A4 Skirt - Rear Plating Change

[73D]

For those of you who haven't seen my posting in the Photographs and Videos section I posed a question to see if anyone knows the answer. It came about after seeing the pictures of the skirting now being applied to 4489 Dominion of Canada I noticed that they are splitting the rear plate into two sections, a later modification that happened from 4462 Great Snipe onwards? The modification on the drawing is dated 14th October 1937. This was obviously done so the whole lot didn't have to be removed for access.

At the time the bell was fitted to 4489 the rear plate was still a single section and I wonder if it, or any others that had the one piece plate (2509 - 4498), ever had it modified. Anyone out there know – seen pictures of this?

To try and make it clearer I have attached pictures of 4498 Sir Nigel Gresley with the early version with just three fixing bolts in the middle of the plate and 4468 Mallard with the later version, which has two extra lines of bolts, showing the split, in front of the three that hold the plate in place.

[silverfox]

That is going to drive the rivet counter watchers at exhibitions nuts!!!

[Hornby Dublo]

Iam finding this quite riveting

[60800]

Well, my Hornby 4468 has the earlier style

[73D]

Well over 200 views and no one, so far, has seen pictures of early locos having the plate modified, so it seems that they kept the single panel until the skirting was removed. As it would be a simple thing to modify it seems odd that it never happened.