Having spent a very pleasant Christmas and New Year holiday with family and friends, I went over to Polly today to collect Kit 9 which includes the boiler.
It is a very impressive and heavy item.
I have fitted the steam dome and regulator along with the blanking plugs. There is just a little bit more to do on packing the regulator gland and finishing the regulator handle which has quite a few casting burrs.
The boiler will be hydraulic tested to twice working pressure (180psi) on Sunday so need to get those last little bits done.
While I was over at Polly I retested the timing of the valve gear. I had to do some re-threadlocking on the valve rod linkages and I knew that I had probably upset the timing. The two Matts at Polly had that sorted fairly quickly. I was also able to confirm that my revised positioning of the draincocks had sorted the problem that they didn’t open and close together. All in all, I now have a chassis that is sufficiently tuned to move on confidently to the superstructure.
I also took some photos of the pipe runs on Molly Ann and Trojan (the 0-4-0 version) to help me with running the pipes to roughly the right locations.
I hope the boiler passes the tests and once it has I can move on to fitting it.
Building Molly Ann 
A very interesting build log. Keep up the good work!
I am considering getting a Polly Loco.
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Julian, thanks for the comment. I am really enjoying the build. Polly are a great outfit and really helpful. They definitely want you to succeed and are always willing to give help and support. The kit contents are good. I have had occasional missing screws or small bits but they always respond on the day and parts are usually with me within 24hrs. I live about 40 miles away so chose to collect my kits which gives me the opportunity to get tips on the next stage. Which loco are you thinking of building?
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Hello Richard
you mention one or two points that you needed to adjust,and the re-locating of draincocks, have these points been taken into account in future Molly-Ann kits.
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Ray – The draincock issue was my fault! The draincocks are “handed” and I had mounted one right-handed one on the left hand cylinder and vice versa. Consequently when operating the activating lever only one would open on each side rather than two! So a quick swap of sides fixed that. Polly gave me a tip for the future which I should add to the blog that you can use a pin inside the draincock to check that it is open when “activated” on the correct cylinder.
The activating lever was a Polly error but it was simply that they supplied one for a Trojan rather than a Molly Ann so the right one was in the post in 24hrs.
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