Since my last update the loco seems to have fought back a little. I am not sure whether it was that I had folded the sides of the cab floor too tightly but the sides needed trimming down to fit. That said it’s a snug fit in the cab so it’s probably unlikely.

My next task which again needed a lot of work for very little to show for it was the upper frame sections that fit between the splashers. Each piece was between 1mm and 2mm two long so they had to be patiently cut and filed until they fitted in the space between the splashers and seated properly.

Still a bit of cleaning up to do.

Having sorted the cab floor I looked at the upright pillar that support the cab doors. These have a pair of slots in them to take a half etched tabs on hinges of the cab doors. Again I am not sure if it was me but once I had folded the small section that is bent at right angles the slot was completely closed. To be fair that wasn’t an issues as I had already decided based on past experience to make the cab doors removable.
This I did by soldering a couple of short lengths of micro bore tube in between where the holes should be (even though the holes were no longer visible, there was a half etched recess). Then I used a small broach as a spacer and folded the half teched tabs on the doors around to make a hinge and inserted a cut down dressmakers pin to hold the doors in position while leaving them free to move and removable by lifting out the pin.

Next I fitted the rear cab roof arch and started to form the cab roof.

The cab roof was a challenge in it’s own right and required quite a bit of coaxing to get it to curve to the right shape being half teched nickel I was very conscious of it wanting to crease across the top where the two strips either side of the opening are.

In the end to get it to stay in shape with a chance at being soldered to the top of the cab I used a piece of scrap etch as a former/stay. this fits just inside the rear arch frame. I dropped lucky in that where one of the sections of arch was removed from the etch left this strip which was at exactly the same curvature as the front/rear so perfect for the task once the cusp etc was cleaned up.