Daddyman

Rub the salt in, why don't you. 😉

Extremely disappointed to see you softening your position on this, Justin. Looks like I'm all alone now then... 😉

I can't believe intelligent people are giving this model airtime and oxygen. It's Heljan; what did you expect? Select "ignore thread" and move on!

Sorry to contradict you, but I don't bother with this - never have in nearly 20 years of building etched kits - and I think Mike Edge himself says the same: there's no need to clean etches as the flux that you apply when soldering will do it for you. Far more important is a clean bit on the soldering iron - the OP would do well to buy a suede brush for this purpose. Brass is always harder to solder than N/S, but most newer JE kits are, I believe, N/S. I was surprised a few years ago just how much harder brass is to solder when I started a JE 06 (which was and possibly still is brass) after years of working mostly in N/S. The answer is a 50W temperature adjust iron, always turned up to at least double the nominal temperature of the solder you're using (good advice I picked up at Missenden; a common error with newcomers is not getting the solder flowing, due to not getting it hot enough). (I use a 2.3mm bit for everything, which seems to be the consensus among fellow modellers in the Scalefour Society Virtual Group, and London Road Models flux, which is cheap, doesn't rot your tools or the bit of the iron, and is easy to clean off; avoid Carr's Yellow!). As for cleaning as you go along, yes, good advice, but I know myself and it's not going to happen - and for all those ten minutes you spend at the end of each session cleaning up, you might as well add them all up and clean every two weeks or when you absolutely have to. Finally, you're going to struggle with motivation, which is why I wouldn't recommend a prolonged or regular cleaning process - you're using up your energy beans. There was a chap on here a few years ago who spent two weeks (sic) detailing how he meticulously cleaned all the etches for his kit. After two weeks he lost interest, and the loco never got built. For the same reason (motivation) I wouldn't recommend a wagon or a building: build what you want to build in order to maintain motivation. There's nothing in a wagon that's inherently easier - you're only ever soldering two parts together (OK, sometimes three), whether they come from a wagon kit or a loco, so you might as well start the loco. True, there are more likely to be parts to bend on a loco, but you can practise on a piece of scrap, or get someone to help you with it.

Surely he'd have told them to rebuild elsewhere too?

More on bogies - 110 and 262, 1989

Another one, 1951.

No, I suspect people are having the same problem as you and no one's fitting them! That sounds familiar. I had the same problem. Seem to remember you have to be creative in your angle of approach - a lot easier once the pipes proper have snapped off! I got them in by hook or by crook, and then prised them out half a mill or so to expose the "peg", then applied super glue on the end of a piece of wire to the exposed "peg", before finally pushing them all the way home.

James Maikin (on RMW) talks about leaving varnish a month as he's had bad experiences. That might be a little excessive (but better safe than sorry?), but the varnish certainly shouldn't smell; it it does, it hasn't set yet. I think I'd wait a bit more than 2 or 3 days... Could still be the varnish, though... Incidentally, Revell's matt enamel varnish is very good - very matt and very easy to use. (Can't say how long it takes to dry though.)

The pipes are different on both. Bachmann have also made them from different material: those on the 37/4 are metal, whereas those on the 37/0s are plastic. I find the metal ones hard to keep glued (I suspect that on inserting the glue-covered into the hole, the glue is being pushed back out of the hole as it's an interference fit). On the plastic one, the pipe part (as opposed to the "cock" or "tap" part) snaps very easily - I defy anyone to get them on without snapping them. But anyway, the pipes appear to be thicker on the 37/0s than Bachmann has made them, so I kept the tops and replaced the pipes, drilling them into the front of the fuel tanks for a "trompe l'oeil" effect. As for where to insert the pipes into the underframe, all I can say is keep wiggling them, sorry! This photo might show where they should go.

Haven't done it for a while, but isn't it Pi x diameter minus (2 x thickness of the metal) - i.e. in this case Pi x 18mm - (0.6 [assuming 10 thou]) = Pi x 17.4. I can't understand why, but Pi x 18 rolls a boiler which is too big, whereas Pi x 17.4 produces one which is right.

That was my first reaction to your post. How long had you left the varnish?

There used to be a thread on here explaining it, with photos, but of course all the photos have been squandered. However, this post by Brian Daniels does offer a description in words of the different types. From that, should be possible to work out what these are at Bo'ness:

The finish - the lustre - on your locos is always superb, Mick, and the lining is exquisite.

Fabricated - the "normal" ones. You could always swap with someone. I'm sure there'd be a lot of takers as Bachmann still haven't released any spares for these new 37s.