engine ran the wrong direction under DCC control, so I will have to swap the motor leads round. Lastly I put the body (as it stands) onto the chassis (to make sure all the bits and pieces would fit OK) and gave it a run on the rolling road and on my sons layout, this too was successful. Yesterday I did a bit more tinkering with the chassis, it needed a packing piece between the chassis and the body at the front to get the levels right. I have swapped the motor leads (Orange and Grey wires) round on the motor terminals which will sort out the directional issue. I had to clean the front axle with some emery paper as overnight it corroded in the brass bearing, which can only be due to some soldering flux being left behind. I have now stripped the chassis down again as I am planning to spray it next, I will also have to take the wheels off the bogie so that can be painted. I have some cans of Halfords spray paint (I don't own a spray gun yet) for undercoat, matt black and gloss. I am now trying to work out the best way of painting the body as I have realised that the cab interior will have to be painted before the rest of the cab is built, but to spray the exterior the cab interior will have to be covered somehow, how do other folks approach the spray painting of a loco body?

Hi Clarkeeboy, I have only been soldering white-metal since I started this kit, the turning point for me was a temperature controlled soldering iron, which I believe is the only way you are going to do it. So far on this kit I have been using Carrs Red Flux and Carrs Red 70 Solder (i.e. solder melts at 70 degrees C), this is a very low melting point. To give you an idea, this solder should melt in boiling water, so don't wash the completed kit in water hotter than your hand can bear (the same is true for super-glue). I use a Maplins 50W Solder Station which so far has been really good, you have to work out where to set the control for each solder you are going to use by trial & error and make a note of it. I also purchased a pack of 50W Solder Station Additional Solder Tips so that I could have one tip to use on standard soldering and one for the low melt solder. So far this has worked really well and is actually easier than using glues. Some tips on soldering, first you need to know is to make solder "flow" into a joint the two items you are soldering together must get to at or near the melting point of the solder, therefore soldering a wire to a terminal is a very different "kettle of fish" from soldering two lumps of brass together; you will need different quantities of heat to go into the job. To do this you either need to hold the iron on the job to get the heat into it or have a big heat sink (i.e. a big soldering iron) so that it has a store of heat, but again this depends what you're soldering. Wires, try and make a quick touch, long enough to get the wire and the terminal hot but not too long to melt the insulation, brass or nickle-silver frames long enough to get the whole job hot enough to flow the solder completely along the joint. Second tip is that the two surfaces you are soldering must be clean, with wires it is fairly easy to get a clean bit, strip off some more insulation. With white-metal or brass, use some thing to clean the surface just before soldering, some wire wool, a wire brush, file, anything that is going to clean the little bit of surface oxide off the work piece. Third use a etching agent, i.e. a flux, this can be a liquid flux (I have been using the Carrs fluid) or a paste (I have a tin of Opella Solder Flux that I have had for years, which is great for dipping the ends of wires into or pasting onto the job with a screw driver). Tin the pieces before actually joining them (tinning is the process of getting a little bit of solder to adhere to each component before joining them), this does depends upon what you are soldering. I always tin electrical joints, strip the insulation off the wire, heat the end and melt some solder onto the wire making sure it covers the end. Sometimes when soldering larger items it is not always possible to tin them, maybe the accuracy of the joint will not allow the extra material. With electrical joints tinning makes it easier as you are not trying to hold the soldering iron, the job and the reel of solder. If you are not confident at doing things, practice, practice, practice, in the SEF kit there were enough white-metal parts for the EM/P4 version of the bogie so I soldered them together as a trial piece. There were also extra nickle-silver parts of the frames so I used them too. Hope this is useful and not too much "teaching grandmother to suck eggs"!!

Hello again, weather not good in Dorset this week, I have had to spend sometime at the local National Tyre depot today as a kerb stone jumped out and bit the nearside tyre during a downpour the other day, of course I had to change the other front wheel as well and have the tracking adjusted, so the bank balance is down tonight!! Gents, I have found that the SEF castings are generally good, but some of the small parts are loosing definition, I found if you call SEF they are willing to replace any parts without question. My opinion is that white-metal is great for the big structural parts of a model, but brass castings, or turned parts, are better for the fine detail. I have managed to spend some more time at both the computer and the modeling table today, so here goes with the description of what has happened. A pet hate of mine is when you take a model apart (either RTR or kit built) is having parts that are "tied" to the chassis by wires, e.g. when you disconnect and try to remove the motor you find it is connected to the chassis with wires soldered at both ends. So with this in mind I started trawling the Internet for some miniature connectors, I found some on the DCC Supplies website, but they were £3.80 or £7.00 each for a two pin plug and socket; then I realised I had some thing to hand that would do the job. More of this later, first I have worked out that no matter how much I tried different positions for the motor, the only way to make it fit was to remove a small section of the boiler between the tanks, so the first photo shows the new hole that fits round the gearbox: - I have also soldered in the cab floor, the water tank balance pipe and the cab front with the back-head detail: - Now for the plug and sockets to allow removal of the motor and the bogie, I used the modular connector strip (Maplin part DC17T) that was used earlier to make the 8-pin NEM652 decoder socket, create four two pin sections of the strip and then solder wires to the pin on one side and the hole on the other, first picture is the four sections of strip with some bits of wire thrown in to set the mood: - Second picture showing the wires soldered in the holes to make the plug: - Then the socket part is made by soldering the wires to the pins the other side and placing some shrink sieving over the solder joint, here is the bogie connector in place, it will be located in the bunker with the decoder, I connected the socket wires to the underside of the 8-pin NEM socket. Also in this photo you can see the strip of nickle silver soldered across the top of the frames, this supports the motor and stops it falling into the cab: - I then turned my attention to connecting the pickup wires from the driving wheels to the 8-pin NEM socket, once again using heat-shrink sieving to insulate the bare wires (you can see the wires hanging around in the photo above): - Lastly a little test, I fitted the motor (you can see the motor plug/socket connector just below it) and a DCC blanking plug to the NEM socket and put a 9volt battery across the wheel pickup wires, to my relief the motor bust into life; I have yet to find if I have connected it up the right way, i.e. so that when the decoder is set for forward it goes forward, but it works: - Anyway, time for bed now, as usual it has gone midnight, tomorrow I am off to Swanage to take some photographs of Met 1 and The Raging Bull (GWR 1501 pannier from the SVR) that are performing at the Gala. Good night all, hope my ramblings are useful.

Another month gone by, soon be Christmas!! Well the firing turn on 14th Sept ended up being a driving turn on the U-boat that has just arrived at Swanage (31806), very pleasant day other than running a bit late. The grass still needs a final cut before too long so that it will look fairly tidy for the winter so hopefully we are going to get at least a couple of days of sunshine before the end of October. Thanks Dave for looking, that is the method of attaching a bogie that I seem to remember was used by a lot of the manufacturers and kit makers. Managed to spend a couple of hours working on the 'H', firstly I have plucked up the courage to cut the tail shaft off the motor so that it is easier to fit into the body shell, I was worrying about how to do this as I was aware that the swarf from the cutting might make its way into the motor (i.e. by being attracted by the magnet), the advice from Dave at SE Finecast is to put the motor into a plastic bag and push the shaft out the side of the bag, any swarf attracted to the magnet sticks to the side of the bag.... simples! Here's a picture of the motor after, this is not the final position: - I have soldered the smokebox front ring to the boiler/smokebox casting, I have also soldered the back-head to the cab front: - I then started looking at the location for the decoder socket (and thus the position of the decoder), I decided that it is going in the bunker as there is an open space, first I attached the four main leads using the standard NMRA colours (Pin1 - Orange(motor left), Pin4 - Black(track left), Pin5 - Grey(motor right) & Pin8 - Red(track right) to the home made 8-pin socket (see 5th May 2014 post) and soldered this to the top of the frames so that it fits in the bunker: - Note, the Vero board strips are cut between where the socket pins are soldered and then one hole towards the edges of the board, thus electrically separating the socket from the frames; hope that makes sense. Here are a couple of pictures with the body (as far as it is built) with the frames under: -

Really long time without an update I'm afraid, but as the mowing season comes to an end soon and the evenings draw-in I may be able to spend more time at the modelling table. I have had another chat to Dave at SE Finecast and he has supplied a second set of crank pins that fit perfectly, he also gave me some ideas on how to remove the unwanted motor shaft so that it isn't so long. Right back out to the garden today as there is always something to do and tomorrow off to Swanage, I am rostered fireman on the Lunch time dinning train currently there is no driver so that may be interesting!

Sorry there haven't been any updates on this lately, there are two main reasons for this, one is life the universe and everything! The other is that I have discovered that the motor I have will not fit into the chassis/body without either modifying the motor or the body. I have also discovered that the crank-pins supplied with the kit do not thread into the wheels, I have tried a 10BA screw in the wheels and that is fine, I found some crank-pins in a kit I was given sometime back which also screw in correctly; so I need to call SE Finecast and chat to them about it.

BTW everybody, I didn't think the NEM socket idea up myself, it came from this page: - Making DCC sockets

OK, some more progress, only a small amount, but bits glued together at least. First thing lets look at the driving wheel pick-ups, as mentioned earlier I am building this loco to be used with digital control so the wheel tyres of both sides of locomotive are insulated, therefore pickups are required both sides. I am using the SE Finecast suggestion of using Veroboard soldered between the frames with the tracks running along the long axis of the locomotive, due to the design of the chassis I have split this into two parts, one for the front axle and one for the rear axle. Here are some photos of two boards soldered in with the spring wire and connecting leads: - The rear pickups have a dog leg in them to miss the pinion gear on the rear axle. The two pieces of Veroboard are a bit messy and slightly offset due to the pitch of the board; also (unlike the bogie) I have used the red and black wire colour coding for left and right rail wires (standard DCC practice). Now I have started building the DCC NEM652 socket (rather than using the ready made socket with wires attached I bought), I thought making one myself would be better. So I have bought some modular connector socket from Maplin's (Cat No. DC17T), this will be soldered onto a piece of Veroboard and then soldered the top edge of the frames; here are a few photos of the parts and the socket coming together. First the component parts, I will not be using the piece of Veroboard on the left and I haven't started fitting the NEM652 plug to the decoder yet. The right half of the photo shows the two pieces of connector, the Veroboard and a Hornby DCC blanking plug. I have drilled out eight of the Veroboard holes to 1.5mm so that the thicker part of the socket pin fits through. Here is the completed socket, I have cut the tracks between the socket pins and will be cutting them between the holes at the outer edge. I have also decided to ditch the TCS T1 decoder and use a TCS MC2 decoder, mainly as the MC2 is much smaller, I decided the T1 would be too big. Onwards and upwards, hope it is interesting for peeps.

Thanks for the answers from the two Ian's, I will have to see how the SE Finecast bogie works out, I may have to modify it to get more side play if required as the only movement side ways now is from the slack in the 1" long 8BA bolt. Couple of little bits done towards the end of last week, weekend quite busy with an appointment with 109 year old lady at Swanage on Saturday and the RMWeb members day Sunday. I have soldered the sides of the loco body together with the two cross members, one makes the front footplating & the rear one is just in front of the cab, with the bunker rear. I realised that it wasn't quite square, but with a wee bit of diagonal force and it seems to be good: - I then put some of the bits together, the frames, wheels, loco body and boiler. There will be some fettling to do around the front wheels as they are shorting on the splashers, but mainly went well: - Lastly here is the 109 year old lady at Swanage, not an H class but the LSWR equivalent: -

Matt/Ian As two people that have a Finecast H would you mind if I ask you to describe or photograph the bogie pivot as I have looked at the way the kit is going together and cannot see how the bogie is going to get any side play?

Well, after saying there won't be many updates, here's another! I managed to spend five minutes yesterday parting the components for the brake gear from the etch and soldering together the two halves of the brake pull rod. Here they are laid out on the work bench: - After spending the first part of this morning unblocking our drain pipe to the main sewer, most unpleasant task , I thought I would make a start on fitting the brake gear to the chassis, I may regret this as I have realised I haven't fitted the pickups for the driving wheels yet, so I'm now going to have to do this around the brake rigging! I cleaned up all the bits and bent the hanger brackets, I decided that it made sense to make up a hanger bracket and hanger unit (with its piece of 0.5mm wire) and fit that to the chassis, that was a bit like rounding up cats, so in the end I went with soldering the piece of wire to the frames and then fitting the hanger and its bracket to that. The first two photos show the front hangers in place, I also found that the hanger brackets need to be on their sides rather than upright as shown on the drawing, so that the body will fit correctly: - This photo shows the wires soldered in place for the rear set of hangers: - I soldered the two weigh shaft brackets to the chassis at the rear of the ash pan and soldered the two cross beams to the pull rod. The pull rod was then fitted to the chassis with the length of 0.7mm wire, the bottom end of the hangers were soldered to the cross beams and the whole assembly was checked for position. Up until now I had left the tops of the hangers to move freely, now I soldered them to the outside ends of the hanger brackets. These two photos show the finished article: - I have also fitted the reverser weigh shaft (runs across the frames at the bottom of the motion bracket), this sticks out on the drivers side of the frames, between the driving wheels and will have the steam reverser operating lever and rod fitted; I am not going to fit this lever or the hand brake lever until I have the body in place for positioning. The hand brake lever will also need to be fitted in such a way so it doesn't foul the bogie wheels. I think it has taken longer to describe than actually do, I hope it is of interest and that folks find it interesting. I have tried to use names that describe the actual pieces, if it is total tosh then please feel free to comment, I won't be offended, I have found that the parts of locomotives seem to have different names in different areas of the country.

Well, I have been doing a bit and so far fairly happy with the results, one milestone is that I have finally managed to get all the right bits in the same room to successfully attempt some white-metal soldering and I am really pleased with the results. First two photos show the frames, all soldered now, I have removed the front screw in spacer so that the piece representing the rear cylinder covers could be put in. I did have a chat to the nice man at SE Finecast about a number of things and his advice was it was up to me, either use the screw in spacers or the etched ones. I have also soldered the front axle bearings (brass top hats) into place, the rear coupled axle bearings will have to wait until the motor gear box is in place. I did use the 12" pieces of 1/8" steel to align the chassis and bearings whilst soldering, but the picture I took wasn't in focus I'm afraid. The third photo just shows the chassis with the two driven wheel sets in place, I have found that the front axle is a bit stiff, the top hats seem to have shifted slightly, I will be looking at ways to rectify this later. The remainder of the photos concentrate on the bogie, one of the topics in my conversation with the chap at SE Finecast was around building the bogie, sadly as the bogie wheel sets had arrived in one piece I thought you had to construct the bogie frames around the wheel sets, this was like juggling, every time you got one piece in place the others all moved!! I now realise that you have to take the wheel sets apart, I found the easiest way to do this was to punch the axle out of one of the wheels, shown in the fourth picture, I suggest you support the wheel as much as you can, I used a pair of pliers. You need a punch as close to the size of the axle as possible, I used a cross-head miniature screw driver and some sort of hitting device (I used another pair of pliers). It doesn't take too much force, but start hitting lightly and increase the force until it starts to move. Next to construct the bogie frames, I started off by digging through the old boxes of model railway stuff in the loft until I found the Carrs low melt solder and flux I purchased many years ago, completely unused as I have not had a temperature controlled soldering iron until this year. I soldered together the EM version of the bogie to try out soldering white-metal. I am using Carrs Red 70 degree solder and Carrs Red liquid flux, I was very pleased with the results, so I moved onto the real thing. The picture I took of the frames on there own was out of focus (really must learn how to use the camera! ), so the fifth photo shows the frames with the wheels fitted. As I said earlier, I wanted to have pickups on the bogie to give a better running quality over dead crossings etc. so I now set about fitting them. I used a piece of Veroboard super glued to the bottom of the bogie frames, it had a hole drilled in the middle to allow for the fixing screw and two pieces of tinned spring steel wire with some TCS 30 gauge connecting wires; these wires go up through two 0.9mm holes drilled in the bogie base plate. I have looked at the clearance under the bogie and I it looks OK, but it is close to the rail head over point work. (If you feel the clearance isn't enough another idea for these pickups would be to put the Veroboard on top of the frames (again with a hole for the bogie spring) and locate the pickup wire between the bogie framing to the inside edge of the wheels.) The last two photos show the bottom and top of the bogie with the pickups fitted. I realise I am going to have to take the wheels off again for painting, but that will be for another day. That's all for now, hope my ramblings are useful.

Thanks for the comments guys. Coachmann, there may not be regular posts as I am juggling the build around my day job, family and footplate turns, but I will try and document as much as I can.

OK, I have made a start! Every journey starts with the a single step. I have parted the frame plates and the stretchers from the frets and screwed the two plates together, I have fettled the stretchers and trial fitted them (see pictures below). Not sure what to do with the two screw in spacers as the front one is actually covering the slots where the cylinder back covers go, the instructions aren't clear on this point. I am tempted to solder the motion bracket and rear stretchers and then remove the front screw-in spacer before soldering the cylinder back and front in. So one question for debate: Remove the screw-in spacers on not, anybody who has built this kit got any thoughts. I chickened out on the straight or joggled frames for the bogie at the back, I went for the joggled frames on the basis that it may be running on Hornby 2nd radius curves. (Picture 3, not very good picture, but hopefully you can see the bends).

Postman has visited us again, two 12" pieces of 1/8" silver steel (using Grahams advice), a TCS T1 decoder and a NEM652 socket and harness. Don't know what I am going to do with all the wires though! The 10mm piece of silver steel is to see if I can fix the broken base of the DayLight angle pose lamp that decided to fracture and bend in half! Not started anything in anger on the building front, I am sad to say the Swanage Railway Spring Gala got in the way of that!!

071, I am planning to fit pickups to both sides of the chassis (including the bogie), the wheels supplied are fully insulated (you can just see "All Ins" on the packet). I am going to install a NEM652 socket somewhere so that the decoder can be changed if required. Pete, it is going to be in BR lined black with a early (cycling lion) crest, it will be numbered as one of the locomotives that was allocated to St. Leonard's in the mid fifties. Mike, I guess the thing to do is keep the weight over the driving wheels so that the bogie is not carrying too much, but we will see how it goes. Thanks guys, that has made me feel a lot better, the last kit I built was a Mallard Models GWR 517 and I couldn't remember how I did it! It was around 1973! I will try and keep up with progress reports, as time allows.

Having last built a 00 gauge locomotive kit around 30 odd years ago, I have decided the time is right for the next one! I have purchased a SE Finecast H class tank, chassis, wheels and motor, I have also added to it some detailing parts that seemed appropriate (see below). I still have to order the DCC loco decoder, when I have decided which would be best. So before I start I want to ask a couple of really basic and possibly naive questions: - How do folks separate the etched parts without causing little or no distortion? What is the best way to ensure the chassis is true, the Finecast chassis has a couple of screw fitted spacers to use before soldering in the stretchers, but I would like to fix it to something to ensure it is square? I am sure there are other questions that will come to me as time goes on, but that will do for now; thanks in advance to anybody who feels the urge to help out! Below we have the kit on the day it arrived, a selection of Branchlines cast brass parts, some Kean Maygib sprung buffers and a selection of Markits parts.