MDC/ROUNDHOUSE locomotive rebuilds

[cnrglen]

Thanks to another modeller I now have the main rod and crosshead for this engine.


The day after these parts were dropped in the mail for me I did a bit of horse trading with another modeller and:

Another one, pretty much complete including the motor. so now I have two to build.
Now after lowering the Boiler, was wondering if there was going to be enough room for the motor. As it turns out, no there isn't. The brass nut on the top of the motor is too tall now so I did some machining to the boiler to fix the problem:

As it turns out the high point of the motor is right under the steam dome on the boiler to I was able to hollow out the steam dome to make room. Of course this might be completely unnecessary since I have to replace the motor the convert to DCC (if I can find a decent motor that doesn't cost as much as the engine!).
I think I'll work on the older engine first, It doesn't have a motor so it will be a static model. I might power it later though.
I stripped the old paint off the frame, cylinder block and driver retainer plate with easy-off oven cleaner.

It worked very well. Then I pulled out my container of 'Blacken It' and started to experiment.

I poured it into a small pan and dipped the drivers, rods, main road and cross head in to see what would happen.

I think it worked rather well. It only took a minute to darken the metal and it worked on both the brass and the zinc/zamac castings.