Just couldn’t help myself. An IHC HO 2-8-2 arrived at The Shops yesterday:
I plopped it on the layout and test ran it a bit…sweet! Maybe after Christmas I thought. Then this morning…it called me…taunting me…It was more than I could bear. Brandishing my trusty screwdriver and razor saw, and with a Rebel yell that made the Lady of the House raise an eybrow, I attacked…
Aaaaahhhh…I love the smell of sawing plastic in the morning. A piece of drain pipe was pulled out of a scrap box, cut to length, and notched to fit the mechanism.
The tender wasn’t safe either…I tossed the shell and set about cutting about an inch and a half out of the center, and then splicing the two sections back togehter. I had a tender shell that I had started for another project and then changed my mind. In this case it worked just fine. A square of styrene makes a fine tender deck.
And then there was boiler work to do. The full length jacket was made from .001 styrene sheet with rivets embossed on it with a pounce wheel. Another piece of .001 styrene makes a boiler jacket from the smokebox back. Firebox sides and end are fabricated from .040 styrene and so is the smokebox front, and cab floor. boiler bands are merely strips of styrene glued in place.
As the sun sank slowly in the west, I surveyed this HO to On30 conversion and saw that it was good. See the On30, touch the On30…