Sunday, June 30, 2019
Forney update: painted, lettered, coaled, and crewed
The body is now finished with the exception of a few details that I will add after the locomotive is reassembled, namely the bell rope, whistle cord, and control rod for the sander valve.
Saturday, June 15, 2019
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.
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.
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