Well, the errant boiler stay had to go for the chop, flipped one end off, trimmed, refitted end and test fitted, perfect
Faffed with another simple spacer stay up front, really no idea what it achieves on the real loco, probably some bod found it lying around on the floor at Doncaster and thought they'd better fit it, even if it wasn't needed?
With frames fairly rigid I test fitted the bearings and axles, to make sure, by eye, they were square with the frame and then one thing led to another
Out with the A1 tender and a piece of test track, the foot plates line up almost perfectly height wise.
Big bugga isn't she, the front bogie is from the A3 kit and I'd been using it as a place holder as I'll be making a whole new one for that engine in due course, as such it's a 6'-3" wheelbase and only three inches too short it shows a mile off.
A quick look between the frames at the rear end shows loads of space for the trailing wheels and a rather left field idea formed about the rear Cartazzi set up, the inner of the two axles. Rather than faff around with radial slides, I think it'll work perfectly fine as a simple lateral sliding axle between the guides, others may wish to fabricate the real deal but being as the axle is pretty close to the rear driver then a simple sliding axle should work fine. Actually, I'm not sure what the W1 Cartazzi axle box angles are, the rest of Gresleys locos are 7°... I think, being closer to the rear axle then the W1 should, logically, be less.
I'll pop some S7 axles in for the Sudbury meet this month and run it through Love Lane and see how much clearance I have at the back end there, I'll have to spacer out the main axles as they'll be miles away from the wheels, but that's a compromise I'll have to live with....unless I just make up a small etch sheet with S7 stays to replace the current ones.
Still being fidgety, I decided just for grins to pop a Hachette body on
Ok, now I know what all the burnt fingers, niggles in etching and swearing were for, an almost prefect fitting body, more accidental than planning if i'm honest as it's been designed around the DJH casting. It is still only an A4 body which requires a lot of hacking into a W1, but none the less, it does look rather dashing.
Looking underneath I can see that I simply need to trim the buffer beam width to allow it to go up into the casting at the front about 5 mm
Looking at the side view a few pictures above, we can see the opening in the casing for the lubricators on the firemans side, this needs to be centred between the intermediate and rear driver, trimming the buffer beam will allow the body casting to slide back and fit perfectly. There's still a lot of space between the frames but that will fill up quickly with gubbins and stuff I'm sure.
The rear end of the casting will go and I will make all new casing footplates and valances just like the A4 I already have in progress elsewhere.
All in all, pretty pleased with how it's going and just the boost needed to finish it all off toot sweet