When I fitted the cylinders I managed to do so without remembering to fit the etched covers so I had to dismantle the motion again to fit them. In theory the end of the cover should peek through the footplate and appear as a slopping surface either side of the smokebox.
My worry is that, if I did use the etched covers as intended, it would be difficult to remove the motion in the future (the instructions reckon you can slide the crossheads out of the slide bars but on mine there isn't enough clearance) so instead I've added the covers around the cylinders than used a small piece of plastruct (cut from a 0.3mm x 4.8mm strip and filed down slightly) to provide the part of the cover above the footplate, and I think this looks pretty effective from just about every angle. The gap you can see in the photo isn't as bad in real life as it looks, and is also filled with glue, so hopefully when painted will vanish completely.
While I had the motor out I made use of the access to the inside of the large whitemetal casting to add some more plastruct (again cut from a 0.3mm x 4.8mm strip) to act as the bottom of the boiler and to hide the inner workings. On the real thing this would be a curved surface, but I've gone for just angling the flat strip as a) that's easier and b) it leaves room for the motor etc. It's not perfect but there needed to be something there to fill the gap. Hopefully once everything is painted it should look better as the eye won't be drawn to the white surface but to the coloured saddle tank.
It's looking good.
ReplyDeleteEngineering suppliers sell tins of brass shimming. It need annealing but is much easier to form than plastic.
The problem with brass is rolling it. Having had fun with the cab roof this morning (see next post) I definitely need to buy something to make the task easier.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't happy with the way the cylinder wrapper continues through the footplate either, and shall also be using a piece of plastic glued into the cut-out. I can understand why Brian designed it that way, but to my mind its more faff than its worth, being rather difficult to line up and sit convincingly.
ReplyDeleteI think it would have been especially difficult to align on mine, because messing with the bracket on one side to get it to align properly seems to have left one cylinder further forwards than the other, which means I doubt both wraps would have fitted through the holes anyway. Unless you look at it from below you can't really tell that the cover isn't in the right place anyway so I'm happy with the plastic bit.
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