Thanks Ricardo and Mike1158 (is that your year of birth?
). I like the expression “Muddy Marvelous”!
As mentioned last time, I still wasn’t fully satisfied with the loc-tender connection. Actual pictures, as well as my greatest guide in the building process, the GA drawing, clearly indicate that the doors installed at both loc and tender are overlapping (obviously for safety reasons) and that the size of the footstep is smaller than provided in the model. At the point where I left last time the doors were more like the saloon door type.
So I changed the buffer block at the loc side, in fact I made it flatter, to save about 1 millimeter and obtaining a smaller gap between the loc and tender. Also cut off approximately half a cm of the footstep. Now things look as they should.
The only thing missing is the bracket (or latch – I’m not so sure of the right word here) between both doors to keep them closed and in place during operation. This is a detail that should be installed at the tender. And speaking of the tender, you learn as you go, and I’m considering a few other final modifications but that’s for next time.
The final parts to be mounted on the locomotive were the wind breakers at the cab, which are in place now and the final paint/marker touch-ups. This is still ongoing but the boiler body has been fully “checked” now and I have applied a final coat of varnish.
The varnish I’m using has a matt tone, but if you apply it with a (flat) brush rather than spraying, the effect is a kind of silk gloss and that’s exactly what I want to achieve. The museum Gresley looks as shiny as a new car at the dealer but in reality must have looked like far from that considering rain, dust, mud, steam, water and smoke surrounding the machine during daily service.
Operation Varnish is still ongoing. Next will the cab and then the chassis.
In the meantime, please be informed that I have changed jobs. I’ve become a train engineer. Just kidding but I put a 1:48 mini-me (3.8 cm) next to the train to give you an impression of the in fact huge size of this impressive machine.
Alright, to be continued I guess one more time before reaching the true finish line.
Erik