Hello Chris, I have just joined your band of brothers and I understand that you want to know how to get your expansion links into the frames. I am not too au fe with GWR engines but on a B1 you need to put the side pivots into the frames first and then build up the links on to the pivots from scratch. Try that and see if that works. It is the same with most of the big LNER engines.
regards,
Doug Hewson