Workshop - getting there.

Since the last workshop post at the New Year a lot has been happening in our day to day lives.  We have had to spend far more time looking after the affairs of my 97 year old mum.  Most weekends and a couple of weeks we have been away working on her old house and/or waiting in for estimators.  I am sure a lot of you will know the amount of time this all takes.  Beside this we try to see her every week so not as much time as I had intended has been spent in the workshop trying to reduce our ever lengthening interest lists.

1st April 2016  The stage all 11 Hunslets of the second batch are at.

Any time I have found has gone into the second batch of Hunslet quarry tanks.  I had hoped when I last wrote to have them finished by the AGM next weekend.  Well the photo shows where I have got to. They are not finished.  All the 11 chassis in the batch run beautifully on air and most of the platework is finished. 
Next week I will get the slide bars and motion plates on complete the chassis.  Still to do are the boilers, burners, valves and fittings, fit the smoke box and firebox castings, finish assemble, test and paint.
I hope this will all be done next month.  It sounds a lot.  However it is not as time consuming as the stage just finished. Each chassis involves making a lot of parts, drilling and tapping 60 or more holes. Fitting all the nuts and bolts ......... The only way to do this economically is by batch building. The downside is if anything goes wrong - say a broken tap, the problem has to be sorted before you go on. Hopefully we will get to the end soon.

The end point!