Fettling a 55 – Accurascale’s Deltic

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This post isn’t presenting anything clever or unusual.  I thought it worth sharing my experience of tweaking the model as I have seen many online comments along the lines of “I’m too scared to touch it”. 

 

The quality of Accurascale’s first UK outline locomotive is amazing.  I couldn’t resist buying three from the current batch, and hopefully we won’t have to wait too long to hear what’s planned for the next shipment. 

 

I’ve just finished fitting the AS crew, bufferbeam detail to one end, as well as a few other tweaks.  I thought there may be value in recording how I got on.

 

The first task is to get the body off, and the process is well described by Accurascale on their website:  Accurascale How to Remove The Body .  The card supplied as backing for the nameplates makes great shims.   I had to bend over the card to enable the bogie to be moved across when trying to insert the opposite shim.  I found it helpful to remove the roof access hatch to the decoder, this gave me something to pull on the body whilst also gently pulling on the fuel tanks. 

 

 

Fitting the driver and secondman is obviously an easy task, however I did slightly trim the right leg of the driver to get a squarer fit.  Perhaps the pose I now have isn’t as AS intended?

 

The hand brake chains have been causing some debate, so I have decided to trim them and attach them to the bogies.  I removed just under half of the chain, which looks like a prototypical length, and superglued the rest of the chain in an appropriate location.  I used a Dremel to remove the now redundant plastic spigot on the actuator before repainting it black.

 

 

 

 

 

The lack of screws on the central speaker bracket has been commented on.  It appears that this was never planned to be screwed down, as there is no thread in the PCB holes.  In fact, it appears that the factory has applied a small amount of glue, but probably not enough to keep the bracket in place.  I removed and refitted the bracket so that I could apply more superglue.

 

One benefit of removing the body is that the chassis can be placed upside down and because of the square cab bulkheads it is rock solid.  Now it’s time to move onto the bufferbeam detailing.  Removing and fitting the bufferbeam is much easier with the body removed.  Again Accurascale have some great instructions available  Accurascale bufferbeam detailing .  Scroll down to the end of these instructions and it highlights that one of the bufferbeams has been modified to accept the exhauster pipes.  These should be present at the #1 end (the end with the additional large panel on the nose side).  All my models had this bufferbeam fitted at the incorrect end, so had to be swapped.  I removed the coupling first by pulling it out of the NEM pocket laterally.  The NEM pocket can be easily removed by inserting tweezers and pulling up.  As I was detailing the #1 end, I also removed the kinematic coupling.  Removing three screws and a gentle nudge was enough to free the coupling.  I found fitting the exhauster pipes last to be a frustrating task, as access is now difficult.  I wouldn’t like to recommend when to fit them, as I never had enough opportunity to try different options.

 

Once the detailed bufferbeam is reattached the body can be refitted.  Keep the roof hatch off, as you need to ease the body over the engine room lighting glazing and the hatch provides great access.  I also found that I needed to re-insert the shims used to remove the body, so that the clips easily slide over the foam on the chassis sides.

 

The final piece of fettling, other than the fitment of the nameplates and builders plates, is trimming of the side handrails on the nose, which I think protrude too far.  A gentle wiggle and pull with some tweezers or pliers will free them.  They all came away easily and without any collateral damage.  I trimmed the legs close to the bend and refitted them with a small application of superglue.  The headcode light settings were reduced to the minimum possible and now have a more realistic glow that is still visible in bright daylight.

 

 

All that now needs completing is some weathering.

 

I’ve also spent some time tweaking the sound decoder settings, but will detail the changes I've made in another post in the DCC Forum

 

 

Steve