Thanks for the kind comment glencairn,
I've been even more disorganized than usual over the last few months. Doing a little bit of this
and then drifting back to things I've left behind. I really MUST get a grip !!
I was out at the Weymouth exhibition over the last weekend and resisted buying anything !!
I was however supervising two of my layouts over the 2 days. We had Thomas and HS2, both
designed for visitors to drive, one for the younger children and shunting for us 'older kids'.
I came back to earth and have been pushing on with the Cambrian 'Mermaid' kit. NOT an easy kit.
There are many little niggles, probably my main gripe is the quality of the instructions and the build
sequence. There were a few pieces broken in the bag, that is probably storage through it's life, but
one piece was so delicate it broke as I was painting it !!
My old version of the kit was from when they included plastic wheel sets !

Probably not clear enough, but the brakes are spaced for P4 and I had to add small pieces of plastic rod to extend away from the solebars
and get in line with the tyres.

The activating lever was in the wrong place to line up with the vacuum cylinder and the cross shaft was too long. At the same time another
cross shaft was too short and I replaced with a cut down pin.

With no positive fitting locations for the roller guides all you had was the required gap between !!

Rather than fix onto the chassis I chose to fix the outer roller guide piece onto the rollers themselves that are afixed to the main body.

The roller beam HAS to sit on the rollers, no way would you match up if you fixed to the chassis

The plastic looks scarred, but given a coat of paint it'll look better.

Now painted with a first black finish (First operational colours) it actually look O.K.

I have glossed over several building glitches, this is no beginners kit ! However it has a presence and with it's chains attached (another
trying process) it looks the part.

Now it'll need weathering ......
Geoff T.