In the previous installment of this series (here) I left you with a bit of a cliffhanger, as the front of the hood was square instead of rounded properly.

Filing it to shape

I don’t have any in process photos, but the process involved using a big file, a small file, and then finally a sanding block with 400 grit sandpaper. I used a piece of scrap wood in the bench vise to support the hood as I worked. The shape may be seen below, it was not difficult to do.

The “wedding cake” of solder and brass is hardly visible.

Soldering it all together

From there I came up with an order of soldering all the remaining parts together. Step one was solder the hood to the frame. I did not take a photo of this, but I used the tabs to align it in place. I’m not going back to change it, but the hood may be set slightly too far back on the frame.

Step two was solder the cab body to the hood and frame. For this I used painter’s tape.

And the final step was soldering the roof on the cab. I set all of it up so that held the frame in place with a metal clamp in the bench vice, and from there hold the parts mostly in place with painter’s tape.

After that I was excited to see how the drive fit, and it will work with some final modifications to the front truck.

What it looks like

The body hangs slightly off the back of the frame, but it is not particularly noticeable.

Parts I did not solder on?

There are brass vents that go on top of the hood, but I felt soldering them on was too much of a risk, I did not want to unsolder anything. I’ll be super gluing those on, along with other plastic details.

The plastic details include a stack from a HO Athearn SW7 body and lights and radiator details from AHM HO SW1 bodies. Oh, and the truck sideframes are pretty great, they are also AHM SW1 parts. In the photo is the rear truck, for this I cut down the Athearn Bloomberg road truck sideframe, turning in into a pad to glue the switcher truck sideframes.

As I write this, the engine is probably within a half hour of running! Then to some new challenges, in particular the handrails. More on that in a future post.

Continue reading the SW8 series