DSJ Part 6. Handrails.

 DB teters onwards:

A few minutes were available for trainroom duty today, so some handrails sprung from the holes that were drilled last time. I had grand visions of soldering these up on the workbench nice and straight, and then inserting them into the holes. This was never going to work as I'm shite at soldering, and all my superglued ones from the ancient past are still intact. More or less, anyway.

So an overall hoop of brass was folded to fit and glued in the outer holes. Then the central vertical piece inserted into a hole, cut to size iteratively, and glued to attach to the hoop. Then the two remaining vertical pieces done similarly. 

To finish things off, the horizontal bar was glued in place (which I assumed went all the way across, but after looking at a few prototype photos, doesn't). The first horizontal bar, on the unpowered/short hood end went in nicely first pop, and the other end had to be wrangled about and a small kink added in the middle with tweezers and fingers covered in superglue. These end rail pieces were all made with leftover (0.6 or 0.4mm??) brass rod that came with the Trackgang Zs. Overall, this didn't take as long as would be imagined. 

Ironically, the 'short hood' set of rails is pretty straight and square (whereas the short hood end itself isn't!) but the verticals at the powered end aren't quite as vertical as they should be, which shows up against that perfect 3D printed end!  

The two vertical handrails indented into the corners of the short hood were added with finer brass (pic above), although the 3D printed ones on the powered end look better (pic below)! Those vertical corner ones and the horizontal grabs along the tops of the hoods were made from .008 inch brass (a bit fine in comparison, but what was at hand) .

And lastly, the vertical standalone inverted U shaped bits in the corners and by the cab doors were cut from the Tomix top. A little short, being 1:160th (or maybe 1:150th), but they were too nice to not use. Yes, the leaning one in the background of the above pic is being stabilised by a tin of paint as it sets!