A little more progress, I think the prongs can go but I'll wait until I'm 100% sure
I don't know what material the cast firebox sides are made from, but it doesn't take solder very well at all
. Despite scrubbing, cleaning and roughing up, the casting kept breaking clean away from the solder, it was solved in the end by using some good old 60/40 leaded solder at 400°C
Smoke box core and boiler belly added today, looks like nothing but quite a lot of work, the boiler belly had to come off and it hadn't......well it wasn't rolled on Cuban girls thighs is all I can say
There were a couple of other uglies with the wrappers and formers, fortunately all are hidden once the tanks go on so I didn't have to bully it all into line.
The tanks fit to the boiler core on knife edge joints, there is/was an inner skeleton to support the rear end and it fits into the cab front, obviously I have no cab front yet to secure it too and the skeleton didn't survive the strip down. Never the less, all fixings are thin knife edge solder joints, I'm not overly comfortable with that so will work up a replacement set up that better suits my Viking style of skill base
The gap twixt tanks and smoke box core is intentional, it will be covered by the smokebox front overlay. Currently the tanks are just sat on the footplate supports, the front ones still need modifying, which couldn't be done until the smoke box saddle was in place.
Despite carefully cleaning the mass of pigeon
solder at the end of the right hand tank it's still too short, it may have been cast like this and the builder tried to fill the gap, or the builder just filled too much off and made the gap too big.
I think the real engines have a small gap here, I'll need to find some photos to be sire and once the cab front is on, judge how much the gap needs reducing. The original builder covered it with the injector pipe cover casting by soldering it hard up against the cab front.
Odd the firebox side castings are also different lengths, the one on the right being shorter by just over 0.6 mm, this is not the previous builders fault as he hasn't touched the casting front or rear edges, it is genuinely shorter on one side. This of course means it does not touch the cab front or fit the rear splasher arch very well at all; a suitable plug and filler will be fabricated to close the gap off and make good.
Underneath, thankfully not seen, unfortunately the original builder used a chainsaw to trim off tabs etc, it's quite a chore smoothing them all out