Bendy rods

 

With the soldering iron warmed up, water in the tip cleaning spong and solder and flux to hand, it's off to work on the Hudswell Clarke shunter. 

A logical place to start is with the rods. These are made up of three layers, and straight away I find myself with a challenge. 

Real rods are jointed, and on the model the knuckle is represented with a length of wire through a hole beside the main crank pin hole. The trouble is, these are etched quite large, and there is only the thinnest piece of nickel outside the hole - so the rod tends to become a zig-zag once released from the etch. 

With care, each layer is tinned and then sweated together into something like a straight line. I filled the smaller holes with solder to keep things under control. Once happy, a little drilling of the soft metal allowed me to stick a bit of 0.7mm wire in - this being cut to length once the solder had cooled. 

It's also important to ensure the rods are handed by not sticking the wire in from the same side on both. 

These might not look like big jobs, but there's over an hours work here with all the careful soldering and cleaning up. Time well spent with a bit of luck.