Confession time. I have spent the last couple of evenings painstakingly filing the boiler barrel down to the right dimensions to a much greater degree than planned. The barrel comes in the kit as just a plain piece of brass tubing. It needs cutting back so the top part of the barrel sits snugly on the tank tops. I carefully measured the amount by which the boiler sits proud of the tanks from a scale drawing kindly supplied by Mr H Garden of this parish. I then marked it all up and made my cuts with a piercing saw (allowing for a bit of drift so I knew I had some filing to do but hoped it was minimal).
Best laid plans of mice and men, combined with the old adage of measure twice and cut once… To cut a long story short, I had measured against the drawing for the similar (but different!) F4/5, not the F6. One of the differences was the tank height so my carefully cut boiler sat about 2mm too high and was blocking a part of the cab front windows. It took a while for the penny to drop but once the lightbulb was turned on I realised I had quite a bit of brass to file off (I suppose I could have cut again but was concerned about the blade drifting where it shouldn’t). One sore wrist and hand later and I think I am about there with it…
Nigel
