Rebuilding the 48DS

Once all the parts of the little 48DS locomotive were cleaned up, the task of putting them back together could start.

First up, the cab was rebuilt, taking care to put the sides on the correct way around this time. My previous mistake was easy to make, conventional cabs have the entrance at the rear so the driver can lean on the "window" at the front. on a tiny diesel this would make getting in and out difficult. The driver is sat at the back and can swing his legs to the side to slide out with the correct configuration.

The work highlighted the problems faced assembling a second hand etched brass kit. During my last attempt I'd obviously had some issues with the fit, probably caused by my inexperience/incompetence and had filed the ends a bit. Thus now I found it impossible to get a perfectly square box as the sides were fractionally different in length. This doesn't show on the finished model but frustrated me for a little while.

One thing I have been able to improve on is the roof. Those cab sides aren't very tall and so the roof has to be bent very tightly to fill the gap. Previously I'd made good the space with scrap etch. This time I nailed it by some vicious metal wrangling.

With this done, detailing started. The buffer beam appears to have an overlay in the picture and so I made one from thin brass sheet. The same material was used for replacement cab steps since I'd lost the kit originals at some point. At the same time a 1mm strip was added to the bottom of the sideframes. Plastic sheet would have worked as well but I fancied practising my metalwork and so soldered the sheet - with a proper iron too, no easy RSU work for me !