Next I insert the grab into the side of the hood. I push the wire against the body with my thumb, making sure the wire is perpendicular to the body. I use a finger and push the, wire around the bend to the front of the hood until I get to the second grab iron hole.




I keep the wire against the hood and with a thin point sharpie, place a dot on the wire in front of the hole. Gently removing the wire out of the body, I place my pliers at the location of the mark. I make sure the wire is perpendicular because I’m going to make another 90 degree bend upwards.



I insert the grab back in the hood side leaving it stick out from the hood about .030. I use a piece of .030 scrap plastic on the front of the hood as a gauge. I check the 90 degree to see if it matches up to the second hole. If it doesn’t, I adjust the 90 degree angle until it does. If it looks good, I remove the grab and make my final 90 degree with my tool. I trim the ends of the wire and insert the grab iron in the body. I do my final tweaking and gauging.




Looking at the picture above, when I finished bending the grabs for both sides, I used my .030 gauge and secured them in place with CA. Next I bent a 90 degree on a small section of wire and inserted it in the first grab iron hole. I trimmed it up and used CA to glue it to the curved grab and the body. I added the rest of the grabs and secured those also.

With the all the grab irons secured, I was ready to finish the detailing of the hood. First in line was the walkway over the fan shroud.

For the walkway, I used Plano Boxcar Apex- Slotted pattern photo etch #201. I cut the grate to a scale 4.25 ft. or 14.9mm in length x.224 in width. I wasn’t sure if this is the proper grate to use, it could have been a chicken wire grate over the shroud, but I couldn’t find any good overhead pictures to support the theory. So I settled for the Plano material.

To make the end support risers, I cut 2 pieces of .010 x.080 to a width of .224. I sanded a slight arc to the bottoms of the supports to fit the slight contour of the roof. Next I located the center of the louvers. I also marked center on the supports so I could line everything up. The back support was lined up against the wall of the shroud and I used liquid cement to secure it. Next I cut 2 pieces of .010 x.040 x.567 or 14.40mm. These will be the walkway cross support between the risers. I glued these in place with liquid cement on top of the shroud against the end support. Before these have a chance to set up, I quickly glue the 2nd end support. I used the walkway to align the frame work and make sure nothing was crooked; I left it dry for an hour. I then applied CA over the top of frame and set the walkway in place.

Wrapping up the body detailing, I did mention I broke the shutter control actuator while removing in from the hood. I didn’t document through pictures how I made this part, but I did re-create one of the parts and took a pic. The picture below shows the shutter control actuator on the prototype. Photo credit Richard Wolfram.



I wasn’t quite sure at the time how I was going to make this part, so I basically winged it. The original thought was to make it out of styrene, but I quickly disputed the thought knowing one accidental bump would wreck the part. So my brain trust felt it would be best to make the actuator out of .010 x.030 flat brass wire. So, I cut off about a scale foot and then center punched a dimple in the middle of the wire. I then drilled a #80 hole through the dimple. The hole will be for the control arm of the actuator.

Using my Xuron flat nose pliers, I placed the tip of the pliers centered over the #80 hole. I bent both sides of the wire downwards. A little tweaking here and there to the part gave a nice U-shape. I trimmed off the supports so they would be a tad longer than the factory part. This gave me the room to file the part level across and then file a slight angle on the supports. With a few swipes of a small round file, I was able to match the contour of the hood. I checked to see if the height of the part now matched the factory part. I didn’t want the new part taller, but if it was a little undersized, it would be ok.

The hole I left open for the new actuator was too big so I ended up plugging the second hole on the hood from the old actuator and sanding the area smooth. Next, I double checked my location for the actuator and made sure it would sit nice on the hood, I placed a mark in pencil for the location which was centered on the newly plugged hole. Then I dabbed a little CA on the support ends and placed the actuator back in its location. I let this dry and made sure it was perpendicular to the fan shroud and vertical. I then used the #80 drill and inserted the drill through the hole on top of the actuator and carefully drilled a hole into the hood. Now I will be able to add more stability to the whole setup on the top of the hood. The control rod for the actuator was bent using .012.



Inserting the control rod into the actuator gave me the location to drill a #80 hole into the fan shroud. Next, I cut just enough of the control rod to slip into the fan shroud and dabbed a little CA to set it in place and also glued the rod going into the body.

Now I can make the shutter control rod. I use .012 and bend a 90 degree on the end that will reside in the actuator. I slide the rod through the eye bolts and trim the 90 to just fit in against control rod. I dab some CA along the eye bolts and at control rod to keep the shutter control rod secure. I trim the end of the shutter control rod back just far enough so it will not scratch the cab.



The hood detail is complete, moving on to the cab.

Cab

The cab was simple to detail. The only item that gives it the obvious Reading look is in the form of the drip strips. My additional detailing just added a little more pop to blend in with the body. I replaced the door handles, added windshield wipers and constructed an all-weather window.

For my drip strips, I use .010 x.015 brass bar stock from DA. I cut the bar stock a little longer than the cab roof. I find what appears to be center of the bar stock and bend the angle. I used reference photos to determine the angle and length to be trimmed. When tweaking and test fitting is done, I place a pencil mark on the cab at the location of one end of the drip strip and another at the top of the point. I dip one corner of the drip strip in CA and carefully set it in place at the mark. By just doing one corner first, I can now adjust the strip to match the mark at the point and be perpendicular to the roof line. With a pin posing as an applicator, I apply a thin bead of CA along the drip strip.

Next I replaced the molded on door handles. I used a set of EMD style handles from Railflyer. These come in two separate parts, the handle and the latch. I just used the handle. I’ve also made these and still do with .012 brass wire bent to look like a handle and drilled the correct size hole needed to glue them to the door.

Rolling along here, I looked at reference photos for the locations for the windshield wipers and drilled the holes for the DA wipers. These are applied when paint and weathering are done. I removed the molded wipers off the glass by gently scraping them off and sanding the glass smooth with 600, 800 and 1000 grit wet/dry sandpaper. Wet sanding through all the grits is important to reduce heavy scratching. After cleaning the glass and letting it dry, I brush on Pledge floor shine to the glass. Leaving it dry thoroughly for a couple hours I apply a second coat to the glass. The Pledge will fill in any fine scratches and restore the glass.

I didn’t like how the walkway handrail is attached to the cab. Proto has this mounted to the outside of the roof overhang. The handrail is supposed to be attached to the inside of the overhang. I nipped off the very tip of the handrail were it bends to go into the roof line. I used an Athabasca eyebolt and drilled out the center of the eye to the size of the handrail. Using the original hole, I glued the eyebolt to the inside of the roof making sure the stem was trimmed enough not to stick out the other side.

Another item added to the cab was an access cover on the brakemen’s side; I cut a piece of styrene .010 x.040 for the access cover.

Getting back to this build, I needed to take some time and make a minor change to one of the details I’m about to talk about. One of the details I added was the all-weather window that the Reading used on some of their switchers and GP7’s. Unfortunately, there isn’t any made like the Reading used on the market, so these have to be handmade. My original window was made using a DA 2301 all-weather window as a starting point. I trimmed it up just to give me the flat window frame. I thinned the frame of the window by sanding all four sides as thin as I could get it without breaking. But as I looked at it on the model when completed, I wasn’t all that happy with it. What I ended up with in my eyes was a window that would have been a much better fit for a model house! The good news is, when I placed the window on the model, I used clear tacky glue and popping the window off didn’t ruin the paint job. And now my mission has been to come up with a better idea, which I was working on over the holidays. I did some trial and error with different ideas and came up with a more simplified version. Below is the pic of the original window.

My first approach to building the all-weather window was to make the upper and lower window attachments for the window. I don’t know the proper name for these, but I’ll refer to them as panels.

For my representation of these two panels, I cut 2 pieces of .010x.060 to a length of .320. Then I cut 2 pieces of .010x.040x.280 in length. I assembled these by taking one long and one short length and gluing them together keeping one of the side lengths flush and centered. This leaves a .020 gap on three sides. The purpose of the gap is to mimic the channel the window locks into when assembled. The window will be .020 thick that I’m making, so this will all blend together for appearance. I centered the panels with the flush side against the cab under and above the window and glued them in place. The pic below shows the window and panels.



Since I like to keep the windows opened on switchers, I made an arm rest for the engineer’s window. I cut a piece of .020 x.040 x.310 to match the inside window frame and glued that into place. I did bevel the top outer edge of the arm rest slightly.

Next will be the window supports. The picture of RDG 103 shows the channels used to keep the window in place when not in use.