Since my last post I have been beavering away identifying and curing the shorts on the tender which I am happy to say that I have done.

As with many things in life getting there required at least one side project. During last Thursday’s GOG online modellers meeting the consensus was that I really needed to dig my multimeter out of the depths of the shed. On friday morning I bit the bullet and started to pull out plastic stacking boxes (having first removed the lawn mower, petrols cans, oak kitchen cabinet doors and finally my router table). An hour and a half later I had retrieved one of my two multimeters and put everything back.

Sadly the one that I found was the one with the missing probe, the wire was there but the common probe which had broken off in the dim and distant wasn’t with it. Before embarking on making a new probe I fitted a new battery to test that it still worked which thankfully it did. The metal section of the probe was made from a length of brass rod which sat atop my useful bits box on the workbench and I quickly drilled one end to accept the wire and turned a step onto the other to fit snugly into the yet to be made insulated delrin handle.

I didn’t take photos along the way but this is the finished article alongside the original ‘live’ probe.

Once I had it I reassembled the tender chassis test along the way without find any further shorts.