This week has been about adding small details to the body work starting at the front, I added the smokebox door dart, and the handrail above it. The LMS design of handrail has the rail ending in a button at each end. I have heard of people making these from microbore tube but I didn’t have any nickel silver tube so I put a short length of 1.4mm nickel rod in the lathe and drilled it out to fit over the handrail at either end and then fitted the rod into a pin chuck to chop of the appropriate length soldering on to the hand rail and filing to finish. From the photo I still have a bit of cleanin up of excess solder to do on the handrail knobs.

One detail that is quite prominent on the smokebox door but absent from the kit is the door latch. It is included in the GA reproduced on the front cover of the Wild Swan volume so I was able to import this into Fusion 360 not only to get the length and spacing of the handrail and knobs but also the outline and dimensions of the latch.

The latch itself was filed up from a strip of scrap etch which I doubled up at the thicker end to file to shape to accommodate the curve of the smokebox door.
The brass rod will be the stay which fits into the front ring. It’s 2mm x 1mm bar and I popped it in a 1-2mm ER 25 collet to turn the spigot on the end. The fun bit will be soldering the latch onto the door. But more of that when I have achieved it.