Model #6

Another week sees another episode in the "I've Finished..." series of videos, this time looking at the first fully etched kit I ever built.

That Took Longer Than Expected

I knew I'd been slowly building Canopus for quite a while but I had no idea that it was almost six years since I wrote the first post when I'd just bought the kit. To be fair for a lot of that time the part built model has just sat around while I've focused on other things. In fact it's almost two years since I started painting the body.

I actually finished the model back in February so in total it took about five and a half years from start to finish. I had every intention of blogging about the finished model, I even shot the photos and video for this post, but then I got side tracked by one thing or another, and that was before the world went crazy. Anyway, roughly five years and eleven months from starting and I give you a completed Canopus...

I'll be the first to admit that these close up shots are rather cruel (I'd not noticed the odd shape to the chimney in real life, or the gap under the cab roof) but in normal viewing I'm really quite happy with how it's turned out. Given it was, and still is, the first etched chassis I've ever built and all the problems that made it difficult to build the fact I've finished it at all seems like a triumph. Just to prove it still works here's a short video of it on the test track (it won't go around my tight circular track as the wheelbase is too long now the rear pony truck is fitted)

It's never going to be the best runner (it's locked up a couple of times but I think this is the gearbox shifting and not the quartering) but I'm really rather proud of how it turned out.

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Apologies it's been so long since the last post on this blog. I have been doing quite a bit of modelling and railway related research I've just not had the time or enthusiasm to write proper blog posts. Sorry. Hopefully this will mark the re-start of more frequent posts but no promises.

Unlined Black?

I've now started on painting Canopus, and the question arises as to what colour it should be. The instructions suggest that at some point it had a striking livery of emerald green with red and yellow lining, but that it was also seen running in unlined black. I'm not sure I've got the patience for a complex lining job, and as I don't currently have a black loco, I think I'm going to go for a reasonably well weathered unlined black look.

Currently the chassis has been retouched by hand to cover damage to the original paintwork done before the wheels were permanently in place, and the body has been painted with red oxide primer and then matt black.

Even with an unlined black livery there is plenty of detail painting and weathering to do, but it's nice to be on the home straight now.

One interesting point about the black paint. In the past I've used Humbrol Matt Black (No. 33) from an aerosol can, but as I no longer have a convenient model shop (I do miss Antics in Sheffield) I can call into on my way home I had to buy the paint online. A quick look on Amazon and I was amazed to find that the Humbrol paint was costing £11.48 for 150ml (yes I know it's cheaper from other sellers but I have Prime so why pay for delivery or wait for ages for it to arrive). I had a look around and instead bought matt black from Hycote -- I use their red oxide primer which is excellent. Amazingly this comes as a 400ml spray can and costs just £5.09. Coverage seems to be excellent and it dried nice and quickly (as does the primer) so that's me happy.

Track Power

When it comes to making working models getting the pickups right is really important; no pickups means no power which means the loco doesn't move. Unfortunately I always seem to struggle with pickups be that on a kit I've bought or one I've designed. As I mentioned previously, with Canopus I only have to fit pickups to one side as the chassis is live to the other wheels (a change from the original kit design) but that still means I need to fit three pickups. There is a suggestion in the instructions but no mounting point, you are just given a bit of copper clad board and some wire. After a bit of head scratching this is what I came up with.

What you can't see is that I've filed a gap in the underside of the board so it sits down nice and secure on the stretcher between the slide bars. This made it easy to position and glue in place. Phosphor bronze wires then run from the board to rub on each wheel. Amazingly it all seems to actually work. I did have to clean the wheels well, but given the amount of handling the chassis has had since I started the build that's not entirely surprising. Anyway here she is running for the first time under track power.

Not bad if I do say so myself. As far as I can tell the loco is now complete so next step will be to start thinking about a paint scheme.

Short Circuit

Short Circuit was a great 1980s film that I quite enjoyed as a kid (not my favourite 1980s film but not bad all the same), but when it comes to railway modelling the last thing you want is a short circuit; it's more likely to end in tears and you pulling your hair out rather than laughing hilariously. Now imagine my surprise that I've had to solve a short circuit issue on Canopus.

In fairness I think this issue is down to the original wheels the kit was designed for not being available when I bought mine and so a different set were provided. Originally both wheels were isolated from the axle. This means that you had to fit pickups to the wheels on both sides of the model, but that the model itself was insulated from the track. The replacement axles have only one wheel isolated and the other is live to the axle. This means that I only have to fit pickups to the isolated wheels as I can just connect the motor direct to the chassis as the power will flow from the wheels to the axle, through the bearings and into the chassis. So far so good; I hate fixing and adjusting pickups so I'm more than happy to halve the work involved.

The problem though is the trailing wheel. If you remember from a couple of posts back the wheel is mounted on a metal truck that pivots from the chassis. Now while both wheels are isolated from the axle, there is enough movement to allow the wheels to both touch the chassis and for the back of each wheel to touch the pony truck. If this were to happen to the wheel on the same side as the insulated driving wheels we'd have a short as both rails would now be connected to the chassis.

My solution to this involves two modifications. The easiest bit was to ensure that the wheel couldn't short against the chassis frames. I've fixed this by putting a piece of masking tape on the inside of the frame. To try and make sure it doesn't come off I've run a small bead of superglue around the edges and then painted it black to hide it against the frame (it's unpainted in the photo). Making sure the wheel can't short against the pony truck was harder. I went through a number of ideas for this but in the end I thinned the truck slightly and then glued a thin piece of plastic to the side (so that with the plastic the truck is still the right width).

As far as I can tell these two modifications should ensure that the wheel now can't cause a short circuit, but the real test will of course come when I finally wire up the pickups and test the loco on the track. Fingers crossed.....

Cylinder Drain Cocks

Whilst I may have finished most of the build of Canopus there are still a few detailed bits and pieces to work on. One issue with replacing the cylinders was that the front face didn't have any of the detail of the cast parts. I did contempate etching some covers with rivet detail, but in the end decided it would be easier to use up some scrap wire and tiny brass washers and model the cylinder drain cocks which were quite a prominent feature on the prototype.

As you can see these things are tiny and took four or five different attempts until I managed to produce something I was reasonably happy with. Each is made from two pieces of 0.45mm wire slid through a tiny brass washer (I bought the washers to fit on the crank pins). One of the wires had two 90 degree bends put in it to form the tap handle. Everything was then soldered solid nicely forming the body of the tap. The wires were all then trimmed back and the spout gently formed before being glued to the front of the cylinders.

Compared to photos of the original loco they are a little over scale, but given how tiny the parts are I'm not sure I could sensibly make them any smaller. Once everything is painted they should also be a little less obvious, and if necessary I can file the spout and handle back a little more.

Cutting Up A Pony

Next up in the continuing saga that is the process of building Canopus is the rear pony truck -- the original loco had a fixed trailing wheel but it pivots in the kit to help the model negotiate tighter curves. The part is supposed to be built from a simple fold up etch but the instructions go on to state that...

as supplied the bogie frame is for 10mm gauge. For 009 it will be necessary to snap off the fold-up sides of the bogie and refit them 0.5mm inboard of their original positions.

Quite why this part is designed for 10mm gauge when the rest of the kit is designed for a gauge of 9mm is simply beyond me. However, the idea that I could snap off and accurately reattach the parts just 0.5mm inboard was also a bit of a joke so I opted for a different approach.

I found a piece of brass tube with almost the same hole diameter as on the etch (the tube has a slightly wider hole) but with an outer diameter which when rested on the folded up part aligns perfectly with the axle holes. So I folded up the original etch, cut a piece of the tube to the correct size, and then held it in place for soldering using a piece of rod slotted through the original 10mm gauge axle holes and the tubing. The original sides were then simply snapped off and the sides cleaned up and filled back to narrow the truck to the same width as the tube. This was then riveted to the stretcher that will be attached to the chassis frames.

The sharp eyed amongst you may also notice that I've filled away part of the stretched just off centre. Whilst it did just fit, there was practically no daylight between the stretcher and the larger of the gears in the gear box. Even now with that section filed back there isn't exactly a lot of clearance. I'm not sure if this is yet another design issue or if it's related to the change in gears from the original kit, either way it could easily catch out the unwary.

You'll possibly also notice that clearance between the stretcher and the worm gear is also fairly minimal. I've actually reduced the length of the worm quite a bit, having now removed about one and a half turns of the gear from both ends; from one end to clear the fixing screws for the motor/gearbox and from the other end to clear the pony truck stretcher. Fortunately there is still plenty of worm gear to mesh cleanly with the large gear in the gearbox.

Amazingly, baring fitting the pickups, that's the last step of the instructions finished!

Powered Waggly Bits

So having fixed the cylinders to Canopus it was clear that the clearances were minimal behind the crossheads. Slowly turning the motor over by hand and everything seemed okay, although on one side it did look as if the crosshead was pushing on the retaining nut on the front flycrank. Under power everything did move but it was very jerky as the two parts rubbed against each other.

On closer inspection it turns out that when I widened the slidebars I didn't refit them completely central, so while one side was very tight for clearances there was quite a lot of space on the other side. So I've now removed the cylinders and slidebars, refitted the slidebars more centrally and then refitted the cylinders. Although the clearances are still tight I can now see daylight between the parts all through a full rotation of the wheels. More importantly under power it seems to run quite nicely.

Next up is the pony truck, which unsurprisingly will need modifying before it can be fitted, but more on that next time.

A Blast From The Past

Having finished the Clayton commission I decided I'd try and finish some of my stalled projects before starting anything new. First up on the workbench is my build of Backwoods Miniatures Canopus. Last time this appeared on the blog was November of 2015, when I was in the middle of trying to fix all the issues with the parts supplied with the kit; on that occasion the slidebars being two narrow. While problems still remain the model is really quite close to being finished, and so I'm going to make a determined effort to see it through to completion.

After altering the slidebars and riveting the connecting rods to the crossheads, the next step in the instructions is to fit the cylinders. Not entirely surprising but it turned out not to be as simple a task as it sounds. In theory all I needed to do was drill a 0.8mm hole through each of the two whitemetal castings for the piston rods to slide through. I drilled the first cylinder with no problems at all, but drilling the second one seemed impossible. Not only did I break a drill bit but even when I'd found a second drill I just couldn't get it to drill through. I'm guessing an impurity of some form in the casting. Either way this left me with only one usable cylinder, so I decided to turn up a replacement. Fortunately I checked the one good casting against the loco before starting as in the end I had to turn up a pair of cylinders.

The instructions suggest that the cylinder should have two notches on one end into which the slidebars fit into. My castings didn't and worse still when the cylinder is held in place against it's bracket the slidebars are almost a millimetre too short to meet the face of the cylinder. So my turned replacements are the same diameter as the cast parts but about 1mm longer so that they fit in the bracket and against the slidebars.

While the cylinders are now a bit longer than they should be I don't think they look too out of place on the loco. Even having moved the slidebars outwards (back in 2015) the clearances are still really tight but turning the motor by hand seems to suggest there is enough space for everything to move past each other.... just. The test will be when I find where I've put the rolling road so I can give it a powered test where I can watch everything closely.

Canopus: Altering the Kit Parts

It's been almost a year since I discovered that a number of the parts in the Backwoods Miniatures kit of Canopus that I was building were the wrong size. Annoyingly this seems to be a fairly well known problem so anyone who builds the kit finds themselves having to alter or replace a few parts. Specifically the slide bars sit too close to the frames and the connecting rods aren't long enough. I solved the problem of the connecting rods by having a new set etched back in February, but the slide bars needed surgery.

Having now released the kit for the Hudson-Hunslet and finished my entry to the Dave Brewer challenge I really had no excuse to use to put off having another go at finishing Canopus so today I set about altering the slide bars and building up the crossheads and piston rods.

It turned out that altering the slide bars wasn't as bad as I expected. Basically I cut them in half soldered in a piece of scrap etch and then filed back some of the central mount to allow the wider version to sit in the frames properly. From a trial fitting this looks to have worked nicely.

Strangely the crossheads and piston rods were much more trouble to assemble than altering the slide bars. Each crosshead is made from two layers soldered together with the piston rod wire trapped between them. While folding the etch in two and soldering things together works well cleaning up the grooves to allow them to run smoothly on the slide bars is a bit more of a pain. After a bit of swearing and filing they do now seem to fit and slide nicely. A quick test fit of one of my replacement connecting rods also shows that these fit within the crosshead nicely. This means the next step is to use a rivet to join the crosshead and connecting rod. Hopefully you won't have to wait almost a year to see how that turns out.

Canopus: Replacement Connecting Rods

So it's been almost three months since I last did any work on Canopus. If you can remember back that far then you'll know that I hit a bit of a problem as some of the parts that come with the kit aren't the right size. Specifically the slide bars are two close in to the wheels and the connecting rods are a touch too short. It should be fairly easy to move the slide bars out slightly but there is now way to stretch the connecting rods to make them longer. The solution was to get a new set of rods etched.

A few days ago the new rods arrived in the post having been etched for me by Narrow Planet. On it's own that might not be worth a blog post, but what you are looking at is the first set of etched components for which I've drawn the artwork! Okay, so Steve did tweak them slightly but I did the majority of the work.

I actually only need two rods but these are etched onto 0.25mm nickel silver whereas the kit uses 0.5mm, although it seems to measure out nearer to 0.4mm, so I'll probably have to laminate two rods together to get the right thickness and strength, although it's tempting to see if I one rod is strong enough as this will improve the tight clearances involved.

Now I know roughly what I'm doing I've moved on to drawing up the artwork for the body panels for the tiny Hudson-Hunslet but that can wait until the next post.

Canopus: Slides Bars

Not long after I started building Canopus I was warned by a fellow modeller that when originally released there was an issue with the slide bars. Essentially in the original kit the slide bars were so close to the coupling rods that there wasn't enough clearance for the crosshead to slide along the bars. Given that a number of changes have been made to the kit since it was released (different, wheels, motors and gears) I was hoping that the problem had been fixed. Unfortunately it seems not.

As you can see in the photo the slide bars are so close to the frames that the filed down retaining nut actually forces them outwards. This means I'm going to have to make some alterations to the part to move the slide bars out a little bit on each side to provide enough clearance. While the slide bars don't fit properly they did highlight that I'd managed to get the cylinder bracket on wonky which I've now fixed, hence the rubbed off paint on the bottom bracket in the photo.

Fortunately I have a copy of an article from the September 2006 issue of 009 News where Phil Savage documented how he went about altering the slide bars. He also hit a problem with them being two short and the crosshead striking the support bracket on the back-stroke. Looking at photos of his completed model though, it looks like he ended up with the cylinders and slide bars being perfectly horizontal while they should be on an angle and I'm wondering if that would change the distance of travel. I'll have to assemble the crossheads before I can see if my model suffers from this second issue as well.

Canopus: Three Out of Four Ain't Bad

Just a short update on Canopus today. If you remember the last time we saw Canopus I'd fixed the retaining nuts for the coupling rods on using threadlocker and everything still seemed to work. Well today I've gone one step further and trimmed the crank pins and filed down the retaining nuts. Amazingly it all still works.

I did have one small problem in that one of the four retaining nuts came loose once I'd filed it down. I'm guessing I'd not got the threadlocker all the way along the thread. Worse when trying to reattach it, the now very thin nut, went pinging off across my study, destination unknown. With some difficulty I managed to get a new nut on to the tiny remaining crank pin along with lots of threadlocker. I then filed this nut down. Unfortunately once filed down it was also loose, so this one has been soldered in place.

Canopus: Biting The Bullet

So I've finally bitten the bullet and permanently attached the coupling rods on Canopus. The good news is that everything still seems to turn freely under power so it doesn't look like I've messed anything up..... phew!

The instructions say to use solder to affix the retaining nuts in place. Experience from building the Quarry Hunslet suggests this doesn't work very well. The problem is that you need to fix the nut before snipping off the excess pin and filling the nut thickness down. When soldering the nuts the solder doesn't penetrate all the way through the nut which means when you start filling it down the first thing you do is file off the solder and the nut becomes loose. On the Quarry Hunslet I secured the coupling rod in place with superglue but still found this difficult as you get so little time to check and adjust things.

For Canopus I took a slightly different approach and have used LOCTITE 243 medium strength threadlocker. This gives me (according to the datasheet) 5 minutes fixture time (that's for brass, it's 10 minutes for stainless steel). Also unlike superglue it is designed to be reversible, assuming you can supply 26 Newton-metres of torque. I used a slip of paper to try and stop the stuff getting anywhere it shouldn't as well as ensuring that I didn't over-tighten the nuts. This seems to have worked well although removing the last bits of paper was a bit of a pain.

I haven't yet removed the excess crank pin or filled down the nut (this was as much stress as I wanted today) but having had it on the rolling rod everything seems to be working nicely. You can tell that the threadlocker is working as previously running in one direction would cause the nuts to work loose which is no longer happening. Now I've got past this point hopefully progress will pick up a little.

Canopus: Covering Up The Solder

While I was fairly happy with my soldering of the chassis I do think hiding most of it behind a layer of paint improves things no end! This is by no means the final layer of paint the chassis will see, but I decided to get a base coat on (it's Humbrol matt black primer) and to paint in the flycranks before going any further. The next step is to permanently affix the coupling rods at which point it would be difficult to paint the chassis, and almost impossible to neatly paint the flycranks.

There are still a few parts that need to be glued or soldered to the chassis, which I can't fit yet, so I will have to remove small areas of paint to get a good joint, but it should be easy to touch up the paintwork, and anyway most of the chassis is hidden or will be shadowed by the body.

The good news is that having stripped it down, painted it, and then reassembled it, it still runs nice and smoothly.

Canopus: It's Alive!

Okay, so while I know that my plan was to paint the chassis next (before it would be difficult to get at with all the motion permanently attached) I just couldn't stop myself from performing a quick in-situ test of the gearbox and motor.

Given that this is the first locomotive I've built where I've had to form the entire chassis and gearbox I'm really happy to see all the wheels turning move under their own power. The test did highlight a slight issue with the way I'd put the gearbox together though.

When I was working out which way around to fit the gearwheel to the gearbox I worked from the idea that I should align the larger part of the gear with the shaft of the motor to ensure it meshed well with the worm gear. Unfortunately because of the way around I'd fitted the axles this didn't work, but I only found out once I'd fitted everything together properly.

If you look at the gear on the rear axle you will notice that on the lower surface it has a boss that extends out along the axle which isn't present on the top surface (you can just about see this in the photo to the left, but it is a lot clearer in the photos from the previous post. The problem is that when the gearbox is fitted the larger part of the gearwheel is fouled by the boss if it is fitted on that side of the axle gear.

Fortunately it is easy to fix this by simple rotating the gear in the gearbox (given I can't swap the wheels around as they are permanently trapped in the chassis). Although the worm and gear are now no longer in line they still mesh nicely and everything turns freely.

Canopus: Building the Gearbox

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was a little concerned about building the gearbox for Canopus as the supplied parts differed from those originally used in the kit and it appeared that the new parts wouldn't build into a working gearbox. Fortunately I have now built a working gearbox, but before we get to that let me show you the problem with following the instructions given the change of parts.

As you can see from the first photo the gearbox fits between the rear driving wheels. The instructions say to solder the bearings to the outside of the gearbox and then file off anything that protrudes through to the inside. This is easy to do, but when you then fold the gearbox to shape you find that the clearance between the bearings on the outside of the gearbox and the wheels is very minimal. I couldn't actually see a gap although the wheels did turn freely without moving the gearbox. With such minimal clearance though any slight movement and chances are the wheels would touch the gearbox and this would likely lead to a short as the chassis is live. I'm assuming that this wasn't a problem with the kit originally but results from a change to the actual gears. Originally two separate gears were supplied rather than the new combined gear and I'm guessing that they fitted onto a thinner shaft and that the appropriate bearings had a smaller outer face.

The change in gears presents a second more important problem. The width of the two original gears appears to have been equal to the inner dimensions of the gearbox. With an interference fit between the gears and the shaft this would mean that they wouldn't move sideways within the gearbox. Unfortunately the new gear is much thinner. This means that the shaft is free to move sideways and any sideways movement causes it to drop out of one of the bearings. It would also appear that the shaft is a little undersized as the gear is a very loose fit; it measures 1.97mm and is loose in the bearings designed for a 2mm axle (they are the same as those used for the wheels). Fortunately it turns out that both problems are solvable without too much effort.

As you can see from the photo I've assembled the gearbox while completely ignoring the instructions. Firstly I've fitted the two bearings from the inside instead of the outside of the gearbox to improve the clearance with the backs of the wheels. Secondly I've replaced the shaft with some 2mm brass rod (yes I know I need to cut it to match the width of the gearbox but I've left it long so you can see it) as this is ever so slightly thicker (0.03mm to be precise) than the original and is a tight interference fit with the gear wheel. While the gear no longer slides on the shaft it would still move sideways in the bearings but I've solved this using a third bearing. The kit contained a spare 2mm bearing which just happens to be the perfect width to fill the gap. So now I have a gear box where there is no sideways movement, the gear wheel is a tight fit to the shaft, and the shaft rotates freely. A quick test with a 9V battery and the motor shows that it works perfectly; I haven't fully pushed the worm gear onto the motor shaft as once it is on it will be difficult to get off and it can only be fitted once the motor and gearbox are fitted to the chassis.

So I know have a working gearbox, I just need to trim down the brass rod before fitting it to the chassis. I'm thinking that the next step might be to paint the chassis because once the motor is fitted it can't easily be removed and I don't want to risk getting paint in the wrong place. Also it will be easier to paint the cranks etc. before permanently fixing the coupling rods and adding the rest of the motion.

Canopus: Pipework

With this post I'll have finally caught up with the current state of the build at which point updates may slow down as I move onto the more complex task of getting the thing to move under it's own power. So without further ado, let's talk about pipework.

You'd already seen one small piece of pipework when I added the balance pipe, but I've now added the injectors, the vacuum pipe for the break and the lubricators to the front of the saddle tank. Only the long pipe that provides the vacuum for the break is permanently fixed, the injectors and lubricators will be permanently fixed after painting, along with the handrails.

Strangely the instructions don't mention the pipe for the vacuum break, but not only is it clearly visible on photos and the works drawing, but there is a hole for it in the etched cab front, so I made it up from a simple piece of brass wire. The rest of the pipework are cast brass fittings. Unfortunately I managed to break one of the injectors when removing it from the fret.

I'm not sure how the injector pipe broke as I didn't exert that much force, but the long section snapped in the middle. I did try soldering it back together, but the joint looked horrid and didn't seem particularly strong. In the end I cut of the broken sections, drilled holes in the two end parts and then fabricated a new pipe from brass wire. This was then slotted into the drilled holes along with some solder paint. A quick touch with the soldering iron and I had a repaired injector, which looks the part.

You may also notice that I've moved on from using a piece of wire insulation to hold the coupling rods on. Now each rod is properly attached to all three fly-cranks with a small nut. These are amazingly tiny and very fiddly to fit, especially as the bolts are cast so not a perfect screw thread. They will eventually need fixing permanently and then the remaining screw cutting off and the bolt filing thinner but that will wait until I've got the motor in so I can check the movement is nice and smooth and make any necessary tweaks.

Canopus: Joined Up Motion

List time you saw the chassis for Canopus I'd fitted the wheels and the cylinder bracket to complete the basic rolling chassis. Since then I've added the fly-cranks and coupling rods to both sides (so the wheel quartering is done). I was a little worried about doing this but as you can see the chassis is still rolling nicely and looks great with the body rested on top.

The next stage is to build the gearbox. Unfortunately this may take a while as I've discovered that the supplied parts won't build into a working gearbox. Since the kit was originally designed some of the parts have been replaced, and this includes the gears. Unfortunately the change in gears means that they will no longer stay in the correct position within the gearbox so I'll need to figure out a sensible way to proceed. I have some ideas, but I'll need to get some more supplies from my local model shop before I know if I have a working solution.

Canopus: Balance Pipe

Now I'm not quite sure what a balance pipe is for, especially on a locomotive with, as far as I know, a single water tank, but it is worth noting that the dimples marking where it should fit on the saddletank casting are in the wrong place. All the drawings and photos I've seen of Canopus show the pipe curling tightly under the boiler just to the front of the tank filler cap. If, however, you look at the saddletank casting the dimples are positioned just to the rear of the filler cap.

Fortunately this is easy to fix by simply drilling holes into the casting in the right place and using a little filler to cover the old dimples (and the first hole I started to drill in the wrong place). Once the saddletank is glued to the boiler fitting the balance pipe (just a bit of 0.8mm wire formed around the handle of my modelling knife) is nice and easy.

Now if you remember I hate fitting handrail knobs to the saddletank. Having eventually got them right, I've had to do them again, as I've discovered that the saddletank casting appears to be slightly twisted. I glued it into position and checked that it looked level from the front (i.e. the bottom of both sides were level) and that the tank filler cap was in line with the chimney etc. It was only once the glue had set solid that I discovered that at the cab end it isn't so level, which of course meant that the handrails weren't level. I did try to break the glue to re-position the tank but it isn't coming off, so I've tweaked the handrail holes slightly to try and get them level back to front and at the same height on each side. They aren't perfect but for normal viewing they will be fine; it will only be a close up inspection from directly in front where you might notice a problem.