Hi Joe,

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From memory the seat base (B29) is folded into a square and attached to the footplate (for want of a better description) this hides the chassis fixing not.? The seat top (B31) is curved to fit the seat base with the two little holes at the back.? These holes take the seat back (B30) which is very delicate.? This part has a large square sacrificial support at the bottom and the seat back cross member at the top.? The cross member is folded 180 degrees back away from the half etch lines and soldered to the two thin uprights.? Then you can remove the big sacrificial square which should leave you with a ‘U’ shape of the cross member in front of the two legs.? The bottom of these legs locate in the two holes in the seat top.

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I hope that helps a bit.

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Cheers, Robin

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Hi Joe,

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I don’t have a common weight but the attached photo shows what I can typically fit in the floor of all but the skip wagons.? Thin strips of lead cut so they don’t foul the wheels.? This rake of three ammunition wagons weighs 32g so each wagon is about 10g.? Not much weight is needed but I find the wagons shunt better if they do have a little bit in them.? The skip wagons are harder and the tank wagons benefit from a bit of weight inside the oil drums before you glue the lids on, otherwise you have to drill a hole in the bottom and try to pour in some liquid lead.? Don’t ask how I know this!? I have some thin self-adhesive lead strip which is just over the width of a skip body and have added that inside and attempted to dress the edges so that it is not obvious.

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Regarding axles for the Simplex chassis, I would use 2mm diameter ground silver steel rod if you can get it.? I would cut the axles about 19.5mm long which will give a bit sticking out from each wheel. ?It sounds odd but I have found it looks better on the loco body as it looks like the axles go into the axle boxes rather than just stop at the wheels.? The Simplex was designed for 016.5 and supplied with that length of axle.

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I retro-fitted my KB Scale chassis to an already built body and found that I needed to cut away some of the inside of the engine castings.? Trimming the castings would probably have been easier before they were fitted.

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I pretty much made up my coach conversion as I went along but I took inspiration from Paul Lindsey-Scott’s Brookford articles in the Review and also his thread on the Narrow Gauge Railway Modelling Forum ??

Which is free to join and has provided me with lots of help, information and inspiration.

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The one thing I found with my coach was that standard 016.5 bogies were a bit too wide and didn’t have enough swing for my sharp curves.? I ended up using some Sn3 bogies from PBL in the States.

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Cheers, Robin ?

Thanks Joe, excellent progress and it’s all looking very good.

Cheers, Robin

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