You too can have a body like this....
Entry posted by 2mm Andy
1,425 views
(or the sweet smell of success singed fingernails!)
Pete asked last time about progress on the body of the shunter. At that time I had only cut a few parts from the etch and formed things like the cab steps and the funny little boxes in front of the cab. I wasn't sure how much I could assemble without needing to check the fit of the motor and gearbox, so it didn't seem sensible to progress too far too fast.
After a fairly stressful week at work, I decided to celebrate on Friday by escaping work a bit earlier than usual and popping into town to purchase the small drills I forgot to get last weekend at the Watford show. The first job upon getting back home was to fit the 'Simpson' springs - these are short lengths of straightened N gauge coupling spring wire, soldered at one end with the other end set across the middle of the axle bearing hole (the axle hole having been enlarged to 1.6mm from the nominal 1.5mm normally used in 2FS chassis). Despite this going against 'conventional' chassis construction advice and rules, this works really well.
I then had a go at milling some frame spacers. My first attempt was in brass, but this was an unmitigated disaster (I definitely need to brush up on my techniques for milling brass) so I started again using an offcut of 'Tufnol' - much easier to mill! After a bit of fiddling and filing to get the spacers to clear the gears and muffs of the gearbox, these were drilled for 12BA bolts to hold the frames and spacers together. Next mistake - I read the wrong line of the data charts and drilled the holes to clearance diameter, not tapping diameter! 
. I should have packed-up the modelling and done something easier at this point, but I decided to press-on and see what other disasters awaited!
Having assembled the frames with bolts, everything looked OK, so I started enlarging the etched footplate in the kit to fit the gearbox and motor arrangement I had designed (see previous blog posting). I got carried away then, and decided to form the engine cover, adding the engine cover doors and panels before soldering the layers of the radiator together and adding them to the front of the engine covers. An piece of scrap etch was cut to fit inside the end of the engine covers and the radiator assembly soldered to this. There were a few choice words when, trying to tweak one of the doors into position, I lingered too long with the iron and the whole lot disintegrated into a heap of bits of nickel silver! Half-an-hour later, having put the whole lot back together again, I moved on to the step/bufferbeam assemblies, which is where the subtitle of this blog post is most appropriate. Several scorched/melted fingernails later, I had two sets of steps and bufferbeams in place, although the joints need tidying-up as I think there are some minor errors with the etch. After all that, the body looked like this:
One last photo - just to check everything fits OK of course!
There is a bit more work to do on the body - the engine cover needs fixing in place and there are a whole load of small details to add. The chassis needs painting before final assembly, and I've also got to work out a way of fixing the chassis to the body. Plenty to keep me occupied I think!
And whilst conducting a bit of research to identify how some of the more awkward bits of the etch were supposed to be fitted, I found a rather good video here. The Class 02 loco is at 6 minutes 53 seconds. Catchy music as well!
Andy 
EDIT : Photo added to give a better idea of scale;
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