Cravens chassis

 

Clipping a quickly assembled chassis into the body reveals an interesting problem - it's too high at one end. 

This is no surprise, the training bogie is supported by a casting but the instructions provide no clue which way up it should be fitted. I actually flipped it over half a dozen times trying to guess the orientation and in the end gave up, screwed it in place and then filed around 3mm off the support until the model sat flat. 

One "issue" with the kit design is that according to the instructions, the body is painted inside and then glazed and THEN you fit the chassis and build the rest. That's lovely, but how do you spray the outside?

My plan is to glaze after painting which means I need more finger holes, hence the large holes sawn out around the trailing bogie. The nut and bolt fixing of this and the driven end will also help as I will need to be able to remove these.

All nuts are fixed in place with Pound Shop epoxy resin. The whitemetal pivot for the bogie is replaced with a big, fat, bolt. I had to bush the hole in the stretcher with some plastic tube for this to work but I found some in my stocks that was about right - a little reaming in the middle opened it up enough for a slightly sloppy fit so the model handles less than perfect track.