As planned I have made a start on the main vacuum pipe which runs the length of the loco and tender, in fact, the whole train but you guys knew

As I said last week, this week I'm fitting the gravity sanders, having looked at this area, I've also decided to catch up and some of those many small jobs

This will be the final chapter on sanders other than when I refit them to the chassis, hopefully on Monday. All of the parts have now been made and tested,

Good evening chaps..ok so a slight change of plan... after I posted the last update it was pointed out to me by Kevin Fisher and Peter Pope (FB) who

As well as playing around with sand today  ( i checked to see if the sand worked as planned, it did) I have also made a start on the trap shields,

I spent today finishing the filler tube for the driver's side and then repeated the process for the fireman's side. A few pictures to show/help explain my thinking... first

Having given this some thought, I decided that the next job that must be done is to make the sandboxes. I did mention before that I'd need to do the

Inside connecting rod I then made a small start on the inside connecting rod, my thinking is to get the inside motion done first as it's relatively easy, well not

Slide-bars As suspected I have gone off on a slight tangent and made a start on the slide-bars, I am beginning with the middle cylinder and may, but not set

On to the liners which are made from bronze, I can't recall if I said it was PB102 or PB104 but it's one of those, think it's listed elsewhere in

I've spent the last few days tidying up various bits and pieces and finishing off the outside cylinder slidebar brackets which are part of the casting. I'll show the right-hand

Back to reality and on with the build, I haven't got much to show for tonight but since this next job is fairly involved I'll cover what I've done so

Well, it didn't take me long to clean up the tender, I also put some oil in the axleboxes while I was at it. I have now put the tender

Continuing on, I have taken a look at a way to secure the rear of the boiler, this is something that is omitted from some designs including 'Doncaster' relying on

So onto the outside steam pipe covers, I'm sure glad that I'm posting more regularly as tonight alone there are 9 pictures which takes a fair while to write up.

So, I mentioned that I would sort out the running boards as my first priority but before I can do this I needed to ensure that the boiler was in

NB: This really is getting very 'Deja Vu' as it wasn't that long ago that I gave these details on this page. However, it needs recording on the blog and

NB: This is only a short entry covering the start on the steam chest covers, it was at this time that Paul Tompkins (Southern Boiler Works) began work on my

I now move on to the cylinder covers, these come as cast discs including a spigot with the cylinders. First job was to true up the spigots, for this, I

I wasn't really sure what to do next as I fancied a less stressful job for a few days but since I've got back into the 'cylinder mode' I thought

Next on the list was the cylinder cover for the main bore, I had machined a slightly oversized cover some months back when last working on the cylinder where you

Back with the middle cylinder then, I took my time setting this up on the lathe's cross slide. After bolting the angled wedge to the cross slide and checking it

My first thought for today was to fit the leading coupled axle so that I could turn the chassis over but realised that in doing so I wouldn't later be

Return Crank: Lots of pictures for this job. First up to show what's actually being made, this is Don's drawing which more or less follows full size, in fact, the

Last time I laid out my plans on what to do next, one of the jobs on the list was to radius the axlebox slots and that's what I have