Many of you will remember the pictures (shown below) of Peter Hillman's green Annette with the boiler offset to one side and the tanks leaning to the other side:
Not shown in the photos was that the loco's frames were twisted too, causing it to only ever stand on three wheels (instead of four, the centre flangeless wheels rarely touch anything) and so it could be rocked from side to side when standing on a flat surface.
The rebuilding of this loco is my current project and you may be interested to see this picture, which shows the cause of all three faults (boiler offset, tanks not level, twisted frame).
It shows the underside of the smokebox, and the boiler barrel extension therein. The two holes are for the blastpipe (left/front) and live steam supply to the cylinders (right/back). Note the scored line carefully marked on the centre line of the barrel's underside, and note that the live steam supply hole is perfectly centred on that line. Note too that the blastpipe hole is not aligned with the scored line. The alignment of the blastpipe is crucial and it must be on the centre line of the loco. Having this hole drilled in the wrong place required the boiler to be forced to one side to compensate. This in turn put undue stress on the bodywork (causing the water tank misalignment) and the frames (causing the twisting). Releasing the boiler mountings caused the body and frames to almost breath a sigh of relief as they were then allowed to return to their intended shape.
