We have been asked how best to fit our buffers. So, here's how I do it.
For buffers drill a 2mm hole in the buffer beam, for the buffer
head itself, hold the buffer in a pin chuck and gently file any
mould line away. Use emery to smooth further, then use an
abrasive pad (medium or fine), and twist the buffer face
into the pad until you have what looks like a turned face.
Clean any mould lines off the rear of the mounting plate
and fit onto wagon with a spot of Cyano glue.
After completing the test builds of our chassis and fitting them into a few of my own kit built locos I offer a few observations.
Our Stanier chassis can fit into the Brassmasters tender and everything lines up well - just a couple of millimetre to take off
the rear end to clear the bufferbeam assembly and new fixing holes to drill in the body.
The older DJH Stanier tender has mainframes
that are too deep by 1.25mm so our frame stretchers or the DJH frames require height adjustment. The later DJH tender as
on my 8F kit is correct and our chassis lines up well.
The Fowler Chassis fits various kits and RTR tenders, some
with slight modification to the model, but the DJH Fowler tender again has the frames too deep by more than 1mm so the height adjustment
will be necessary to either the frames or our frame stretchers. Also the cut-outs on the underside of the tank to clear the wheel
flanges need to be enlarged to clear the suspension movement of the wheels.
Update on Tender Chassis
Quality matters