Thursday, November 20, 2008

Oops

Class 14 repairNow those of you know know the Class 14 diesel will have spotted my deliberate mistake. I didn't realise the error until fitting the roof and looking at prototype photos.

As any fule knos, a "Teddy Bear" locomotive has only one exhaust. I had fitted two.

For a moment I seriously thought of leaving the extra port in place and hoping no one noticed. That was too much deviation even for me though. The extra casting had to be removed. And without a complete repaint as well, there's no time for that.

Anyway, my lazy building efforts paid for for a change. The whitemetal castings were only soldered along the bottom edge and one side. Some great from the bit iron loosened the joins and forcing a scalpel down the back quickly flicked the offending part off.

Cleaning up took longer of course - the solder and leftover superglue from the non-soldered side had to be scraped clean. Then the horn cover was reattached in the correct place. A coat of primer showed I needed to feather the paint a bit more but a fibre pen sorted this out. Another prime and then some topcoat and varnish, carefully masking off the handrails and most importantly cab sides.

The result isn't bad apart from the satin varnish being a bit glossier than the rest of the the locomotive. Were the model to be finished as ex-works I'd have to re-paint. For a weathered look the dirt will hide any joins. I hope.

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