Getting there...

The Coffee Pot continues to progress...

Last night saw sand pipes going into the body, left over-length at the moment so that I can shape them and trim them back when the wheels are fitted.  On the front end went the coupling hook - and Exactoscale one which initially I thought looked overscale.  Now that it's fitted in place, it seems to have just the right amount of heft to it.

I realised that I hadn't fitted the front lamp irons on the buffer beam either, so those went on.  At this point, the right hand side dumb buffer promptly fell off!  It was better that it happened at that point than after the paint had gone on the locomotive, so I only swore a little bit, then put it back on.

The photo with an appalling depth of field does at least give an impression of how it looks:
 

Back with the chassis, the last proper soldering job was to add the drain cock detail to the bottom of the cylinders.  Again, this is a usual highly detailed High Level confection of etched bits and fine wire.

I differed from the instructions slightly.  It was a little too difficult to drill all three holes in the cylinder bottom to locate all three wires into it.  I could probably have done it with a 0.4mm drill in the pillar drill if I'd wanted to.

So what I actually did was drill the hole for the central wire, and used that as the locating anchor.  The wires at the two ends were then tack soldered in place, which seems to hold them strongly enough.  Certainly if the model is knocked in a way that disturbs them, it's going to have bigger problems than a bent wire!

I realised afterwards that I'd taken the picture before cleaning up the remains of the solder paint.  The final result is much neater and reflects Chris's thoughtful kit design.
 

After this, the body had a good scrub and went into the ultrasonic tank, and I started work on the fold-up gearbox.  More to be done on that this evening, I hope...

Cheers
Flymo