Lookin' good, Lutz!! I appreciate the small details changes that you made that many other modelers would not bother to change.

Lutz, I’m lost for words!

I think that we called one week before and you said for buying the two articulateds - and now you have done very expansive rebuilds already. I’m enjoyed to read about this and I would like to see more of progress of modifying! Best what you have done are the expansive researches in order to find original photos and drawings and I’m sure that you will get two models which are very close to their originals. And what I said since our first talking about “Big Blue” – here you find ideas and answers to your questions given by specialists in US-railroading and model railroading.
Congratulations and a good time with these projects!

Hello!
... grew more and more complex:

I only wanted to replace the yellow LED by an golden sunny white one. And make looking her square. This is W&LE #8007.
But until you get acess to the front LED you have to disassemble the loco nearly complete.
Then ist is relatively simple. Solder off the wires from the LEDs legs, bend them, poke out the lens of the headlight housing and the slid out the yellow LED.
I use an 3mm golden sunny white LED for replacement. At first i reduced the lenght of the LED by filing away the rounded top.
Slid in, bend legs, solder wire, make function test, insert lens and refit the head light.
And then reassemble the loco... :x

Besides i found an broken wire and resoldered it. Also oiling and greasing all bearings, worms and gears.
It was not possible to ad some extra weight inside the boiler. The "lightweight" weights, visible in the photo on the right, takes all the space.
Also the weight of the loco is uneven balanced. The rear group of drivers bears more weight than the front one.
Here still i have to do some things of thought.

Greetings Lutz

The horizontal smokebox door.
The only example i found was on P2Ks 2-8-8-2, there it is moulded onto the complete boiler shell.
So i decided to scratchbuilt this part.
The first step was making parts from brass and copper sheet which i found in my stock. The oval door i filed out of 0.3mm brass recycled from the remains of an etching frame. The fascia is made from 0.1mm copper sheet. The small plate on front of the door was made from 0.15mm broce sheet and a little spacer for the plate was made of 0.5mm brass profile. This was soldered together and soldered to an sheet of 0.05mm copper.
The 0.05mm copper was punched to give an fixature for the clamps(?) which hold the door tight. The clamps itself were formed from 0.5mm brass wire.

Next step was to fetch the kitchen sponge (never, never let your wife know what for strange things you do with it). The 0.5mm brass wire was bend in an 90° angle with one very short end and an loner one. The longer end was pushed into the sponge. Then the question, solder or glueing? I choose glueing and so i used a lot of ACC to fix the clamps. The door hinges were made from 0.8mm brass wire. Let dry over night.


Next day i peeled the device out of the sponge and cut off the unwanted wire ends. Then filed the backside plain and smoothened it. The clamps and hinges were shorten to an equal length on the visible side. Then flattened by an silicone abraisive disc in an motor tool. Thus way i removed the original Spectrum smokebox door also and plained the front end.


The hole was filled with an flush cut piece of styrene sheet which was glued in. I also made an step fom 0.3mm styrene and redo a plumbing on the pump with brass wire. When you took an photo of your work and see what you have done, you often see some things and work are not properly done. So in this photo. The step is not right in angle, some clamps were broken and there is still an gap between smokebox front and fill in.
So i fixed it again until it will fit properly.


So it looks when it was fixed and painted.
What to do next is to replace the builders plate. The recangular ALOCO plate says year 1903 which is undoubtly wrong. I am searching for an round Baldwin builders plate. And then there are this footboards which in this case have to be small ones.

@sumpter250
A fellow in the German US-Forum posted a link: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.cohs.org/cgi-bin/cohs_search.pl?st=H-5&tr=AND&io=YES&lp=1&sl=100">http://www.cohs.org/cgi-bin/cohs_search ... p=1&sl=100</a><!-- m -->
The text says this were C&O H5 Mallets. You see clearly broad footboards on the pilot. The bell mounted on smokebox front of #1529, #1539, #1534, #1527, and mounted on boiler top on #1536.

Greetings Lutz