Detailing the Railway Recollections forney

A couple of years ago I bought an assembled Railway Recollections model of SR&RL #21 from another modeler.  The kit uses the Bachmann 0-6-0 mechanism with the middle driver removed - the resulting driver wheelbase is spot-on at 6'.  The previous owner had already added a bell and a whistle, but being the detail freak that I am, I decided to see how close I could get it to the prototype as it looked circa 1920.  Here's a shot of the model before I started working on it:

The kit is well designed and the proportions are close to the prototype dimensions. The only major cosmetic change I had to do was to reduce the thickness of the headlight base (the headlight itself is very close to scale).  I wanted to wire it for lighting anyway, so after cutting off the headlight and filing down the base, I hollowed out the headlight with a drill and inserted an LED before gluing it back on.

The only other changes to the body shell were to file down the top of the smokestack a little bit and to lower the short sections of running boards near the cab - the kit places them higher than prototypical in order to clear part of the Bachmann frame.  I will eventually have to mill down the frame but I think it will be worth the effort.

I then installed grabs on the cab and tank sides, handrails on the boiler and smokebox front, an air compressor, and lots of piping, matching prototype photos as best as I could. Other details included a finial on the sand dome lid (made from a short piece of wire dipped in CA to form a bead) and sand pipes on both sides. Here are photos of each side before painting:

After painting and lettering, I will add window glass, a crew, and a coal load, plus bell and whistle ropes. Once that's done I will start on the chassis.