Quarry Hunslet: Cab Controls

The next, and almost last, step is to add the detail items to the inside of the cab. There are three nice whitemetal castings for the safety valves, brake, and reversing lever and then some tiny etched parts for the regulator and a couple of valve wheels. I've used a combination of the kit instructions, prototype photos and common sense to fit these.

The vale wheels were very fiddly as they involve first folding a tiny etch in half as the backing and then attaching the wheel; thank goodness for the hold and fold! At least there is no question as to exactly where they fit. The regulator is again quit difficult to make up as it needs short pieces of wire attaching to act as the handle and to attach to the backhead. I've fitted it at an angle which will suit the driver figure that came with the kit (more on him in a later post).

The three whitemetal parts took a bit more thinking and cleaning up before they could be fitted. I intended to fit the safety valves in the same way as the chimney, with a piece of brass wire connecting it to the top of the backhead unfortunately I decided that would be tricky if not impossible. The problem is that the top of the valves have to just poke out of a hole in the roof (so on the real thing the cab didn't fill with steam) and trying to figure out where to drill was impossible. So I checked that it looked as if it would fit and then added a drop of glue to the bottom of the part and nudged it into place with a cocktail stick through the cab door. Amazingly it went on first time.

The brake had a pin on the bottom of the casting that would allow it to go through a hole in the footplate for a secure fit. Unfortunately, as we know from before, the footplate is very difficult to drill through and given how close I needed to get the hole to the side of the firebox I couldn't get the drill upright and to bite. After trying for about five minutes and making no progress I decided to remove the pin and just glue it in place. Given that it glues to the firebox side as well as the footplate it seems secure.

The reversing lever was the most awkward to fit. Looking at photos it should be slightly further forward and to the right. Unfortunately this is about as far forward and right as it will go and still allow the cab to fit, and to achieve this I still had to file down the width of the casting. Anyway they are on and look good enough considering that they will be difficult to see once the cab is on.

With these parts in place I have just three more parts from the kit left to fit (I'm not including the driver as part of the loco); two steps and the reversing rod. There are a few other detailing parts I want to add that weren't part of the kit, but this means I'm getting very close to being able to start painting things, although I'm already beginning to see that deciding on the order to apply the different colours could be an interesting challenge.