The slang term for a westerner in China is gweilo (bignose). Of course you would never call my nose big if you had met an English Electric DG loco. Aiiiyaaa!
I began by making the front face, which on a DG slopes back a little from the vertical and is graciously curved across the front and suddenly more sharply at the corners. A few plastic corner posts and a .5mm sheet rendered a fair representation of this once sanded down and stuck together.
After letting that set for a while I started on the top section. This is surprisingly tall on the prototype - the top of it comes up to the height of the top edge of the cab side windows. To make this I stuck two pieces of 2mm sheet together and began filing. As with the front face, there is a nice curve all over the top with a tighter radius curve at the corners. To make things even more difficult, the top slopes down slightly toward the front. Again, I think the Trackside kit seems to do a good job of capturing this from the pics I've seen (and again, I should have bought a Trackside nose rather than making my own, but that's stupidity for you).
After a considerable period of dremeling and sanding I attached the nose-top to the body only to find it was too tall. The sanding crew were roused from their slumbers and eventually I was happy enough with the general shape. A little modelling putty was applied in the seams and hopefully some paint, hatches, doors, headlights and handrails will complete the illusion of fidelity.
I highly recommend the April 2002 NZ Model Railway Journal's article on DG locos, which has an excellent range of reference pictures and plans.
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