Kettle time

Another new project tonight here at Chateau Dandruff. Why finish anything when you can start something exciting and new. I made a trade with another modeler to move one of my 4-8-2's which I was not happy with (don't get me wrong, its a very nice bit of kit, but to my MK1 eyeball the wheels are just too small; a fact backed by my plastic Chinese calipers). The replacement is this lovely Dapol 4MT 2-6-2.


The immediate possibility that springs to mind with that beautifully made valve gear is a Wf. Looking at the NZMRG plan the immediate observations are that the wheels are a bit big and the wheel spacing is 1mm too large, the cylinders are a bit on the small side and too high, and the trailing truck needs to be replaced with a 2 axle bogie. The driving wheels I can't do that much about, but the rest...

First up remove the top. The screws are under the trailing truck and in the chimney of all places. The plastic top is then removed for future sale to some simple minded English outline modeler on trademe. Carefully break the glue bonds that hold the cylinders on and then remove them by moving them forward and up. Take care of the waggly bits as they are made either from some really soft reject Chinese steel or toothpaste tubes; easy to bend, but just as easy to bend back. To lower the cylinders you will need to remove about 1.5mm of plastic from the marked area. Carefully remove the plastic by filing until the center line of the cylinder lines up approximately with the center of the driving wheels. At this point I also cut all the detail off the front of the cylinders.


The cylinders are then carefully repositioned and all the waggly bits lined up again. its times like this you wonder why god didn't give us more arms and hands to do jobs like this as you always need a spare pair of tweezers to move something else into position. I just did it sober...


A very minor detail is that the upper link on the valve gear should be flat. I did this by removing a plastic pip at the front of the valve hanger and gluing the link in a level position.


The next job is to remove some of the metal from the motor holder in order to fit the boiler underneath. I'm not sure if its needed yet but best to do it now while the beast is in bits. You can see from the picture its possible to remove quite a bit of metal without breaking anything.


Final picture is everything back together. Next step will be the construction of the rear bogie and fitting it into position, accompanied by the removal of a fair bit of metal.