A weekend at home in Wakefield for a family event has mean’t extra time to crack on with the J71 which is almost there now.

Like most classes of locomotive, the J79’s had a wealth of details over their life. a couple were Westinghouse fitted but 1662 was vacuum fitted in later life (it retained the steam brake for the loco braking) and the vacuum pipes were the under buffer plank hanging type rather than the more common upright variety.

The pipe ran down the bottom of the valance on the right had side of the engine and the mounting brackets looked quite substantial. Initially I made my usual mounts from scrap etch folded in ‘P’ shape but they just didn’t look right. After a rummage in the box that I keep all my rod and strip sections in I came up at a loss and it wasn’t until looking in a drawer for something else that I chanced upon some short lengths of bullhead rail.

They seemed perfect from an edge on view so a couple of attempts to get the right length later and I had 4 mounting brackets. To make them I drilled a hole through the web and then cut the from the back through the web like this

I also drilled a hole in the roof and filed it square for the roof ventilator then cut a scrap of etch for the cover. To get it to sit at such a jaunty angle I popped a bit of thich scrap etch under it at one end then gripped the other with a pair of self locking tweezers. turn it over and touch the soldering iron inside the hole for the ventilator and its firmly held in place at an angle.

The remaining whitemetal body details were then fixed in place with epoxy and thoughts returned to the chassis.

Not included in the kit but very visible on the sides of the chassis are a couple of injectors. A search through Laurie Griffins site didn’t reveal any that looked remotely suitable so I decided to make my own from brass tube, rod and some 14BA nuts with copper wire for the pipes.

And of course the photo has revealed that I need to nudge one of the nuts to close the gap…

Finally a shot with a 5p coin to show how big they aren’t