Hi Bowwave and thanks for the kind comments. I hope Capt Povey won't mind us hijacking the thread for a moment. The funnels are thin wall brass tube from Eileen's Emporium - they have most sizes in 1mm steps - although slightly heavy I prefer brass because it doesn't have the ripples that sometimes show up in plastic tube after painting.
I have the official admiralty drawings courtesy of a Canadian contact (Niobe is often credited as the first ship in the Canadian Navy, in 1910, and this is their centenary year). The drawings are quite hard to follow and i've had to put right oh so many mistakes due to not studying the the drawings and the photos together! Even then there are many puzzling questions that have been partly answered by studying Vickers' suberb model of sister ship Ampthritite in store but viewable at Barrow museum.
Of course Rurik 2 was also built by Vickers and is a fantastic choice of model, and quite big in 1/96th! I wonder if there's a model of her at Barrow? I didn't notice one, but a phone call to the very helpful staff would find out.
I've added a couple more photos taken by my nephew Jonathan earlier today.