Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Fast work


Y7 Chassis
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.
I need a half built model railway locomotive in a hurry.

The reason ? I’m demonstrating somewhere on Sunday and it helps the demo if you have a few part built kits on the modelling board. Of course I don’t actually have anything suitable kicking around, especially in 7mm scale so half a day last weekend was devoted to sticking some bits together.

Out of the maturing cupboard came an etched brass kit for an LNER Y7 from Conneseiur (Sorry, can’t spell it and the box is upstairs) Models. A nice simple locomotive that I bought years ago when I fancied building an O gauge layout. I’ve built 3 & 4mm scale versions, so why not get the set ?

The chassis is a simple fold up affair, which took very little time to reach the stage I photographed. The 50W soldering iron was a help here as there is a pretty large mass of metal to soak the heat away from the joins. Powerflow Flux was useful too. It’s nasty stuff that takes a lot of scrubbing to remove but it makes that solder flow. I even managed to get it around the axle bearings properly, not my usual blobby effect.

All soldering was carried out with the chassis upside down on a sheet of glass to keep things flat. It sort of worked but I still had to twist it a little with my fingers. That’s not a trick that you see in proper modelling instructions but it works. Just a gentle twist though, or you end up with a brass corkscrew.

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