Michael Walker      (at 10:59pm, Sun 3rd Feb, 19)

I greatly enjoyed your notes and photographs covering your construction of this Outfit 9 Pontoon Crane.

Your comments regarding the set's insufficiency of Nuts & Bolts have been echoed by other builders. The models can be built with the Nuts and Bolts supplied, but a few additional packets of these essential fixings makes such a welcome difference in terms of structural rigidity.

As to the originators' clocking off, leaving a sub-optimal design with many interesting parts left unused, to go to the pub on a Friday afternoon; who knows?

But, the same speculation could be applied to many other models throughout the range of outfit instructions of that era.