Horsetan

All except no.4 available as SSM kits. And even no.4 may yet emerge as a full-ish kit from Worsley Works......

I think only the J15 and NCC "WT" have any prospect as RTR, and even then they would need to allow conversion to 21mm. Most of the other Irish steam classes were mostly small in number, reflecting in part the lack of money of the railways that had them built. I derive my fun from building kits, and having a J15 in RTR means one less sale for SSM.....

Ah, that's a shame. Lost in the mists of time. Never mind, it was just a question that occurred to me as I went along. You'll have to build it, though....

Will he not get some sort of cash prize...?

It's not all plain sailing, as we will now discover. First, I took out the post-1938 front frames (Part P16 and P17) from the etch: These have two layers, with the riveted layer being attached last of all. The inner layer has no tabs at all along the base, so trying to hold it in place is going to be the very devil: Note that the left-hand frame has a tiny notch in the top - this is where the lubricator and its bracket will be places. Now, let's have a look at the underside, so yis can see what I mean: if the slots in the footplate are going to be that long, why not have tabs on the base of the front frames to fit into these, and provide a stable location? "Weshty": what d'ye think? Is it worth modifying the etch artwork?

The interior shots were filmed at the former Bushey School (which was already being developed for expensive private housing whilst all the filming was going on!) near Watford.

Now, some photos of what was done over the weekend.... The smokebox is the subject of our attention, and the kit provides a basic fold-up shell (Part P13) which we saw out of the fret: Stick it in the vice: ....and start folding: As can be seen, there are tabs underneath the smokebox sides which are intended to fit into slots in the footplate. The front and rear of the smokebox shell have tiny etch marks; these act as seats for the tops of the smokebox sides: ...and this is how they fit: A minimum of solder is now run into the inside corners, and eventually, we get this: ...which means we can test-fit it onto the footplate: