Movement

I've spent the last couple of days in the garage sniffing solder and burning my finger tips. In between doing these things I've been getting on with Britomart. I won't lie and say it has all gone swimmingly because this is the fiddliest, tiniest thing I've ever made but with persistance I've made some progress.

Footplate, buffer beams and frames soldered up

One of the trickiest bits was making up the cylinder assemblies. The instructions say that the bit that slides into the cylinder should be superglued but I found a bit of brass rod the right size and soldered that on instead. After much swearing and re soldering I got both the slide and the con rods to hinge as they should.

Side rods on and cylinders not fixed in place

All the valve gear attached, not quite running

The next finger tip burning phase was to make the cab up. It consists of a set of inner etches and then outer ones with the detail embossed on them. The inner set went together pretty well but I found attaching the outer skin very difficult, I think this was mainly down to my lack of skill. I have made a reasonable stab at it but Brian has predicted that I might mess this up so has given me a second set of etches for the cab so I may have a second stab at this. 

While I was making up the cab I was fettling the chassis and I've got it to run... not as well as I know it can but better than I expected. I will make it perfect, hopefully.

The boiler/tank casting is lovely and needed very little cleaning up. So far I've attached the safety valves, tank filler and smokebox door. It catches the look of the real thing very well. I've seen it haul a full WHR set out of the carriage shed at Dinas with lots of chuffing. I need to get some detail pictures now and start adding the details. I've got handrails knobs and wire but one of the most obvious features are the lubricators on the front of the tanks, also the wooden tool box which sits in front of the cab.