The power collection for this loco is from the rear driving wheels, the front truck, and will also be from the tender truck of the tender & coach unit. All these connections are fed into a couple of ‘copperclad’ busbars that are fitted at the bottom of the firebox, extra wires have been fitted for the yet to be completed connections, and here is a photo of the busbars in location –



To give the front truck some weight and to assist in its tracking I added some lead strip weights to the top surface of the base plate. These strips are hidden by a couple of side pieces. All the front truck chassis is painted black. I did fit a set of pickups to theis front truck, but they were an 'abject failure', they stopped the wheels rotating!

Instead I have from some .010 x 5mm wide scrap nickel silver fitted a pair of pickups to the inside of front driving wheels, these work much better. I asked at my locoal G scale club as to what to use and the answer was nickel silver, as it retains its 'spring' better. Thanks Geoff!

The two pickup strips are held between the frames, with a set of plastic spacers, a pair of wires are routed inside the frames to the busbar on the loco; there will be an extra pickup from the front bogie, which fits under the tender or the coal space on the rear chassis unit.

For plugs (which are fitted under the cab), I have used some latchable ones from Maplin Electronics; they look to be the same as the ones used by Bachmann: the reference numbers are as follows (for 2 pin plugs) - RK65:HB59, and YW25. All 3 parts are required, the last is a set of 10 pins, of which two are used, so some are spare for next time. These plugs are also doone in 4 way sizes as well, and are very cheap at 20 pence per unit ith the 10 pins being 63 pence (2006 prices).

Complete picture