Cherry Clan

Now we can get on with building the main tanks for the loco, which starts with the front spectacle plate for the cab. This has another half etched overlay which provides the rivet detail around the top visible part of… Continue Reading →

Building the rear bunker. Next in the instructions we move to the rear of the loco to start building up the bunker. We start with making up the rear of the cab with the fitting of the coal doors. The… Continue Reading →

Building the front footplate The next sub-assembly to build is the front footplate unit. We begin with finding all the etched parts for the platework, these form the saddle and the front dummy frames visible above the footplate. The component… Continue Reading →

Forming the boiler Whilst cleaning up the multitude of castings for the springs, hangers etc. for the chassis,  I thought I’d make a little progress on the bodywork so I’d get the feeling of getting somewhere. The bodywork initially is… Continue Reading →

Moving on to the cylinders The cylinders are a fairly hefty brass castings, and the rest of the components, cylinder end covers etc are more nice castings. Thin overlays provide the etched detail for the cylinders, which means that the… Continue Reading →

The rear bogie again is a mulitude of etchings and castings but it is all clearly covered in the instructions. There are 4 hefty castings for the axleboxes and this may be the only small problem if building the bogie… Continue Reading →

Building the front pony truck Whilst pondering the arrangement for the suspension I turned to building the front pony truck as another little self contained unit. First task to hand was to separate out all the components required, how many… Continue Reading →

After the ashpan the instructions start laying out the frames and the beam compensation. This is one of the small deviations I have made in the kit, preferring to go for sprung compensation in the form of Continuous Springy Beam… Continue Reading →

The instructions start with building the ashpan. This is a good little introduction to the tab and slot construction method used in the kit. So these are the 10 etchings required for the ashpan, which are fairly easy to assemble…. Continue Reading →

What’s in the box The kit is delivered in a rather plain un-assuming box, the first impression is the weight, it is heavy. Once opened you can see why, bags and bags of lost wax brass castings. There are 8 bags… Continue Reading →

Research material for the 4MT build. For any loco build it is imperative to get some good quality period photographs to work to. For many years I have had excellent service from The Transport Treasury. They have an ever expanding range… Continue Reading →