Scalefour Forum

This has been a very slow build. With the chassis finally finished, I made a start on the body. This went reasonably well until I got to the point of fixing the detail overlays. Unfortunately there didn't appear to be anything to fix them to, either on the bunker or the upper part of the cab. There was also very little in the way of support for the front of the tanks. From the instructions it would seem that these areas are intended to be built with just the overlays, hardly practical with material only 0.12mm thick. I therefore had to resort to some scratch building which I actually found quite satisfying. The pics show before and after.

John.
A very impressive recovery and looking good for further progress.
It does seem a bit odd for the kit to provide no backing support for area of such thin overlays. Perhaps there's a few bits missing from your example?
Best wishes for Christmas and New Year.
Dave.

Sadly not Dave, nothing on the parts list or the drawings.

... and best wishes to you Dave for the 'festive' season.

My Finney V2 is mostly half etched - it's ok when it's finished but it did wander about during construction. Some of it could be 2/3 rd etching. There's the odd full thickness strip to re-inforce - did you consider these? There's plenty of Finney kits been built.

DaveB

Yes Dave, I have built several Finney kits and never had a problem with them. In my humble opinion they are in a different league to MM's.

When I lived down south there were some MM 45xxs being built and there weren't any reports of problems. I never heard of one maker being better than the other. Some of our group knew MM very well. With kits of this quality you can have faith and press on whereas there's been plenty in the forum where the danger flags are flying before you even start.

DaveB

Progress has been rather slow but I am getting there!

Wonderful! Almost a shame to paint it...

Mike

Hi John.

Nice work, I have a straight tank and a 44xx in the stash. I look forward to seeing your progress.

Steps, injectors, AWS and rear sand boxes have now been fitted.



The sand boxes that came with the kit were the wrong pattern (more suitable for a pannier tank) so I knocked a pair up out of styrene. I also made up some brackets to support them from the footplate but to fit them I had to unplumb the injectors. Once they were in, the pipework was reattached before the sand boxes them selves could be fitted. All good fun, ha, ha.

5514 is finished at last and has joined the loco roster on Worseter. Here she is seen crossing the canal with a local passenger train.

Another very nice looking model, John, and wonderfully posed. That is a rather splendid location to photograph your models.
Dave.

Good looking loco, John, despite the trials and tribulations of the build in the bunker area.

Cheers

Phil.

Lovely loco. Coming from the Faithful City, seeing your viaduct always makes me homesick.