Wednesday, December 10, 2008

White metal bits on


White metal bits on
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.

So far building the Porters has been all about making up sub-assemblies. This one is at least attached to the loco.

The steam dome is a whitemetal casting needing only a little cleaning up and a hole drilling in the top for a whistle. A tap is fitted and the pressure gauge rescued from the spare bits pot.

The casting fits pretty tightly on the spigot so you can't really get it out of square which is a relief 'cos I hate doing these sort of jobs as it's too easy to get things looking fine while you build, only to show up wonky once the paint is on !

The water gauge and regulator come next. The gauge looks suspiciously generic to me and is fitted to the backhead in place of the vestigial moulded effort from Bachmann. I filled the spigot flat and superglued it in place which seems more than strong enough. Drilling a hole in close proximity to the gear didn't appeal and anyway, that metal is pretty hard. The regulator arm is etched and has to be bent and glued in place. I've never been convinced that I've ever got these right but they fit, look OK and anyway you can hardly see them on the photos of the made up models.

No comments: