When I decided to purchase my Feldbahn the first choice I had to make was to specify its colour scheme, and that was simple.  It had to be the same yellow as my previous Stafford as so many people recognised that as being my engines colour that it had almost become a corporate image.  The second choice was the design of the driving truck and that was more difficult because I had spotted the engine shown here.  This preserved Orenstein & Koppel 0-6-0 is currently running on the Statfold Barn Railway but originally operated in the SRAGI sugar plantation in Java.  Ideally I would have liked my Feldbahn to look like this but Station Road Steam did not sell it with this style of cab.  However I did mock up a tender from cardboard to fit my existing driving truck chassis but it looked awful being far too long.  So that's where things should have ended but the dream of converting my Feldbahn wouldn't go away. In the summer of 2015 I started to seriously look at designing a new tender for my Feldbahn based on the one in the photo.  I had found a lot more photographs of SRAGI No 14 and to make it look right the tender had to be short, but I wanted a similar wheelbase to my existing driving truck to ensure stability.  My eventual design retained the previous driving truck wheelbase but unlike the real tender I positioned the axles as close as possible to the ends of the tender.  Another full size cardboard mock-up proved that the design looked correct and that the seating position would be both practical and comfortable.  The tender design also looked "right" when placed behind the stock Feldbahn engine.

My completed design had two major components, the chassis and the tender body.  The chassis was to be laser cut from 6mm mild steel plate and would be within my welding capabilities once jigged up.  The body was simply too difficult for me to construct myself as it required several different bend radii and had to have a watertight non rusting tank incorporated into it.  After talking it through with a couple of local sheet metal fabricators I decided that it would be built from 3mm thick aluminium sheet and seam welded.  Once I had completed all the CAD drawings I accepted the quoted price and construction was underway. Exactly to schedule the body was ready for delivery on December 23rd, so I received an early Christmas present !   This photo shows the body as delivered from the fabricators.  At the rear (left of the photo) is an L shaped water tank that holds 8 gallons of water.  At the front is the coal space which can hold about 30 lbs of coal, and in the centre is space for all the tools and other items needed for a day at the track.  The narrower section at the front allows the drivers feet be positioned nice and low outside the tender.  Personally I find this to be a comfortable driving position and it overcomes the problem I have seen on so many other tender designs of having the drivers feet positioned together inside the tender and ahead of the front axle.  The tender is much more stable in this configuration as the driver's feet effectively put their weight on the centre line of the front axle so that the tender does not tip up as the driver climbs aboard.  As will be seen later, some careful design touches have made these wells look like part of the design and not at all awkward.  The small flat inset above the right hand foot well is reserved for the speedometer and water level gauge.