So for the first time in years, I've started a project out of genuine enthusiasm - rather than just getting another long modelling job out of the way.
Every sugar mill needs a boneyard, for all the worn out and broken things they're too cheap to scrap. Usually includes a couple of overgrown sidings.
A dilapidated locomotive of some description can often be found here amongst retired wagons and redundant milling machinery.
With the sounds of it's former shedmates nearby, it silently stands, rusting amid the weeds and rotting sleepers, at the back of the siding..
Enough "poetry", time for butchery.
I have a pair of LGB Koppel 0-4-0WTs picked up for cheap, the chassis of which I plan on bashing into a Koppel Mallet somewhere down the line. This leaves me with a pair of redundant bodies.
From some rough measurements of the motorised chassis, a dummy set of frames were cut from foamboard offcuts. The footplate and just about everything else is also leftover material. The wheels came from a NewRay (?) toy bogey wagon, and the axles are cut down nails. The springs and steps came from the donor loco.
Scratching cylinders and motion is more effort than I'm willing to put into this project, and I think encouraging nature to obscure the missing bits would be far more interesting.
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The ridiculous lower cab extensions were cut away and tidied with Squadron putty. Some detail parts were removed and their mounts filled in where appropriate.
A pair of "near enough" motion brackets and half-dismantled couplings were scratched from styrene scraps. The frames were made to look as though they'd been robbed of their cylinders.
The chimney was turned from a 4" long lump, of 2" dia. aluminium bar, that I had previously used as a camshaft bushing remover/installer.
Because it wouldn't be one of my machining sessions without some obvious sequencing mistake, I found the lump was slightly too long to drill through the centre with the drills on hand. I couldn't turn it around in the lathe chuck and drill from the other side, as I didn't want to damage the finished end by gripping it in the chuck.
In hindsight I could've used some brass strip as soft jaws, but I digress. I had to drill from the other end by hand, which of course means the centre hole is oversized and not perfectly centred.
The point of all that is to say, when I put the now-redundant bushing puller to good use as chimney-making barstock, I found that when I finish-turned the bottom of the chimney, I'd started cutting into the off-centred bore. On any other chimney this would be game over, but for a boneyard loco, it looks like the base of the chimney has rusted out.
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I've had a lot of fun on this little project over the last three days.
A quick rubbing back of the printed worksplates so they won't show through, and I can start painting.
I'm thinking I'll use a combination of salt-chipping and iron powder for real rust. Peeling paint revealing an old livery underneath, is another method I'd like to learn for this and future projects, so that'll need some experimentation before I proceed here.
I'd also like to weather a rake of Binnie tippers the same way, so I may assemble those first and weather the lot in one go..
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