Some Assembly Required

As I expected I couldn't just leave the etched parts alone and so by the end of yesterday I'd got as far as being able to waft some primer over the first complete test build of the body (I haven't looked at assembling the new chassis yet, but I'm off work for the next week so I should get to it fairly soon).

If you just take an brief glance then I hope you agree this looks pretty good and I'm certainly happy with it, but there are a number of issues I need to sort. I've already mentioned needing to alter the name plates as the current ones basically disintegrated during etching, but I've now discovered two other "mistakes" on the etched parts.

The most obvious mistake in the photos is the curved cutout on the bottom of the front grill. The cutout should line up with the centre line of the locomotive, but I managed to draw it in the centre of the grill so it's out by a millimetre or two. Not quite sure how I missed that but it's easy to fix on the etch artwork.

The second, and slightly less obvious, issue is that the folded part, which if you remember I had issues drawing, is ever so slightly wrong. I seem to have ended up with the fold lines slightly too close together which means that it forces the panel to slope out too sharply on the side in the photo as it drops from the top of the engine cover. I think this has happened as the etched lines allow the metal to fold much better than my scored lines on brass which has slightly shrunk the part. Again it should be fairly easy to update the artwork now I can see how the current version fits against the model.

Even with these issues I think it looks pretty good when viewed from a sensible distance (the photos are very cruel). So next up will be tweaking the etch artwork and testing the MkIII chassis print.