With the cleading nearing completion I felt confident enough to finish off the reverser dial gauge and its track which in part is connected or, in my case, leaning to said cleading. When saying 'track' I am referring to the link between the reverser itself and the gauge. I have no drawing for this but photo's suggest some form of housing (track) running behind up the cleading between the two. On looking at various images found online and my own I formed a plan to have the dial gauge fixed (hinged) to the reverser stand making it adjustable to match the cleading angle, my thinking being that this would not only make maintenance easier but also keep the gauge more consistent in its readings.  Now Don has drawn a metal strip as the link between the two, photos suggest some form of an arm from the shaft with a UJ which then goes into the housing strip or something like that, I'll stick with a strip.

I will make something that at least, looks like the prototype, while also making it a one-piece component. This means the reverser can be removed with its gauge by simply removing the mounting bolts, housing clip and the reach rod pin.

I have not drawn for this, it will simply take shape as I progress.

I begin with a large (and heavy) bronze tube, which is 20mm OD with 4mm wall thickness.

I plan to machine this into a 'U' channel, representing the back of the track section, with lots of swarf here. The first job was to turn the round into a square, yep.. certainly a lot of swarf as can be seen here..:)

before making any more changes to the track I first placed it in its correct position and transferred the drilled holes from the stand to the rack housing.

Fast forward and we get to a stage where the track housing begins to take shape. Sometimes I  enjoy the time taken making swarf, this is such a time. The reason is that machining sessions like this give me plenty of time to think about what comes next, especially when I haven't drawn up a plan. A little explanation of what we see in this photo, we have the track that is deeper at the bottom (right) and shallower as we go to the top (left). The width is constant and now matches the gauge but later shall be narrowed in the middle as we progress. Holes have been drilled/tapped 8BA ready for fitting to the stand.

Here we see the dial gauge placed in its position to check for fit, The section above in this photo will be where the track latter narrows.

I then paid attention to the dial gauge plate itself, the first job was to drill 20 x 0.7mm holes using a PCB drill bit. I have used this partly done photo to point out that when things don't go to plan, stop and wait until you have the tools required. In this case, my PCB drill bit which is a few years old, has chosen this point to lose its sharpness, as seen by the last hole bottom right. As the holes all need to be counter-sunk, the job itself isn't affected/ruined. There was no point in continuing and forcing the drill as it would probably break and most certainly drill larger holes. I therefore stopped at this point and ordered new bits to be delivered the next day. It just ain't worth it guys...

Anyway, the drill bits duly arrived and I proceeded from where I had left off. These holes are drilled and tapped for 16BA CSK brass screws, I would have used 18BA if I could find any. The solution was to use the larger 16BA and turn down the heads to be closer to scale. Finding a 16BA tap for a reasonable price proved fruitless so I went with a clockmaker's metric size which as both are metric threads worked out fine. I bought a cheap set of said taps from eBay, 0.6 to 1mm and settled for the 0.7mm making life much easier to cut the thread. It wasn't exactly 0.7, a little smaller at 0.68 but worked out well. I used a suitably sized drill bit as a CSK, setting the mill quil as a depth gauge. A word on the holes, I have followed the prototype for the holes on either side of the gauge markings and added a row of 4 to the other side. The reason was that I needed 4 corner holes to mount the plate to the housing. The holes still need de-burring in this very close-up picture. I later changed my mind and soldered the plate to the housing instead of drilling more holes, there was no need to have the gauge plate removable.

To turn the screws down I used a Dremel and a needle file, this was surprisingly quick and easy, with heads taken down to approx 1.2mm dia. I found a lit magnifying glass very helpful here.

Here we see the components so far, the housing has been further worked on with the top part that the dial sits on machined to support the indicator marker which will be sandwiched between the housing and dial. The slot machined away at the bottom is to allow access for fitting the marker strip to the reverser screw. For the strip, I have chosen to use a metal strip, the sprung type found wrapped around pallets, I cut the width down using tin snips. For the dial itself, we can see that all of the screws have now been fitted.

This side image of the stand with housing in place should help explain what I'm up too.

I then test-fitted the reverser with housing track attached to the cab. A few things to point out here, this is as close to the prototype as I can get with the various boiler bushes for the steam fittings. When looking at the prototype the top of the dial sits about a 3rd up the steam valves, I can't do this with the blower bush being so close and of such a large size so will fit the dial position as shown below, but it still looks close to the prototype, close enough for me.

And now with the finalised machining of the housing and the dial gauge fitted

I then turned my attention back to finishing the internal workings for the dial gauge marker. Here, going left to right, we can see the housing, which now has its lower section painted. Today on FS, this looks completely black except for the gauge itself, but early pictures show this to be polished metal, as seen in preservation with Mallard. Next, we have the marker strip which has been profiled a little to give a smoother action and we now also have the hole drilled for attaching to the reverser arm. We then have the clip and shield, added to hide the strip. The prototype looks to have just the strip sliding through the clip bolted to the backhead cleading. However, that would require everything to be fixed directly to the cleading, not so easy when trying to assemble and perhaps giving different readings as the boiler expands. My idea of adding a housing to keep the whole assembly independent from the boiler should keep the readings more consistent and easier to maintain. One note, the strip has been filed at the bottom, this was me drilling the hole in the wrong place the first time around. I had forgotten to set the housing at its correct angle before marking the hole position. Once noticed I filled the hole with silver solder, filed flat, marked its position with the housing set at the correct angle and redrilled for 10BA clearance.

This is the finished reverser except for its final trimmings, such as the oil pipes, reservoirs and the sand steam valve. The shield has been fitted for this last photo but not its clip, I'll do that when back working on the leading.  The dial works nicely although I won't know how accurate it is in relation to the ports for a while yet, trusting in Don's calcuations here.

Last time we built the the front section of the reach rod, this time we shall tackle the rear section and the two pins required for fitting of said reach rod. There's no 'fork' to worry about this time and one might think that this would mean a speedy construction for the rear but we do have the the 'I' beam type joint to construct which actually is more work than a simple fork.

Having said that I did set things up in the last issue which saves us some time, that being deciding on a tongue width that matches one of the cutters I have to hand thus making life a little easier. After setting up the rear blank in the machine vice and clocking the centre I set about machining the slot on both sides to create the 'I' beam required for the front section tongue to engage with. I marked out the length of the tongue and machined to the line. The first picture tests the tightness of the fit between the 'I' beam and the tongue. Of course, I can't fully engage the tongue here until I cut the corners.

I then needed to cut out the corners, I did this first with a suitable chisel followed up with the Dremel and a small cutter.

Next up were the bulges seen top and bottom around the joint as shown in my photo of the prototype's reach rod last session. I approached this by creating a channel in a piece of steel bar that I first machined down to a size required to match the full-size scale and then cut in two to give both top and bottom sections. The channel was cut to a depth that when fitted would also engage with the tongue, the width of the channel matched that of the reach rod itself. here we see the two sections ready for brazing to the rod, once fitted they were then machined to length.

Once the bulge sections had been fitted I could shape them and push the two rod sections together and drill through the 3 holes. These parts are a drift fit and care was taken not to mark them using a wooden drift and small hammer to tap them home. Here we see the holes being drilled, before doing this I shaped a length of brass so that the bulge was encapsulated in a concave section of the brass bar chosen. My thinking here was that I didn't want to risk a void below the part when drilling in case the drill wandered off and pushed the other tongue down thus ruining the hole on the other side. The brass support was shaped so that with the bulge sitting in the concave in the middle, the sections of the reach rod themselves were laying flat along the top of the brass support keeping everything square, hope that makes sense? Note that I have already done some of the profiling to the bulge, ie the concave recess seen on the left-hand side. On the right-hand side, I have made the tongue thickener part a little longer than the prototype, you'll see what I mean if you compare the two. I did this to give more strength to a part already made up of several parts. If I had made this all out of solid as I mentioned last time I could have reduced the length of the thicker part of the tongue to match the prototype, hey ho....:)

Here we see the general shape of the joint very close to its final stage, just needing a final polish. The 6BA bolts have been fitted with washers on both sides and then cross-drilled to accept 1/32 split pins. I reshaped the pin heads to make them closer to scale size, a simple job for long-nose pliers. I used a suitably sized PCB high-speed drill at more than 1000rpm to ensure a hole that stayed on track and not deviate from the planned route close to the 6BA nuts.

We have a finished reach rod (well except for the final polish), a close-up of the joint tackled this session.

The only thing left was the two pins required to fit the reach rod, the two are very close in size ( made so that when tightened fully there is a slight end float to allow free movement on the reach rod ends) one has a thinner head as there's not much room in the cab between reverser shaft and cab side sheet. Both pins have had flat spots machined allowing for a 5BA spanner to make a good purchase for when tightening. These were built using the same method described for other pins throughout the build.

One question to answer is whether 4472 had a painted reach rod as she does today, back in the late 1930s. She certainly didn't in 1934 when she did her 100mph run as we have the famous photo showing the record-breaking crew standing in front of the unpainted reach rod. I'll see if I can find more pictures closer to 1938 to confirm my belief that the rod remained unpainted for my era.

Last time I said that I needed to look into the reach rod joint as Don's drawing wasn't very clear and as it turned out, not to the works drawing although in his defence it would look like it was from the side which is mostly what one sees.

Over the years I have been fortunate enough to have some invaluable help from those who follow my adventure, this time I have to thank Colin Green (Riley & Son's) and Rob Walker who is currently researching FS to build his own model in 7 1/4, I do not doubt that this model will be superb and accurate as it's all being converted to CAD from works drawings and direct measurements of the old lady herself. The trump card was that Rob had in his collection the reverser works drawing which included the reach rod, perfect!

So, what are the differences between Doncaster to the work's drawing...well for one Don has specified 5/32 thick rod (0.156) whereas the scaled-down size from work's drawing is 0.077. That's fine and I shall keep what in effect is a double-thickness rod, the rod is 2 feet long so I can see why Don has gone for thicker than scale, mind you it may be fun getting it to fit inside the cleading alongside the firebox. To help show what I'm up to I have drawn my version of a fag packet sketch on some A4 paper, better than a thousand words but very crude, it was enough for me.

The sketch below shows both Doncaster and works drawings, it's very simplified as it's just for me in the workshop and doesn't include the slight bulge on top and bottom seen at the joint itself but is good enough to show the differences for you and good enough for me to build from. Note that both pieces are shown end on for the works sketch to make it clearer.  Don's version is clever, and simpler to make while still retaining most strength in the tongue and not just relying on the 3 bolts to take the push/pull strain. I have included some of the dimensions. The note is not drawn to scale.

Following Don's overall dimensions I cut the front section to length, (both sections had been laser cut overlength at my request) I'll make the front to drawing and check the rear length in place, I need to be on the ball here as there is no adjustment in the design. The first job was to drill the 3 holes, center's from the end are 5/32+ 9/32+ 9/32 and then machine the step down for the tongue, so far following Don's drawing. For the tongue width I chose a size in between Don's and the works drawing, to make life easier I chose a width to match a suitable cutter to hand making the required slot to the rear section easier.

I then began to mostly follow the work's drawing while using Don's overall dimensions. As shown in my rough sketch, the two sections don't overlap as Don had drawn them but are a tongue-and-groove joint. The photo shows that I have cut a 2mm wide slot down the middle of the tongue. Now a heads-up note here, if I'd had my head properly engaged before machining this slot I would have first added the extra metal required to either side to represent the step as seen on the full-size. I blame it on the meds...:) No big deal but it meant extra work as I needed to drill both extra side pieces before silver soldering them in place. Silver soldering was done by holding the parts together with two 6BA bolts/nuts which were first heavily coated in bar soap to stop them from becoming part of the part during heating, this worked perfectly.

I missed photographing some steps here so will describe what I did plus yet another mistake. This time after finishing the joint end with the extra metal added to the sides and then machined to finish I happily went on to silver solder the extra metal needed at the other end for the fork only to realise after, that I had added the metal to the wrong side of the rod, great for a L/H drive engine but useless for my R/H version. Again, wasting yet more time I sweated the part off, cleaned up and reattached it to the correct side of the rod. No real loss but I clearly need to pay more attention to what I'm doing these days.

Here we see the finished front section after being cleaned and polished.

Before moving on to the rear section I first test-fitted the front end to the lifting arm as seen here. All looks good so far, I will need to make the 'hoop' type bracket that's attached to the running board main stay that the rod runs through. I also realised that I needed to finish off the lifting arm as I had yet to fit its taper pin.

Using a couple of clips and checking that both the reverser and lifting arm were in 'mid-gear' I clamped the two reach rod sections together. The reach-rod sections are lining up nicely.

This picture shows the two sections lined up for marking where to cut.

Next time I'll make the rear section, thus completing the reach rod.

With the reverser nearing completion it was time to take a look at the reach rod, but before doing so, I decided it would be wise to do some checks on the reverser's position, make sure it was correct as the length of the reach rod is very dependent on where the reverser sits.

I needed to check a few things such as that the boiler was in its correct position. To do this I needed to temporarily fit the cab and the smokebox to see when added how the boiler sat in relation to the rear main drivers, the ashpan and whether the smokebox was sitting in its correct location on the saddle. I found that the cab was very tight against the manifold bush and at first thought about moving the cab a fraction forward to give room. This worked, and the smokebox could still be fitted in its correct position on the saddle but I wasn't happy until I found out why I had to move the cab.

Eventually, I realised that when fitting the reverser (I followed the info Don gave) to give at least 3/32 clearance from the backhead, he doesn't give any more detail than that other than to state a distance for the shaft fork to be 4.250 from the centreline, nothing for its fore/aft position on the cab floor. The 3/32 measurement is to be sure that the reverser is given enough room for expansion of the boiler once in steam. This I did but I did it before fitting the cleading which of course adds to the back of the boiler, not by much but enough to make an already critical area tighter than it should be.

So the boiler was being forced a little too far forward to clear the reverser, hence, why I moved the cab a little. Everything fitted like this but it wasn't right and  I knew that it would always bug me even if not something that anyone was likely to notice, we were only talking a few mm.

There was only one thing to do and that was to move the reverser back a few mm, this might sound a little daunting at this stage but it isn't if a little thought is given to the method first. My approach (I'm sure you guys will have your own ideas) was to make a drilling jig with the holes drilled to tapping size only and with the job still held in the machine vice to drill the holes to drawing using the DRO. Before removing the part from the vice I drilled two extra holes a few mm forward of two drilled holes along one line, these were drilled to clearance sizes. A bit of a mouthful but hopefully the following picture explains this for me. All I had to do then was drill through the jig and then tap the new 6BA holes. To explain the extra small holes seen, this scrap piece was once the front running board plate as drawn by Don, later research showed this board to be incorrect as the real plate has cut outs along the front edge to fit around the frames. This was covered long ago in the relevant section.

Another check done before doing the above was to dry fit the manifold as it was this part's bush that was sitting a bit close to the spectacle plate. This is a true scale item as will be the other backhead fittings once I get to machining them, all drawings for these were kindly drawn by Adam of Cro Fittings and then cast in NZ by Michael Jack, they are all superb and will enhance the backhead beyond what could be done by hand, a tall order but you'll see why I say this once we get to that stage.

Here we see the reverser now in its new position, much better.

Now that I was happy with the boiler position I placed a mark on the boiler to make it easy to find this position again, after all the boiler will be on and off many times more before it's there for good.

On to the reach rod itself, the two main components were laser cut for me by ED (Model Engineers Laser) many moons ago so most of the boring work has been done. I still need to make the fork on the front section and the sleeve that strengthens the joint. I have a little research left to do here as Don's drawing has left out some important details, hopefully, I'll be fully armed with the knowledge needed asap. Following Don's overall dimensions ( he does say 'check to place') I clamped the two sections together.

With the two parts clamped I did a quick check alongside the model itself, looks pretty much there to me.

Next time I'll cover the fabrication of the rod itself now that I'm happy with the various pre-checks carried out.

I shall begin this update with a picture from Sir Nigel Gresley's overhaul images available online, I've probably said this before, but for anyone building a Gresley pacific, A1/3 or 4 the SNG online blog is a wealth of information.

I begin with this image of SNG's reverser sleeve, its thrust plate and what Don calls the nut although a threaded shaft probably is more suitable but nut is shorter...:)

The sleeve can be seen at the back, this is the part that pivots in the top of the reverser stand. We then see the bronze nut ( you can just see the thread at the top inside) which is sitting on top of the thrust plate. The sleeve and thrust plate are bolted together with the 4 large bolts enclosing the nut in between. in model terms these bolts will be 10BA and the ball raced thrust washers will be a part of the bronze nut itself, no need for ball races here.

Don begins with the sleeve, so shall we. Don states to start with a 5/8 sq length of steel and machine it down to 9/16 sq, that would be nice, alas the smallest that I had left was 3/4x 1/2 in gauge plate and so there I started. Not as bad as it may sound as gauge plate is a lovely metal to machine, once machined to the required size ( I machined it extra long) it was clocked in the 4 jaw. The spigot seen is 15/16 long, 3/8 OD and bored out to 1/4", the base needs to be 3/16 thick as does the thrust plate. In case it's not obvious I am making both the sleeve and thrust plate in one go and the state as seen is the sleeve base has been left over the required thickness and the thrust plate is slightly over its required 3/16 and, of course, both 9/16 sq. I have also knocked off the corners ready for hand filing of the rads later. My thinking is, that I save time is doing the basic machining while the parts are still attached to each other.

The job was then parted off and reversed in the 3 jaw ready for the machining of the 1/2 x 3/32 recess into the thrust plate. There will also be the same-sized recess machined into the bottom of the sleeve base, it's here within both recesses when bolted together that the nut will be held.

The last part to do at this setup was to part off the thrust plate, machine the sleeve base down to size and repeat the cutting of the 1/2 x 3/32 into it. With that done, the thrust plate was turned upside down and reamed together with the sleeve, the result seen here.

It was then time to machine the recesses that encapsulate the sleeve and drill the 4 No.51 holes, which would then be ready for 10BA bolts to hold the parts together.

This picture shows the recess being machined in the thrust plate, with the 4 N0.51 holes already done. These were drilled using the rotary table and with the sleeve and thrust plate clamped together.

After both the sleeve and thrust plate had had their recesses machined. I then bolted the two together trapping the sleeve in between the now 4 pillars checking that the sleeve turns easily. I wanted to fit a thrust bearing here as per full size but couldn't find anything that small commercially, we are talking 1/2 OD 1/4 ID and approx 0.040 wide, I haven't given up, so for now I have a bronze spacer of that size fitted in its place. Note that nut is overlength in this picture, left until I was happy with everything else, the sleeve is to size though.

Next, we move on to the more tricky part, not helped by an error in the drawing, we are,of course, talking about the fulcrum. A few things to point out why I believe that Don has this wrong. First Don has the fulcrum placed in the centre of the sleeve, a quick glance at The photo I posted above showing SNG's workings will show that the fulcrum sits lower down on the shelf. The next problem is that the sleeve and thrust plate when fitted assembled to the stand sit above the front face plate, it has to as it won't sit inside the stand itself. Don's own GA of the stand shows this. A third and more important reason is that the fulcrum point centre as drawn by Don sits 0.750 above the front face plate, however, the sleeve and thrust plate which we know sits above the plate are 0.375 for the base and then 0.468 from the base top to fulcrum middle, giving us a total 0.843 which, of course, won't fit, we also need a small gap between the two as the sleeve pivots above the front face plate, hope that makes sense.

Having decided to move the fulcrum lower down I then gave some thought as to how I was going to make this part and hold it square on the sleeve while silver soldering. Don suggests making a jig or even doing it by eye, his eyes were clearly better than mine..:) I chose a different method as described below. First, we have the 5/32 spigot (overlength) and a length of 3/8 brass machined down to be 0.500 long, I made it a few thou over this for later truing if required. I chose brass to make life a little easier for the next stage.

Ok, so I planned to drill through the brass fulcrum with a 3/8 drill thus giving me two parts, this is very much a Heath Robinson approach but I didn't want to waste time filing a scallop as Don suggests. I anticipated that the part would not stay still while drilling and so wrapped it in tape to give some grip and also cut a deep channel into some plywood which would close around the part when tightened fully in the machine vice. This worked surprisingly well leaving just a small burr at the bottom

With the fulcrum now in two parts I then needed to decide where to make the pivot point along the sleeve, before committing to drilling I test-assembled the parts and checked that where I planned to place the pivot point gave me enough room for the reverser to move fully fore and aft and also that the sleeve sat just above the stand front face plate. I came to 0.300 above the sleeve base, which looks ok to me. Here we see the sleeve trapped between the vice jaws, packed under and then drilled 5/32, I then placed one half of the fulcrum on the spigot to check for fit.

I then dry-assembled the parts to check all was ok. Note that the sleeve and base sit close to one side of the stand, this is as per full size.

I include this picture just to show that before silver soldering the parts together I machined a small amount out of the spigot centre. I did this to reduce the work of the cutter that I'd use to machine the centre away, choosing a mill cutter over a drill bit. Note also the two bearings in the background.

It was then time for the big heat-up, well, not that big but still a possible problem if I got it wrong. After fluxing the parts I used an old rusty clip which is perfect for these little jobs, as the fulcrum was a good fit to the sleeve the clip alone held the parts squarely for heating.

With the part joined I placed it in the 3-jaw and machined out the spigot centre, I started with a smaller 5mm cutter first, finished with a 1/4 and then reamed through. I then held the part by the over-length spigot to true up the fulcrum if required, they were pretty good anyway so I just removed the few thou that had been left oversize.

With the handle now made and painted we have a working reverser, I looked at a number of reference photos before deciding on how to finish the handle. I have seen red which, of course, is BR days, seen what looks like painted and unpainted, IIRC FS today is unpainted with a brass plate on top. I've seen flat tops and domed. I have gone for black taking note of the red handles which are worn down to bare metal where the driver's hands make contact and fitted a shallow dome just because I like it.

I still have the fine detail to add, the same goes for the backhead, plus not forgetting I could now make the reach rod, decisions, decisions..:)

Lastly a short video has been posted in the video page of the reverser working

Last update I said that the sleeve would be my next job (I have made a start) but forgot to mention that the backhead still needed some details so will cover those now.

First a picture of the first A1 1470's (later 4470 Great Northern) backhead from soon after her completion, this is basically the look that I'm trying to achieve. Flying Scotsman looked similar to this in her role for the film 'Flying Scotsman 1929' and I would think that she hadn't changed that much by my chosen era of late 30's. Things that had changed I will address during construction, one obvious change here being the lack of bucket seats and higher cab side (already covered) sheets and, of course, this picture shows the much more generous loading gauge for the north. The cab was reduced in height for the first non-stop London to Edinburgh run in 1928.

Before tackling the finer detail I finished shaping the cleading edges using a file, which looks much more even now.

Next was the fastening 10BA hex bolts and then washout plugs, I have a picture missing showing the bolts being drilled/tapped but they can be seen here while later working on the middle washout plugs. The two cleading halves were screwed down to a piece of board using the bottom edge to keep things square. The bolt holes were set approx 3mm in from the edge and marked by hand for their position along that line. I did this rather than using the DRO as looking at the reference these did not look very symmetrical, perhaps an apprentice job, well the same apprentice did mine..:)

You can see that I have already drilled most of the holes for the washout plugs and have two castings sitting in situ. These lovely bronze castings left over from another project are from JCT fittings and although slightly smaller than required do the job well enough for me. Note that due to the cleading being in two halves and that said plugs seen, live on the centreline I can only silver-solder them to one side, here I have chosen to fix them to the left-hand side but could be either.

A close-up of one of the castings sitting in it's (7mm) hole, this particular plug is close to one of the cleading mounting holes which luckily doesn't impede the job. Here we can see the plug has already been silver-soldered in place awaiting final filing.

and another of the plugs now having had its lip filed down to match the prototype

This gets us to the stage shown below, still lots to do such as the fire-hole door and tea shelf but those will be for after I have completed the reverser. Once the cab floor has been made which covers all of the bottom openings we should be getting much closer to the finished look.

So, next time, we will indeed, cover the reverser's internal workings, which I have to say I am currently very much enjoying making.

This is one of those 'interdependent' parts that need to be taken care of when building the reverser, or to be more precise for working out the brass indicator plate position. I have previously shown the laser cut plates as kindly supplied by Ed of Model Engineers Laser bolted to the boiler, a little fettling soon got them sitting as required. It was now time to curve the edges around the firebox crown and for this job, I have chosen a traditional tool not seen much these days. We are, of course, talking of the good old English wheel. Today's first picture shows a relatively cheap bench-mounted type that is perfect for a typical workshop environment with limited floor space, this is a Metz make.

This is a first for me, I've always wanted to play with one of these tools, and now I had the perfect excuse for purchasing one. They are cheaper than one may think. So, what do I think and what did I learn? Well, this is a pretty easy tool to use, take your time and let the wheel work the metal, don't try to go too quickly, increase the pressure a little and then work back and forward along the wheel. It's amazing how well this works as it forms the metal to your will. The metal naturally thins as it's worked, more than one might expect for such little effort, or at least it seemed so to me.

Ok so on with the job to hand, I soon discovered that I needed a smaller bottom die to achieve the final radius, I'll touch more on that below but for now this picture shows how far I got using the smallest die in the kit, one word, this took 'time'. here we see one half formed while the other is still flat, just to give an idea of how much you need to work the steel. This is only halfway there for the curve, it needs a much smaller rad.

Another picture from head on

As you form the metal it gets thinner and thus expands, easy to control, the only part needing special attention being the top inner edge where the various holes for fittings are closely positioned. An added consideration is the fact, that the top 3 bushes are in the actual curve itself and thus care needs to be taken while using the wheel here, I guess you could form the cleading first before cutting the holes but I think that may be more problematic later. Once happy with the basic shape I used some tape along the joint edge to mark where to cut away (file) the now expanded metal.

Above I stated that a smaller die was required for this particular job, I began by searching the web for a smaller die and found that 1/4" was available but rather than order one I also found that some dies are only made from Nylon. I hadn't considered this before but it gave me a plan/idea to make use of some 2-inch nylon rod given to me by my son-in-law when his firm closed down and had a big clearout some years back. All I needed to do was to turn this up following one of the two designs seen online and bore it out for a drift fit with some 3/8 th steel bar to fit the wheel bracket. Here is the new die fitted, note the 1/4" is to the outside edge, the other design found had it in the middle, I made this type as it suited the curve being so close to the edge of the work. I have to say it worked very well...

Here we see the result of using the smaller die, the metal now curves closely around the bushes and edge of the firebox sides and crown.  A little more fettling with the holes and that will be it other than final trimming of the outer edges. One thing to point out here is the position of the indicator plate. If you compare this with the image from the real A1 shown in the last update you'll note that I will have to lower the plate a little as the oversize blowdown bush is in the way, I suspect the plate will be sitting over the screw that holds the cleading on, (not a problem as the final screws will be CSK) and just below the bush itself. This will be another of those jobs to keep a close eye on being interdependent on others.

I then checked the progress to date with other components, in this case, the cab and the reverser, it's all getting very tight around here but nothing of concern.

This last picture for now hopefully shows how far the cleading has been able to curve around the side of the firebox, this may possibly need trimming once I know how any crinolines sit here.

next time I'll make a start on the reverser sleeve to fit the screw.

Don says " We now come to an area where everything is interdependent" Actually he says this later when reaching the construction of the sleeve, thrust plate and nut. Still, the next part is also very much interdependent of other later parts. The brass dial plate gauge for example is related very much to the backhead cleading, its fitting and the position of the plate and the strip that connects the reverser shaft to the plate. I, therefore, decided to take a look at these now before fabricating the sleeve itself, I will though make the screw as I need to work out the length of the marking strip and position of the plate.

First some pictures to show the relative parts, the plate as it is today on Flying Scotsman, I took this picture in York in 2016, a great reference for those building a Gresley pacific.

Technically, this is not correct for my chosen era as it shows a 75% cutoff; for my chosen late 30s, it should be 65%. As I have zero chance of finding a close-up image of the correct plate I have decided to use this later version, no one will know..well except you lot...

One thing that I do need to change though is the mount that the plate sits on as seen above, most of what's seen in this picture were not there in her previous life. I will therefore ditch the somewhat angular back mount and follow what Mallard has today and what also seems to be present in an early image of Great Northern's backhead when launched. The below image is what I am aiming for and for lack of a photo from my era is probably the most likely state of FS for the late 30's. Please excuse the poor quality, it's been blown up a lot for me to be able to see the detail. This also shows the marking strip between the plate and the reverser screw.  Although not very clear here we do have some great photos of Mallard easily available online, they show the same type and thus a good quality reference.

Ok, so on to the next part which is the screw, Don describes a simple 5/32 forked rod which is crossed-drilled to hold the marking strip. I have chosen to replace the rod with a length of 3/16 square bar, silver soldered to the 5/16 fork and then turned down to 5/32 for a length of 1"1/8,  5/32x32 Whitworth thread.

This gives me a flat surface for the marking strip to sit flat on, much stronger than a cross-drilled 5/32 rod which will not be easy to get at if it fails. The making of the screw is fairly straightforward,  I will share a tip here as my lathes 4 jaw chuck can't close up far enough for this size bar, K&S  SQ brass tube comes to the rescue as shown here.

A picture to show the completed screw temporarily attached to the shaft. I have also turned up a small flanged pin to connect the two together that fits easily inside the stand, to finish, this will be cross-drilled for a small split pin.

Some years back my son James did some laser etching at his old work for my model, we've not seen these in action yet but the batch included the brass indicator plate which was scaled from the photo shown at the beginning of this update, I can now finally make use of my son's fine work. The size of the plate was taken from Don's drawing, the etching was scaled from the photo as said.

The first job was to carefully machine a 1 mm narrow slot as seen in the next image.

Next was to machine the reverse side, first, a step was machined around the edge which will allow the plate to sit in a mount and then a 1/16 slot was also machined over the 1 mm slot for holding a plate to slide in.

A marker was then cut/shaped from a piece of brass shim and a 14BA threaded rod ( cut from a 14BA screw) was silver soldered to its rear.

This is the reverse side when assembled, the back plate still needs sizing in this picture, you can get an idea from the marks I have put on the sliding pad, it also still needs to be thinned for clearance, I'll do this once I have decided on and made the mount. This is very much still a work in progress.

The last piece of the puzzle for the gauge is the various screws that can be seen in the earlier prototype picture, I am still awaiting delivery of the very small 16BA brass CSK screws ordered. Wanting to get on I will, therefore, cover this later. I will also give the plate a highly polished look, as seen with the prototype.

In this update I'll cover the fabrication of the reverser shaft including the extra checks that I  took when assembling the parts thus ensuring no issues further down the line. This will be nothing new to most of you who probably do the same checks but is worth pointing out to those new to the game, Don gives some dimensions to check on his drawings which I'll also cover in the upcoming text.

Following Don's method of construction the reverser shaft comprises of 4 parts, a 2 inch length of 1/4" steel rod, a 3/8 x 1/8" length of flat bar to make the arm, a 3/8 dia collar and a length of 3/8 x 1/2 for the fork. The first job was to make the arm that will connect to the reverser screw, which is as mentioned a 3/8 x 1/8 flat steel bar, this has two holes, one of 1/4 and the other No.23 dia, which have 1 1/16 centres. This is slid over the 2" 1/4 steel bar, drawing says to mount it 3/8 from left side (will be the right side for an A3 or A4), I left the final position until the other parts had been made and after trial assembly to the stand. The first picture shows these two parts and the completed 3/8 x 1/8 collar dry assembled.

Next was the fork, for this, I used an offcut of black steel, it was the only piece I had in stock that was close to the required size. The fork is 5/16 wide with a 5/32 slot down the middle, after machining the slot I roughly marked out the shape as a visual aid for the next stage. Here you can see the rough blank ready for further machining, a point to make is that the two holes identical to the arm have already been drilled.

Before making a start on the final shape I checked the shaft along with the fork blank loosely attached for clearance along the firebox, bear in mind that the cleading still needs to be formed around the backhead corner.

I then removed the excess material from the fork, first chain drilled followed by step machining close to the profile.

For peace of mind, I dug out the cab from its storage box to get an idea of its position compared to the fork, (not seen that in a while). Note the slot cut into the spectacle plate, I did this when aligning for cutting the slot into the running boards for the reach rod to pass through, I will adjust this if required once I can check against the reach rod itself, The reach rod shape dips down past this area and is hidden behind the firebox cleading.

Here we have the completed components (not yet brazed) dry assembled to check fit, Don gives a dimension of 4 1/4 distance from the centre line to the outside edge of the fork, this is shown by the black line marked on the rule. Note in the previous pictures that I hadn't mounted the stand properly, here she sits in the correct position.

It was then time to silver solder the shaft parts together, here we see the parts with coils of silver solder wrapped around the shaft where required. Parts were thoroughly fluxed before assembly, a small broken number drill was used to get the arm sitting level and a simple jig was made using an old helping hands stand with a length of 5/32 steel rod to hold the fork upright and clock the arm to fork at 90 degrees. ( I noted at this point that pictures of A4's show this arm to be pointing down, not up, I checked back just to be sure that Don didn't have this wrong, I guess there's a good reason for this, perhaps something to do with the streamlining?) Someone will know..:)

The completed shaft

One final check to see if things looked right was to sit the shaft on the lower bearing blocks and hold a rule alongside the shaft and the lifting arms up forward, all looked good with the rule crossing the main running board bracket just where there will be another smaller bracket which the reach rod has to pass through.

Some last details to the stand before painting were to drill/tap some 10BA holes for the sanding valve and an oil box to bolt to. The oilbox feeds the shaft bearing blocks below. These positions were taken from photos although are reversed as the photos used were for an A4 and thus LHD. There is no drawing for the sanding valve but according to Don a 3/32 globe valve can be adapted for the task, that's for another day.

stand and shaft are now assembled, but the paint needs the final prep/coat, it looks like most other parts in this area also need some dusting and fresh paint..:)

Continuing from part 3 I am finally getting something assembled that looks like a Gresley reverser. I'll give a few details on the extra detail items covered in this article first. As stated in the beginning I decided to have the shelf hinged to make it easier to reach the cab floor mounting bolts, this presents a few obvious changes to the prototype, I already mentioned the omittance of the 12 hex bolts to allow for the shelf to be able to hinge up for access, on top of that the shelf sits a little lower as I'm using the pre-cut tabs as the hinge pins which leads to one other change is the small angled vertical plate which now needs to be deeper. Yes, I could spend yet more time making these parts as per prototype but they will be difficult to see anyway once in the cab and I do still have an awful amount of work to do to get this model completed, thus I took the easier route.

The two cut parts in the photo are to do with having the shelf hinged, the steel plate below adds back the strength to the side plate which will be lost with a moving shelf and the brass shape is a representation of the small angled plate that sits along the front edge of the shelf, it's , of course' deeper here due to the lower shelf position required to accomplish the hinges using the slots already cut.

The next extra was the 12 8BA hex bolts in 4 rows on the inside face of the assembly, outside omitted as discussed. As can be seen, I have taken advantage of using the base to hold the part square for this operation.

Here's the side with its bolts mounted and cut flush with the back face, note the bearing plate isn't fully aligned in this photo, which will be tightened fully once the assembly is brazed together ensuring everything sits squarely.

We are now ready to braze everything together which I plan to do in one go except the various bearing points, I'll get the bulk of the job done first so I can fine-tune the bearing positioning in a more relaxed atmosphere. The next picture is the last dry test fitting of the various components to make the reverser. There will be lots of final cleaning/fettling before this is finished.

Before brazing the main body I first tackled the shelf and its modified angled upright, these were pushed against the hearth bricks and held in place with a little help from some scrap steel. All parts were checked for squareness before heating.

On to the main body, alas in my eagerness to get this done, I forgot to take a picture of the first stage, the second being attaching the lower bearing blocks so I will describe both stages with just the one picture. The reverser body parts were individually coated in flux and then one by one put together. Next, I cut up suitable lengths of silver solder and placed these on the inside of the body, the plan being to protect them from direct heat as it's applied around the outside. I then applied yet more flux over the silver solder strips to ensure there was plenty as the heating session would be longer than normal, it took approx 10 minutes to get the solder to flow. I used a metal clip to hold the upper section together and square. After cleaning I attached the lower bearing blocks as seen in this picture although when heating it was the other way up to let gravity help. Before heating, I checked that the bearings were square by measuring the distance of the metal rod holding the bearings in place, checking both height and distance from the front edge.

this was then soaked in citric acid for cleaning, in this picture you can also see one half of the backhead cleading to which I attached some steel strips to keep the two halves when joined in line.

This got us to the stage of the basic body completed except for the final filing/cleaning and painting, I also have some more holes to drill/tap for auxiliaries to be mounted. I also still have the bearings to make and then align/attach to the top mounts which I'll cover soon.

Next time I'll make a start on the working internals, plus some work on the backhead cleading. I need to do the two in tandem as the reverser indicator slide needs to be positioned correctly to the leading, I'm still researching its operation but I think I have a fair idea of what's what. I'm always happy to hear from any of you guys who are familiar with the full-size workings. I finish with a taster picture of the cleading, with lots to do here including shaping the top and sides to curve around the firebox, I may even try my hand at an English wheel for this, that will be a first for me.

To Quote the great Don Young, "The stand will test both our resolve and patience" That may be so but then you add nutter's like me, and many of you other builders out there who add extra detail to the equation, that at times can test the patience of a saint, I suspect that the reverser will be such an item. Anyway, on with the craziness, before getting to brazing the reverser assembly together I first needed to decide on how the base would meet the cab floor, two options, carefully cut the floor around the base or mount through it. Cutting around the reverser might make removing the cab floor easier but to do that you'd first have to remove a lot more parts anyway, it would also leave the front right-hand corner unsupported, so not an option. So, do I plot the holes with precision or do I make life easier, and cut large slots or even remove the middle section entirely? Don states that the reverser on the prototype was very stiff, fellow builders of Gresley Pacific's have also warned me of this so I will not remove the middle section but cut slots so that the reverser base has more support underneath. The reason for choosing slots over slightly larger holes for clearance is purely a 'just in case' scenario where I might, for some reason need to work on something on the fly...you know, when at the track with limited resources.

Enough rambling, on to the job at hand, before cutting anything I lined up the floor and approx marked where to start machining. After taking a few measurements I marked where the hole in the top right centre of the base will be (not the doubler), the picture shows where I will set the DRO to zero when held in the machine vice.

After chain drilling rows of holes I used an endmill cutter (perhaps a little too large) to create slots which gave me far more clearance than I should ever need, my reverser now has a gear gate..:)

Do you recall me mentioning a cunning plan for following the prototype more closely but still being able to get access to the mounting bolts? Well, I plan to have the shelf, that sits above the bolts hinged so I can get at them. The photo below borrowed from SNG shows this shelf which also has a front shield to it, I'll add that later along with other parts. This photo is also useful for something else although not just yet, it just happens to show the indicator arm still attached giving a good idea of its angle and height, this info will become handy very soon.

My mod simply involves filing the shelf fitting tabs round so that the shelf becomes hinged, simple.

I then did a test fit of the assembly so far, here the shelf is seen in its lowered position. Also clear here is that the washout plug will need the reverser removed first for access to be able to clean this corner of the boiler, not really a problem as such an operation won't be done that often.

And here I show the shelf raised with a box spanner on one of the more difficult bolts to reach, it would IMHO be too difficult to reach, with the shelf fixed.

some details to note, I will add a rear wall below the shelf to put back the strength that I have removed by making the shelf changeable, I will need to omit the 8BA bolts on this side to allow the shelf to hinge, these bolts will be difficult to see here anyway once the cab is on, I will still place the bolts to the other side though.

All being well, the next update will finally show the stand brazed together with some of the extra details applied.

In the last article, we had the reverser ready for brazing but we're not ready for that stage yet. We first need to transfer the mounting holes to the reverser stool which, of course, hasn't yet been made, and then work out the exact position of the stool which will sit in between the main and trailing frames.

The stool itself is a simple rectangle of 2" x 1 3/8" (made to fit) from a length of 7/16" steel. Not having anything close to that size I machined from the closest size in stock which was 75mm x 50mm x 12mm.. a wee bit of machining required. I used a grinder to get close to size and then machined to size and thickness, not a five-minute job.  With the stool machined/squared to size, the next stage was to machine a channel into the underside creating a U channel. Don states to machine a channel leaving 1/8" on the side to the trailing frame and a little wider on the other side to give enough metal to tap into once this side has been tapered to match the main frame. The next picture shows this.

To work out the taper I first needed to take into account the reverser's relative distance back from the backhead to allow for heat expansion, Don advises to allow for 5/32", before I can do this I needed to place the backhead roughly in position. The backhead sections were cut from steel by Ed (Model Engineers Laser) some time ago, at the time I thought the plotted holes might need moving but now that I've had time to look at this more closely they just needed a little fettling to fit. The next picture shows one-half of the backhead temporally held using two 3 mm screws into the mounting bushes kindly fitted by Paul (Southern Boilers LTD), I only need to fit the side of the reverser for now. Note that the two tapped bushes at the bottom will be fitted with blanking plugs with the corner bush being fitted with a washout plug for boiler cleaning. The outside edge will of course be formed to curve around the outer edge of the backhead.

With the backhead positioned, I could then place the stool roughly in place and sit the reverser on top, I had left drilling the mounting holes into the stool until this stage just in case I had missed anything (I did, details in this update), I can now see that I can drill said holes ready for mounting the reverser (once brazed), more on that later. Here I have rested the stool with its finished edge up against the inner trailing frame edge allowing the 5/32 (4mm)gap between the reverser and boiler.

With the reverser in place, I could see/judge the taper required on the main frame edge, as can be seen here, it's not a lot. I also noted that I need to either remove a little from the frame stiffener or the stool, I'll opt for the stool.

I then marked the edge that requires tapering, the plan being to first achieve the correct taper and then remove metal until the stool fits between the frames. As you can see there's not much to remove and thus I did so with a hand file.

I then needed to transfer the reverser mounting plate holes to the stool, to do this I held the stool in the machine vice along with the mounting plate sitting on top, I drilled the first hole from this plotted at zero, and then the rest using the DRO.

Here we can see the 6 holes now transferred, note that these are at N0.42 tapping size for 6BA with the mounting plate holes requiring to be drilled out for clearance NO 34. later.

It was now time to decide on the reverser's final position while checking for Don's suggested expansion allowance gap. I also needed to be mindful that the backhead cleading will have some insulation sandwiched between it and the boiler. As the next picture shows, there's not a lot of room so have left the cleading mounting bushes as supplied which gives just enough room to clear the copper stay heads and allowance for some insulation material.

As mentioned I filed the taper by hand and checked for fit, the drawing shows that two of the mounting holes into the mainframes are shared with the drag box stiffener, I am not going to use these as fitting them would be more than a little problematic, I have also shaped the rear of the stool to clear said stiffener.

With the stool in position, I placed the reverser on it using a couple of No.42 drills to hold it in place while I checked the gap, the gap here is just under 5mm so a little larger than Don stated.

To transfer the inner bolt holes I first marked the holes with a fine point pen (not easy to reach this area, thus transferring holes in the normal way is not possible) and then set the stool up to use the DRO for drilling the holes to match those in the mainframes. With the holes drilled and tapped I made life a little easier by putting a point on the 6BA bolts as shown in this next picture.

Here we see the 3 bolts fitted tightly and ready for marking/drilling the outside mounting bolts.

To keep everything flat for the holes to be transferred/drilled I bolted the reverser base to the stool ready for marking out the holes, it was here that I discovered an error that I had made when fitting the reverser base to the stool. I had placed the base directly on the stool but actually, it's offset to the outside, I only noticed when checking the fit with the base doubler bolted to its base. No big deal I just needed to redrill/tap the offending holes but an annoying delay nonetheless. The picture with the doubler plate held shows the problem, there needs to be a gap matching the thickness of the frames.

Before taking the base off I first transferred where the holes should be and then marked the frames down from the top edge 9/32 for where the outside holes need to be drilled. I chose to mark where the holes would best be avoiding the spring guards which Don left off his drawings.

I hate drilling into painted parts but if needs be, I'll have some tidying up to do later.  After drilling a hole I placed a spare drill to keep things in place while drilling by hand.

Lastly for this update, we see the reverser base on its stool which is securely mounted and sandwiched between the mainframes and trailing frames.

Next time I'll take a look at the cab floor fitting and then the final assembly and brazing up of the reverser stand.

Yes, I'm back on the loco, It's hard to believe that the last time I worked on the loco itself was June 2022. The workshop still has some way to go but internally I have half of it powered and it's warm with a new Infrared heater, good enough to continue with the main project while outside is a bit wet and cold.

The Reverser on a Gresley Pacific is a fairly involved component and thus will take a number of parts to cover it in detail. Don's drawing is really good, very close to the prototype needing just a few details added to complete the picture. For those who are on the same road as myself, we are lucky to have plenty of very good photos freely available on the A4 60007 Sir Nigel Gresley overhaul blog.

This is a particularly good image showing the general stand, there are plenty of others that will help greatly during the build of this part

The sanding valve seen on the front of the stand is covered in Don's words (no drawing) but there is another oil cup that sits below this that feeds the two bearing caps below via copper tubes, these will be added later.

Before I forget, I should point out that we are looking at a L/H reverser, of course, I need a R/H version for my A1. The two are identical being just a mirrored image of each other, Don's drawing is for a R/H engine as shown here.

As can be seen, Don's is a very close version, there is one discrepancy ( other than a few small profile differences) in that Don's drawing suggests a vertical plate to the rear on the right side, just behind ( above as viewed) the bank of 6 holes. Compare this to the photo and you can see that Don has left off the platform with supporting web which is seen on 60007. In my mind, he may have done this for two reasons, first to add some strength to the outside bearing plate, and second, with the shelf plate fitted it would be difficult if not impossible to access the 6 mounting bolts below. In Baldric's words, I have a cunning plan to fit the shelf and still be able to reach the bolts below, more on this later.

Enough of the background, on to the model, as with many arts on my model I have used laser cut parts to save time, thanks again to John Baguley for doing the CAD work and Ed Parrott of Model Engineers Laser for doing the cutting. There will be more pictures than usual as it's easier to understand my process.

Below we see the parts as supplied by Ed.

A quick dry run to check the fit

The first job was to drill the holes in the base plate, this needs to be done before barzing together.

next job was to make the bearing caps which will eventually be silver soldered in place. I first made 4x 3/4 lengths of 1/4 sq bar, these were overlength to begin with, and then drilled 1.8mm ready for tapping 8BA into the bottom halves fitted to the stand, the top halves then being opened up for clearance. You will see the relevant dimensions in the drawing above.

The parts were then bolted together and equaled in length ready for drilling the 1/4" bore down the middle of the bearing block. Normal practice perhaps for this is to clock the parts in the 4 jaw and bore them on the lathe, I chose to do the job on the mill, it's a quicker setup, and for this particular job more than accurate enough.

Drilled and reamed 1/4"

I then needed to profile the blocs to shape, first I bolted the two assemblies together and held them securely on a pair of parallels in the machine vice. The bolts and the jaws gave enough support to machine the first of the block tabs down.

for the other side, I added a small tool clamp (needed a little ground off) and this time sat the blocks on top of the jaws to finish the machining.

It was then over to the trusty files for a little hand work, the final job involving a Dremel sanding drum to polish.

here we see the blocs finished and assembled along side one of the stand sides. I only needed to polish the top of the blocks as the bottoms only needed to fit into the scalloped recesses for silver soldering.

The last picture, for now, shows the parts worked on so far now dry-fitted together. A few things to point out, you'll note that the top bearing mount which is a separate part from the left side upright has been drilled and temporarily bolted to it. Note also that the other thinner side also has matching holes in it, these will be filled later.  Also note that the bracket has a dog leg in it, only small at 1/16th but there nonetheless. I decided that the easiest way to do this accurately was to bolt the already formed bracket (scribed and folded in the vice) to the other side with a piece of 1/16th brass offcut sandwiched between, a bolt through the pivot holes for alignment,  and then spot and drill through to ensure that all would line u on final assembly. I then did the same to the shorter side upright that the bracket bolts too, basically using the thinner side piece to plot the holes in both the upright and the bracket that bolts to it. Both the pivot and the bearing caps will be reamed through again once everything is brazed up. The other thing done is profiling of the front vertical plate as per the original photo.

Next time we'll hopefully see the stand all brazed up and my plan for fitting the shelf over those mounting holes, assuming it works, of course.

I'm getting closer to being able to recommence working on 4472 again and in fact will do so before actually finishing the workshop, not so much the internal areas but the outside which still needs tiling and painting, once that is done, I can decide on the colours, or should I say those railway colours that I can get past senior management. Naturally, I want LNER but may have to settle for Midland as the red matches the house's front door.. the walls of both the house and the workshop will match being a cream which can cover both LNER and Midland liveries...we shall see...

Ok, so back to the inside and a few bits and pieces to do, first up is the last of the internal insolation sheets, this one being the truss over the large door, I'll board it later. This photo also gives a good view of the curved 1/8th white hardboard running along the middle, I'll add the larger side sheets to cover the rest of the roofing insulation later, I think there are going to be a few of these  'later's'...:)

Some small items now finding their homes, first, we have the rather dirty-looking spray booth used for spraying small detailed parts along with general model making. The filter and perspex will be changed later.

Also, we have the brazing hearth, my old one made up of fireproof MDF and heat bricks is being replaced with this lovely brazing hearth which I recently bought from a fellow member of NLSME. This is perfect for the remaining brazing sessions required for 4472, all relatively small now, and also for some of my other things to build, for example, a G1 Barretts King, one day. The first job for the hearth will be the reverser, more on that with the next article for 4472.

This next stage was most welcome, I finally have a good light source, 4 LED strips using daylight bulbs that are nice and bright, no good for painting ( need natural light) but perfect for everything else, at least I can now see what I'm doing. Forgive the photo, it is actually just the one picture taken from the far corner but due to the L shape gives the impression of being two images joined together.

My humble lathe is now on its stand, luckily for me two of my sons came to my aid and manhandled it into position.

This Warco WM300T lathe combi has served me well since 2000 but to be honest needs reconditioning, the bed is a little worn, and there's far too much slack in the cross slide, one day.

With most of the tools now in their homes, I'll show a couple of general views to give a better idea of my working area. This end where the hoist is situated will be where most assembly work takes place along with the spraying and brazing stations. Here I can lift the loco to work under her, spin her around, and also to lower her to the floor using the swinging gib. You can also see that some of the hand tools are now easy to find.

Now, this area will be where I spend most of my time, I have made this as nice a place to work as possible, I have plenty of light, both from the LEDs but also natural light through the 3 windows, the largest of which is directly in front of the main sitting area.

Here is a list of the next jobs written out on my whiteboard job sheet that lives on the inside of the small door. I may not tackle them in this exact order but I do plan to finish what's on this list before moving on...famous last words.

This picture shows that 4472 is indeed back where she belongs, with lots to do before completion but at least I'm now close to being able to work on her again.

One final picture to show the outside and perhaps if anyone has any ideas of what to paint which colour they may let me know. I am quite pleased with myself in how this is all coming together, not only have I built a reasonably sized workshop but also have the space for a carport to cover my classic car. I have moved the picket fence over to give me room for the carport which will sit to the right of this picture along the picket fence. The gate seen will be replaced with a large sliding gate with one of the fence panels being removed to give a larger entrance, the two posts seen behind the gate will be removed to give clear access to the carport, well at least that's the current plan. Looking at the painting, if I get away with being allowed LNER I'll paint the concrete panels in cream, as will the wooden cladding on either side of the doors and the truss panels. The LNER green will be on the facia boards and beam above the large door, roof will be slated in black tiles. I may have to concede to the picket fence not following LNER green, I may get away with using the cream or I guess that I could do it in white to match the workshop doors which will also be white. Other options for the green are Maroon red for Midland or perhaps chocolate brown for GWR. Decisions, decisions...

Having already built the smaller workbenches in the new building and now that the main area was covered in Plywood I could move on to building the larger benches which will be where most of the work on the loco will take place. The other benches will be used for smaller scale models ( I have a G1 King kit to build) and also doing some of the finer detail parts such as the backhead fittings when I get to them.

This main bench will also take the shape of an L, one side being 2.1 mtrs along the back wall and the other along the side wall of 4.2 mtrs, this is where 4472 will live for all of the remaining work to be done until completed. We begin with the first picture showing the support beam screwed into the plywood along the long wall. This will have legs added to give the needed support for the weight of the loco, currently, it stands at 244 lb but this figure still has a way to go. The space left at the far end is for my old book cabinet to fit into.

I then built up parts of the frame for the bench, note that for the beam along the wall, I cut the legs to sit under the beam and then screwed them to the wall. This is so that the weight isn't all sitting on the screws in the ply, the outer legs are cut to the same height as the frame and screwed to it, I can do this as the weight is still supported by the 4 x 2 legs and not the screws that secure them to the frame, hope that makes sense.

With the frame erected, I could temporarily store some gear off the floor while waiting for the worktops to arrive. I chose 2 x 3mtr length 28mm laminated kitchen tops from Travis Perkins. I chose this size as I wouldn't be able to fit the hoist support if fitting one long 4.2m top, it was a struggle with the 3 m. Note the scaff tube leaning approximately in its position awaiting the arrival of the work surface.

A picture tells a thousand words, or so they say. The worktops have arrived and are resting in their positions ready to be screwed to their respective frames. It all looks so easy but trust me even with cutting a larger hole for the tube to pass through it still took two of us to manhandle everything into place, lucky for me my new neighbours are very helpful.

On to the hoist, when selecting a position for the hoist I needed to consider the area around it so that I had room to lift the loco to both work on and also to lower to the floor and where it could be supported at 3 points. As it happened the supporting trust which was placed to allow an 8-foot roofing board to reach was ideal for what I needed.

This is an early picture showing the minge clips (yes that's the correct wording) clamped to the wooden trust crossbeam. There is an extention peice sitting on top, this was for the height of the old workshop, I have a little more height here and thus later cut a longer section of tube to fit. The two castings are to support the swinging gib, more on this soon.

At the floor I have used a floor mount which is held to the concrete floor via two anchor bolts, think they are 10mm. As can be seen, one has already been fitted with the other awaiting tapping home into the drilled hole before tightening up. There are two grub screws to hold the tube securely to the mount.

that's two of the securing points taken care of, the 3rd is into the bench frame itself, here I have doubled up on the frame timber to give plenty of meat for the special mounting clamp used. Once all mounting points were attached, the tube was checked for being upright and then everything was tightened up fully.

A final picture of the hoist gear, the hoist itself was bought off eBay, and there are a number of suppliers to choose from, the same goes for the swinging jib. This setup has proven itself to be very strong while in use at the old place, this should be stronger still as it's bolted to a concrete floor whereas before it sat on a wooden floor. The electric hoist is rated for 250kg, you can buy bigger but this suits me for the task at hand.