CNS&M 457: Build Part 2

Well I put her back into the soldering shop, and as you can see she looked liked she had been through the wars afterwards. If I didn't know that this is all cosmetic stuff that is very easy to clean up, I think I would have been quite disheartened.

Just showing the front and how getting the hood cover down tight straightened the whole appearance up.

The inside of the model in the soldering aftermath. To the right hand side and center my appallingly lumpy solder, and on the left the craftsmen lumpy solder. Solder will go lumpy, I just had more lumpy solder after re-soldering the model back together again.

Then after cleaning (a combination of scraping with a knife edge and  polishing with a fibre glass brush) you end up with a gleaming model like this.

Unfortunately, all the soldering had softened the brass wire of the hand rails, which had the tendency to bend if you looked at them a bit hard.

So I gently tweezed them straight and them used my micro torch to heat the the hand rails up and then quenched them with cold water, which restored their stiffness.

Finally, I reassembled her, breathing a sigh of relief that the connecting plates that had come adrift had been put back into the right place. Real skill, craftsmanship, or just plain stupid good luck? No not really, the model has oval holes in the frame so as to allow for any minor misalignments. Clever design by the original builders.

So by removing a few part I have completely changed the character of the locomotive and she looks a lot more like her sisters now. More to come when I move into the detailing stage.