Starting at the rear, I added new brackets to the roof using drilled out plastic card, grab handles and a ladder made out of 0.5mm Plastruct rod (I don't know what I would have done without it during this build!), together with lamp hangers made out of the same rod mounted on to blocks of Plastruct strip. At the base of the tender I added a new shelf from Plastruct strip as the OOB was far too narrow and underneath that I scratched up some vacuum pipes from plastic rod carefully bent to shape around a pencil - the kit only provides for one such pipe, but photos show two and in addition the kit pipe is moulded as being nicely stowed in a loop, whilst most photos of working locos show the pipes dangling. The hook is from the kit but with the solid-moulded chain removed and replaced with a bit of cosmetic metal chain from my spares (I knew that would come in handy one day!). The chain is a little over scale and in a rather fetching gold colour but it will paint up and looks a lot better than the OOB chain IMHO. To finish up, I added yet another length of 0.5mm Plastruct rod between the chassis rear members to simulate the visible part of what I believe to be the brake hanger assembly. Alas, the kit buffers have pin holes in their centres which will have to be dealt with prior to painting.
Less work was required at the front of the tender and, as alluded to in my last update, I replaced the moulded on side parts with plastic card which was drilled to accept yet more Plastruct rod for the handles. I also built up a new front chassis shelf arrangement from plastic card as the OOB was far too thick.
And finally, here is the tender posed with the loco to give an idea how it will finally look. The loco body and chassis are not glued together and neither is the roof fixed to the cab.
I intend to apply one or two parts to the underside of the loco and then, finally, I will start to apply some paint.
Thanks for looking.
