09-26-2009, 04:04 PM
With the tender all done it was time to work on the boiler. For the most part all that was wrong was a bent up headlight and a number of loose pipes as well as some small bends in the handrails here and there. It took me about an hour to fix all the broken solder joints and take the minor bends out of the handrails.
The pipes on this side were missing one pipe bracket just under the front edge of the cab so I made one from some very small flat brass bar stock. The pipes in front of the cab running to the air pumps were broken off so they had to soldered back on.
On the right side the pipes were hanging on by one solder joint so I fixed all the broken joints. I also had to solder the shaft from the power reverser back on.
The headlight bracket and headlight were off the smokebox front when I received the locomotive. The bracket was actually bent a little bit but I was able to rebend it. The original headlight was in bad shape. Someone drilled it for a light bulb but when doing so drilled the whole back out of it and also made the headlight casting egg shaped in doing so. I ended up replacing the headlight casting with a Cal-Scale #207. It is a little bigger than the original one but I did not want to put the whole project on hold and wait for a new headlight to arrive. The slightly bigger headlight is actually a good thing as the micro LEDs I use for headlights would not have fit the original casting.
Wayne Reid
The pipes on this side were missing one pipe bracket just under the front edge of the cab so I made one from some very small flat brass bar stock. The pipes in front of the cab running to the air pumps were broken off so they had to soldered back on.
On the right side the pipes were hanging on by one solder joint so I fixed all the broken joints. I also had to solder the shaft from the power reverser back on.
The headlight bracket and headlight were off the smokebox front when I received the locomotive. The bracket was actually bent a little bit but I was able to rebend it. The original headlight was in bad shape. Someone drilled it for a light bulb but when doing so drilled the whole back out of it and also made the headlight casting egg shaped in doing so. I ended up replacing the headlight casting with a Cal-Scale #207. It is a little bigger than the original one but I did not want to put the whole project on hold and wait for a new headlight to arrive. The slightly bigger headlight is actually a good thing as the micro LEDs I use for headlights would not have fit the original casting.
Wayne Reid