Its been 10 months since I did an update on the Duchess test build so its probably a little overdue.

The first bit of news, for those who don’t follow the Brassmasters blog is that Geoff Hurley, the original kit designer, sadly passed away at the end of November 2023.  He had been with Brassmasters for 20 years and in that time he designed their kits for the rebuilt Royal Scot, the LMS 4F and the Princess Royal as well their detailing kits for LMS locomotives. The Duchess was his last project before he became ill in 2022. I had a hope that I would get it finished and he would be able to see it but alas that wasn’t to be.

This had meant that at lot of head scratching and trying to figure out where the project was has gone on since (not much of it by me I must add). So theres actually been an awful lot of work going on but it may not look like it.

Some new bits for the tender. Originally the water tank hatches were white metal castings but these have been changed to 3d prints produced by David. The external part of the coal pusher is another 3d print.

Moving foward the exhauster pipe and the under cab injectors.  The latter have been through several versions mainly because of how we were going to mount them to the loco.  This latest version seems to have cracked it but has necessitated a slight change to the etched artwork.  The cab roof is a loose fit.

While on the subject of the cab heres some of the inner detail.

Some of the footplate details in place.

Moving on to the front, with health problems at Markits at the moment and being unable to supply stocks of their oval buffers we have looked at a 3d printed body with an etched head. This allows the buffer to be much more accurately detailed and while it does lose the springing the prototypes were not particularly know for coupling up to trains at this end.