Something a little different on the workbench for me at the moment a Gladiator G5 which is to be finished in BR livery as one of the last G5's to be shedded in Leeds. I am building this for a friend who is too busy with other things to build it himself. The kit originates with George Norton and came to Gladiator via John Shelly of Fourtrack Models - according to the instructions.
A bit of research using the relevant copy of Yeadons and RCTS Green book show that the last two G5's in Leeds were 67262 or 67325 they were at Neville Hill until 1658. Sadly photos are thin on the ground, I haven't found one of either loco so far.
The kit is to be pretty much an out of the box build but it was supplied with Hobby Holidays Hornblocks for the drivers and Finney hornguides for the bogie. I say hornguides because when I check the hornblocks themselves are those that come with the kit and are significantly bigger than the Finney ones (I have some that I was able to check against. This has meant quite a bits of filing to get the horn blocks to fit but I got there.
I also blackened the wheels and replaced the standard 12ba nuts and bolts with 10ba and tapped the crank pin bushes. Also included in the kit are a pair of Premier rods that look to be approx. half the depth of the etched ones which I made up just incase. More research needed me thinks.
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Next I started to prepare the frames and then encountered a bit of a challenge - The frames have compensation built in in the form of fold up guides and compensation beams.
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The challenge that I can foresee is getting the HH hornblocks in square because there is no fixed axle to use as a datum with my chassis jig - that and the frame spacers are loose in their slots.......
The plan at the moment is to fold up the built in rear guides and temporarily fit some hornblocks. Use this as the datum to fit the front pair of HH hornblocks and then use those to set the rear pair - having assembled the frames before starting on this. But I am open to alternatives