A longer update today, could have been two posts! But in short, some significant progress.

The SW-8 drive and more

Last time, the Worsley Works SW-8 was painted, but I had not yet completed the drive or done any decals. And the hood and cab were not mounted to the frame. If I had done this before painting I would have soldered them in place, but in this case I used canopy cement. It worked well in this application.

The drive is very similar to the one I did on my previous SW-8, as I wanted them to run together well. To repeat the basic details, the motor and drive truck are from an Athearn GP-35 (widened for OO), the unpowered truck is from an AHM S-1, and the sideframes are from a AHM SW-1. I used silver ones so it would look a bit more sporty.

The underside view below shows the basics of it again. It’s a tight fit! But runs very nicely. The sideframes are on the Athearn end are mounted on a modified remnant of the original Geep sideframes, and on the other end on a stack of styrene.

Not seen in the photos, I soldered the wires for 8 wheel pick up and added a big weight inside the cab (based on the AHM SW-1 weight). The small weight from the front of the SW-1 is also mounted in the front end.

It looks nice!

I had an idea how I wanted to do the decals, the below showing the start of it.

The engine is on the layout now, it runs well and looks nice. But I think the paint scheme needs a bit more bling. At least a big flag or something. Need to order a few more decals. More on that in a future installment.

Handrails and stuff on the SW-1 and NW-2

Returning to these engines, here are the Super-Scale bodies with no railings.

The original scheme of railings and stanchions was pretty suspect, nothing could be saved.

I puzzled for a while, as I pretty much had to use the existing holes somehow. Finally I came up with a plan that is fairly close to correct for the long railing on the hood. As with the SW-8 I used A-Line stanchions but with #22 gauge wire, which is slightly bigger and I thought a better visual match to the details of the engines.

At this point I was getting pretty excited, as these look so much better than the original railings.

Which meant I had some details to take care of. On the fireman’s side there is a step in front of the cab, a really visible detail I wanted to add. I ended up using rectangular brass tube and modifying it to the correct size, and soldered them onto both cabs.

This was a great detail to add, it again upped the level of the look of the models significantly. First a close up —

And now a wider view of both models with the hood railing and the steps added.

At this point, a number of things converge and need to be done at the same time, including

*Drilling a lot of holes
*Bending railings
*Working out a way to attach the bodies to the frames
*Attaching the hood to the cab

For the holes, I used my Dremel in the drill press as much as I could, locating the holes and drilling in a divot with the pin vice first. Railings were not hard to manage at this point, they just take time. I did some of them then moved over to the task of working out the body mounting. In short, on both engines it is similar to before, but with the major changes to the bodies some holes had to be drilled and tapped in new places.

Attaching the hood to the cab was a special item of concern. I wanted to solder them together as they were originally. However, with the details that have already been applied and the way the cabs are assembled, it all seemed really risky. Finally, remembering how well the canopy cement worked on the SW-8 body, I put a layer of plastic wrap on the frame and used canopy cement. With a weight on the smokestack to hold it all down square. It should be secure enough.

And that’s were things stand right now. I think I can do the rest of the railings pretty efficiently, which will take us to the point of painting the models. I’ll work on the drives after that. Hopefully, with luck, they’ll be done soon! Although I don’t know if the universals I hope to use will work. More on that in the next installment.