Scrap Tank - plates and handrails

Entry posted by antyeates1983 in scrap tank October 15, 2020

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Here's a photo of the loco before the details referred to in the title were added. In this picture the motor is not fitted, so the cab looks empty. I was running it up and down the track under gravity after glueing the wheels into their muffs, checking that the motion was working. Actually I found that it was a bit tight and had to thin the slidebars further. The middle and rear crankpins have not yet been trimmed to length, so the temporary "washer" - made from electrical wire sleeving - grazes slightly against the bottom of the PCB footplate. The chassis paintwork needs quite a lot of touching up.

I etched the numberplates recently as part of an etched sheet with other things on, and here is a cruel enlargement showing one soldered to the cab side. In fact, they turned out a bit big (I copied the design from the Banking Tank, assuming they would be the same size), but hopefully I will get away with it. Once the plate is painted, you might even be able to read the "HIGHLAND RAILWAY" legend.

Next up, the handrails. Having written in the last post that I would fit the handrails after painting, I decided that it would be better to solder them in place. I started with the short cab-side handrails, which don't have knobs but just bend into the holes in the cab side. I made them from 10 thou spring steel wire, for both its colour and strength. Beneath the loco you can see one of the tank-top handrails ready for fitting, along with a 2mm Scale Association etch of handrail knobs. These needed to be opened out carefully with a small broach.

Bending the semicircular deviation to clear the tank filler cap wasn't particularly easy as the steel wire is quite hard. After a couple of attempts I worked out that I could get a neat semicircle by bending it around a brass rod of somewhat smaller diameter. Because of the shape of the handrail, it wasn't possible to thread it through knobs pre-fitted to the tank, so instead I had to thread four knobs onto the wire and attempt to get them all into the holes at once without falling off the wire. Once in place (finally!) they were soldered with Yellow-label flux to get a good joint to the steel.

The next photo shows the boiler handrail formed to shape with one knob threaded on to go above the smokebox. The other four knobs are sitting (loose) in the holes in the boiler sides. This was also a pig to bend to the right shape, and required more than one attempt. But eventually I was happy enough with it.