X-Raying a Lead-Acid Battery

I'm still waiting on the etched parts for the Hudson-Hunslet to arrive but in the interim I've started to prepare the rest of the body. Specifically I've been adding extra weight to the 3D print which will hopefully improve performance of the locomotive from the previous prototype.

The obvious area to hollow out so that I could add more weight was the space above the motor and in to the back of the control panel, but I've also added an area under the seat where more weight can be added. The final area I hollowed out was a new addition to this version of the body; the starter battery. While the location of the starter battery seems to be fairly standard given the drawings and prototype photos I've found the actual battery, or batteries, used seems to vary widely although they all look like car batteries of one form or another. On the scale drawings I've been using it was difficult to figure out the exact size of the battery (other parts obscure some of the dimensions in all the views) so I've based the model on a 030 car battery using dimensions from this useful resource. You can't get much weight into the battery but I couldn't resist the opportunity to stuff a representation of a lead-acid battery with lead (okay so the Liquid Gravity I'm using possibly doesn't contain lead but you all know what I mean).

With all that weight added the model is significantly heavier than the previous prototype although it still doesn't really register on my kitchen scales so I'm not sure exactly how much it weighs. Hopefully it will be heavy enough to provide enough traction to pull a few wagons as well as give nice slow running.

Track Painting

While I was more than happy with my first attempt at track building clearly it needed painting as sleepers are never copper coloured and the rail is never that shiny.

The first job though was to fill the gaps I'd had to file in the sleepers and I did this using some perfect plastic putty from Deluxe Materials which was filed smooth once it had set. The rails were then given a good clean before I tried something new; metal black.

When I built Jerusalem I painted the rails but it wasn't exactly a success. I found that the paint wouldn't stick well to the rails and tended to flake off over time. This time I decided to try using a chemical to blacken the rails instead, specifically I'm using Carr's metal black for nickel silver which I picked up from C&L Finescale along with the track. The health warnings on the bottle were almost enough to put me off using it, but I gently applied it to the rail using cotton wool buds. I was amazed just how quickly it works, but you do have to make sure the rail is very clean as I found any bits that weren’t were impervious to the chemical and stayed shiny. Once I was happy with the colouring I then applied some Carr's Electrofix to seal everything. Electrofix has a misleading name in that it doesn't actually conduct electricity, so I then buffed the railtops using a coffee stirrer which removed the electrofix and some of the blackening to give a used look to the rails. The final step was to paint the sleepers which I did using RailMatch sleeper grime.

Amazingly after all that the rails still conduct power nicely and the locomotive still moves, and I think the whole thing looks much more convincing than the ready-to-run track I was using before.

Quarry Hunslet: Now With Brass Knobs On!

So today's job was to fit the final detailing pieces to the locomotive; the handrails. I'd put this off as I had a feeling it might not be particularly easy to get all four handrail knobs in the right place so that the rails are both horizontal and at the same height on both sides of the saddle tank. I wasn't wrong as it's taken me a number of attempts to get it right.

I started by looking at a number of photographs and eventually spotted that the knobs were at the same height on the saddle tank as the rivets on the cab front. This made positioning the rear two knobs fairly easy. It also turned out that the 6mm masking tape I had to hand was a perfect fit between the bottom of the tank casting and the rivets. This meant, in theory, that I could lay a piece of tape along the length of the tank to get the right height for the front two knobs. After aligning the tape, I drilled the four holes and test fitted the knobs (these are the short handrail knobs from Eileen's Emporium) and brass wire for the rails themselves. The right hand side (as seen from the front) was pretty much spot on but the left side was terrible; somehow I'd ended up with the hole too far forward and too far down. I filled the hole with some Deluxe Materials Perfect Plastic Putty, waited for it to dry and then drilled a new hole in what I thought was a better spot. I'm not sure how, given how close the two holes were, but this time I was too far back and too far up. So the hole was filled again and then a third hole drilled. This one is much better, although not perfect, but by this point I was running out of casting to drill into so it will do.

I haven't glued the handrail knobs into place as it makes sense to do that after I've painted the tank, which also means I haven't finally trimmed the rails to the right length either, but the video should give you a pretty good sense of how it now looks.

As well as getting it to run further in each direction along the track (just for GB) the eagle eyed amongst you may notice that I've been at the Archer rivet transfers again. the whistle mounting bracket is now riveted to the cab front, if that isn't attention to detail then I don't know what is!

The only things now missing are the things I can't fit until it is painted; the reversing lever (which I can't fit until the cab is fixed in place), the whistle, and name and maker plates, which haven't yet arrived from Narrow Planet. This means the next step is to find a can of primer