Straightening a bent thing

Having looked at the new loco in the cold light of day I realised that the footplate had a droop in it towards the front. This actually gave it a character which I quite liked as I'm intending this to be a pre preservation condition loco. However there was really too much wonkiness to finish it into a working machine. With slight trepidation I prised the tool box off the footplate and grabbed the front of the footplate with some smooth jawed pliers and bent it upwards... thankfully all was well and it didn't just fall to pieces as I'd feared it might.

Try as I might I couldn't get the chassis to sit square inside the body. I thought that the front part of the chassis was too tall so I scraped away at the inside of the boiler to make room for it but whatever I did it still wouldn't sit square. I still can't work it out but in the end I packed up the ends of the chassis so it sits very slightly higher; this then meant that the couplers were too high so had to be removed and lowered.

Raising the body slightly left the chassis looking too exposed so I've added a further section of styrene under the footplate. Not sure if it looks right, it needs to be primered again anyway as I changed the whitemetal roof for a styrene one to help move the balance over the wheels.

If the bits for the tumble drier don't arrive today I may get a chance to do some more work on this tonight.