RSS Fetcher Posted January 4, 2019 Share Posted January 4, 2019 Although I have complained about the Hattons/DJM mechanism and chassis at length, I have never had any major criticisms of the body on this model and this remains the case, apart from the fact that you have to dismantle the body, in order to get the Hattons/DJM motor out, without resorting to the use of a mains Dremel. The level of detailing is very fine and some of the components are, by their very nature, somewhat delicate. The pipe runs along the edge of the footplate are a case in point. The pipes themselves are formed of steel rod, which is rather unyielding as is usually the case with steel. The end of the steam heating pipe, which runs along the left-hand edge of the footplate, actually fits into a corresponding hole in the rear of the plastic steam pipe moulding, which comes in a small bag for the owner to fit themselves. The steel rods are held in place along the edge of the footplate by small plastic clips, which are the vulnerable component here. The steam heating pipe on my model needed to be bent back slightly, in order not to place too much pressure on the plastic steam pipe (which you have to glue onto the buffer beam, fortunately Butanone seems to work OK for this). When bending this steel rod back a little, it popped out of the leading plastic clip on the side of the footplate, which in any case had, I suspect, been compromised during previous work on the loco. As a result, the plastic clip was broken and wouldn't hold the pipe securely any longer. My solution to this was what I have done before, when fitting similar pipework to kitbuilt locos. Two 0.5mm holes were drilled into the side of the footplate valancing, one on top of the other and by necessity, very close together. 0.5mm is somewhat too large but with a smaller drill, there is an increased risk of the drill breaking off, which wouldn't have been very helpful. Both holes are hidden behind the pipework when all is done, in any case. The first thing is then to epoxy a short length of 5 amp fuse wire into the top hole, having previously drawn the wire through some fine wet & dry paper to roughen the surface up to key to the glue: The top 0.5mm hole just goes right into the plastic of the footplate moulding, to a depth of about 5mm, enough to let the epoxy hold the fuse wire nicely. This is left to harden overnight. The next stage is to use a fine pair of tweezers to feed the other end of the fuse wire into the lower hole. This lower hole emerges on the underside of the footplate moulding. The fuse wire is then carefully pulled taught and some more epoxy applied to the underside of the footplate: The result looks like this - the fuse wire forms a very small little loop, that holds the steel steam pipe run in place and will disappear when dabbed with a black permanent marker or a bit of black paint: Attached thumbnail(s) View the full article Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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