I appreciate the compliments - so thanks everyone! And an extra thanks to John since he entertained some questions while I was figuring out the chuff generator difficulties. No doubt the test stand became pretty much a must have for this project. I didn't have one when I started this, but decided to get one about halfway through... For sure being able to have the engine running with the boiler off and laying beside it was very helpful while getting the final bugs out of it.
I tried several different styles of the braided cable covering before I ended up coming up with the shoelace idea and had high hopes one of them would be just the ticket - but all just seemed to be a little too stiff. I was starting to wonder if I was going to be able to find anything I'd be happy with until I thought of the shoelace idea while putting on my shoes one morning. The shoelaces are a little tricky in that once you cut them they love to unravel really quickly. What I ended up doing to deal with that was using the soldering iron to very lightly melt a ring where I wanted to cut the shoe lace, and then cutting just to one side of it. Being slightly melted kept the loose ends from fraying and totally coming apart.
One other thing I forgot to mention that I did was to replace the red LED firebox light. The original used a board mounted in the top of the boiler to get the 3 volts for the original LED, which was mounted to the engine frame behind the motor on a tiny little board to locate it behind the firebox door. To replace that complicated setup I used an Evans self regulating LED because of its compact size, which is mounted entirely on the boiler and not attached to the engine frame at all.
