Thursday, January 04, 2007

Striking while the iron is hot!

Hi all,

I'll leave my views on the secret art that is soldering for future posts, but yesterday produced the correct set of circumstances for some coach modelling i.e. Thomas went to sleep early!!

I started work to finish off a project I started a while ago (my first soldering job) on coach 100, now the WHR mess coach No. 1000. Image below...


I soldered the doors on, folded up and soldered the bogies and tidied up some of the previous attempts at soldering. This kit is now ready for final assembly of the sides and floor. However, I need some advice on this and need to study some photos of the coach in its new 1000 guise before I progress, so I moved on to...


The WHR saloon...I removed the sides and ends from the fret, cleaned them up and then removed the floor, soldering this into its required shape (a U shape) and did the same with the mini U shapes that help form the sides and ends in the corners. Following this, I thought why not do the same for other similar coaches and start a kind of batch production. So...


The WHR brake saloon was next, followed by the Pullman.

Hopefully, these coaches can be finished with floors, sides and bogies completed when Dad comes up next weekend. So, until then, I put down the soldering iron (with a gasp of relief that I hadn't done too much damage with it so far!).

I then found a parkside plastic kit of FR semi-open No.38 and so, in a quick half an hour, I completed this kit, with bogies, internal seats and brakes all cemented in place. All this requires now is the roof cutting to exact dimensions, the vac pipes glued on and painting...

Colin

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