It's no good. Those wobbly stretcher bars are annoying me. As has been said in the comments, you can't really repair them.
At the same time, I remembered that I'd not replaced the moulded safety loops on the brakes. I used to do this as a matter of course, but as I say, I'm out of practice.
Some small clippers removed the bars, and moulded loops. The latter are replaced with bent-up staples. Maybe a bit chunky, but you can see through the loop, which is what matters to me. On a layout, looking along a train, I like to think is is noticable, even in the gloom under a wagon.
The stretcher bars are replaced with the smallest brass angle I had to hand. This still looks a bit big to me, they scale out just under 3 inches deep, but the job is quick, and hopefully not too obvious when painted and weathered. I've not actually done this before, but I'll look to add some thinner angle to my metal stocks at some point.
Incidentally, why weren't buffer shanks and heads included in the kit? I had to dig around in my spares boxes before I found a set of Parkside leftovers. Yes I have metal ones, but they are complete with the housings in a kit of bits, and I'm not breaking one of those up for this job. This is very much a layout wagon, and the sort of layout I build, not some super finescale jobbie.
3 comments:
Great stuff Phil. Small brass bar and angle can add a bit of strength and are most useful. I had a warped signal box frontage which benefitted from just that treatment
Excuse my stupidity, but what are the stretcher bars? Google refuses to give me anything other than track ones. Your pics are only about 2" square on my laptop screen and even trying to zoom in I can't work out what you cut off and replaced.
No problem. They are the bars that run between the bottom of the axleboxes. When the brakes are applied, effectively pushing the wheels sideways, they stop the axleboxes from moving away from each other. There is a better photo in a few posts time too.
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