Buffer beam

Lovely detail time. If you want to bring a loco to life, fill the buffer beam with stuff.

In the case the Ruston locomotive, that means buffers (obviously), coupling hook (chain to go on after painting) and the rather nice lost wax casting for the vacuum pipe that I ordered along with the handrail knobs from Tenmille. It comes with a pair of air pipes that are really rather splendid but completely useless to me for this locomotive. Still, the spares box awaits and I'm sure they will come in handy one day.

Another prototype feature is the row of brackets towards the top edge. I'm guessing that these were to hold a shunters pole. There is a similar row on the back. I made them out of the lamp irons supplied on the etch which aren't required for this prototype. A nice touch, they had to be thinned a little but this way you get consistency which is probably more important than precise fidelity - at least these look right and I didn't have any measurements to cut strip to make them any other way.