After it's trip to the paint stripper, the little model locomotive was looking pretty sorry for itself. This wasn't the end of it's trials however, those cab sides were still on back to front so they needed to come off too.I suppose I could have used an electric soldering iron to melt the joints but a gas torch seemed a gentler option. I know that might seem odd, but I find that you can pile heat into the solder faster so it melts before the temperature of the surrounding brass has gone up by much. Also, the inside of the loco was still a bit painty which would have affected the heat transfer from the iron.
Plan A was just to remove the roof and sides. Then I noticed that the back was a bit lose. Since it had a row of poorly punched rivets I decided that it ought to come off too so I could use the rivet punch. Which lead to the front coming off as well for the same reason - we want the model to be a consistent standard all over don't we ?
After all this hot action it was just left for me to scrape, file and finally burnish the remaining solder from the parts. Next week I can start putting things back together.
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