Friday, December 19, 2008

Boxed Porter


Boxed Porter
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.
These locos have to travel to sunny Leicester (The San Tropez of the East Midlands) tomorrow so they need to be packed up. To me, the obvious plan was to put them back in the nice padded Bachmann boxes the locomotives originally arrived in.

Snag is, thanks to the longer can, and in some cases, fatter chimneys they wouldn't fit. I needed to alter the foam packing. Fortunately this comes as three layers like a sandwich. The "bread" is flat foam and the "filling" is a nutritious fat lump with shaped holes in it.

I carefully marked out the new shape with a felt tipped pen and then tired hacking away with scissor. This was rubbish and untidy so I tried a X-acto saw. This worked better with some neat lines but even the finest blade snagged. Finally I used a cheap snap-off blade knife with the blade fully extended and used in a sawing motion. This worked a treat producing nice neat and straight lines. OK, straightish but they do the job and this model now travels reasonably securely.

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