Horsetan

If you look at the rivets on the smokebox front of 560, and then try to line them up with the adjacent rivets on the smokebox wrapper (a bit like "joining the dots"), what you get is a zig-zag pattern, hence staggered. Most people won't be too fussed about this, and that's fine, but it is something I noticed and since I have a rivet press I might as well give it some proper work to do! GSR/CIE really were great believers in rivets - smokeboxes were absolutely covered in them, and it can be a total pain in the **** when you're trying to get it right. The other thing I have to try to do is calculate how many rivets there are around the smokebox front of 560.

Maybe you were lucky. Others were not.

What people may not know is that DC Kits can be a bit erratic these days when it comes to delivery or even simple customer service, as is evident from this thread. If they have no time to pick up the phone, how can you be sure you'll get your order?

Maybe not so much designed around the motor, but certainly around the motor mounting screw points. What other motors share the same fixing centres?

I had quite a bit of difficulty, when squinting at photos of J26s late in their service lives, trying to make out the smokebox rivet patterns as the photographic qualities weren't the best. Eventually, a photo of 560 on the little turntable at Waterford suggested that not only were there a lot of rivets, but that the ones on the smokebox front did not line up horizontally with the ones on the smokebox wrapper, giving a sort of staggered effect. Not sure how my rivet press is going to cope with this!

Difficult choice, I reckon. Worsley Works has crisper finish because it's etched, but you get no castings, according to the website, or any help with the rounded top of the nose. However, this build article says that castings are supplied. Silver Fox gives you a one-piece shell and details, but may not be quite as crisp.

Not every manufacturer has a Plan B, and if you're only doing short runs.... Supplying your own motor wouldn't necessarily be a good idea because everyone has their own preference and a multiplicity of different designs exist. That said, I went coreless back in the late 1980s and built up a stock of them, so I'm not yet affected by shortages.

Little cubes cut from styrene / plasticard strip, brushed into place with solvent such as Plastic Weld. The solvent will also do a fair job of "rounding off" the cube, making it look like a round rivet.

The motors shown on their website production process page resemble Mashimas. If Mashimas are what OO Works have been using until now, then that may explain the difficulty because Mr. Mashima, the manufacturer, announced a while ago that he was retiring from the business (having already threatened this once or twice in the past), so motor production would end. I'm not sure what motor would be a direct replacement for a Mashima, though it could well be a Chinese-made one.

On the Products page, but it's academic anyway, as they are no longer taking orders for it. Must mean that their projected batch has sold out. If ye've missed it....ye've missed it!

Looks the biz alright

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These are the 21mm gauge spacers that Kirley kindly let me have: They originate from the SSM "SG" loco kit, and being 16mm wide could be usefully adapted for the S-class chassis.

I was pleasantly relieved to find that the eccentric rods from the Finney GW 1854/2721 motion kit are virtually spot-on when it comes to the measurement between centres: the S-class 4'6" equates to 18mm in 4mm scale: ....so I can definitely use all four of these rods and the brass eccentric sheaves, as well as the cast inside cranks from the same motion kit which we already know to be the right shape. I also discovered that the measurement between pivot and crankpin centres for the Finney LSWR T9 connecting rods corresponds exactly to the 6'6" distance of the S-class connecting rod: Half the fun is finding out just what is possible with other people's etched parts; they've done all the hard work, so why not use them?

Thar's gold in them thar hills!!

Are they nearly there yet?

Thanks. I've been reviewing the chassis frames this evening, and working out where I can squeeze in the mounting points for CSB suspension. The rear end of the cylinder block is what I'm dreading.

I saw this running on the test tracks at Scaleforum. Grand little model (think it belongs to Leslie) which looks the part - the paint looks spot-on. Didn't get to see the underside, but I wonder if it has allowances for a 21mm gauge conversion....?

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.