Grand Prix races are good for something. Being dull most of the time you can get things done while watching them. The Brazilian race gave me the chance to fit the fiddly bits in the cab of my mineral locomotive.
This was a challenge but a good one. Each lost wax cast brass part has to be removed from its sprue, doing my cutters no good at all, and then drilled for the bits of wire to be attached to it. The instructions give different wire sizes but as they vary by less than .3mm I just used the .5mm wire for them all. Well except for the .3 stuff, which I ignore entirely.
One drilled, tinned brass wire is inserted into the indentation (I can’t call it a hole as the brass is too hard to drill very far) and lightly soldered. Suprisingly this works very well as long as plenty of flux is used. I cleaned the joins up a bit with a file but not much. Far harder was getting the wire in at the correct angle – I had to remake several joins as the pipe exited the fitting at an odd angle.
The results are everything a Victorian railway locomotive should be. Overly ornate with too much pipework on display. Lovely.
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