I had a spare moment this afternoon, so finally managed to erect the upper frames into their proper place on the footplate. These consist of two etch layers each, sweated together (parts P16 and P17 on the body etch fret), and are the strengthened frames that 171 and her sisters were given when rebuilt in 1938:
The back edge of the frames stop at the exact point where the footplate opening for the driving wheel begins, and care is needed to ensure that they are perfectly vertical and spaced just enough to allow the smokebox to slide in between:
I think we can afford to plug the boiler and firebox into the cab front to have a look, so....
...the rear splasher tops can be formed. I curved them around a bottle screw cap of roughly the same radius as the splasher sides, and ended up with this:
She's looking a bit more together, but I don't think it would be the time to solder the splasher sides to the footplate, as I still want to be able to remove sub-assemblies to check clearances.
Just realised that the little etch for the reversing crank / lever stub has detached from the footplate, but this might not matter too much until I can get the inside motion scheme going.
When Terry MacDermott originally designed the kit, he came up with a fairly complex bogie pivoting system consisting of a rubbing plate which itself was pivoted from further back in the chassis. Although it clearly works, it isn't a system I can use because it potentially gets in the way of the connecting and eccentric rods, so I'm looking at a more self-contained idea such as that used by Brassmasters in its LMS loco kits, which allows the bogie to pivot and slide laterally, but which does not allow the bogie structure to rise and fall - instead, only the bogie wheels do that, just as on the real thing.