A very successful weekend in Ely and now looking forward to taking Wickham Market out in 6 weeks or so. It was a packed day and I didn't end up taking any photographs, I'm afraid, so you'll have to take my word for it.
I've had a change of era since coming back: to break off from the 1950s stock momentarily, I've started work on the scratchbuilt C1 I acquired earlier this year. I'd like to get this into a state to be used on Grantham at Newcastle the week after Spalding. We'll see how that pans out. For the moment I've removed the old mechanism and replaced with a High Level large coreless motor and 40:1 Road Runner plus gearbox, which is what I've used in all these up to now.
I'm waiting on some wheelsets before I fit pickups and get it all running. In the meantime there was detailing to do on the bodywork. The builder intended this to be a C1 in original condition, whereas I will finish it in 1930s LNER livery. I will not be undoing his work to move boiler bands and washout plugs as I fear that woudl be too destructive. It's fundamentally a lovely piece of work and I want to enhance it as far as I can.
The tender had a triangular piece missing from the corner flare which had to be reinstated and then the lifting eyes made and fitted.
On the body, working forwards from the cab, the whistle actuating lever was loose, the pipe or spigot at the base of the firebox wasn't present, the oilboxes had come off when the glue failed (now soldered), one set of steps was missing and had to be remade and there was no lubricator. I also added the lifting holes in the front of the frames and reattached the smokebox where it had broken away from the saddle.
Round the front, I moved the smokebox handrail to the higher position and filled in the old holes, removed the cast dart and added a brass one and reapplied the top; lamp iron, which promptly fell off again. We'll try that again tomorrow.
