added new cab windows to match the contour of the firebox.

jacket banding, running board and washout plugs added.


Overview so far.

Hangers for ash pan.



This area will be really hard to paint once assembled, so I brushed on some black.


Add a little piping and viola! Other than adding rivets to the cab, I think the fireman's side is complete.

And that's the engineer's side! Next warm day, I'll hit it with a coat of primer, which I'm sure will reveal a few places that need minor adjustment, but overall I'm very pleased. Looks like it's time to start hacking up the other one. (But not this weekend, I'm taking a weekend trip with some friends, so don't expect any more work until Monday or Tuesday. )

Ok I lied. I forgot to post the picture of the numberboard.



Also, I broke one of the handrail stanchions during dis-assembly, so I built a replacement, which you can see in the forward-most mount.

Back in action.

Nobody makes a cast whistle that even vaguely resembles a Reading freight whistle, so I banged out this out of some brass stock. It's not perfect, but it looks closer than anything I've seen.



So that's pretty much it, except for adding a bell (when my supplier gets them in!) and paint, and I'm going to wait so I can paint them both at once, so I'm going to put the guts back in this engine and put it on the hold track while I tear down and start #2. It's going to be a lot of (ok, exactly) the same stuff, but I'll try to take some more interesting pictures.




Removed number from rear of tender on 2nd unit. Surprisingly the numbers on the headlight and rear light were paper stickers. Didn't expect that.



New decals applied.

And now the hacking with a dremel can begin!





Unlike the first engine, I broke almost every plastic handrail stanchion trying to remove them. So I ordered a brace of them from MTH. At 25¢/ea I'm not terribly stressed about it. Stuff like this is the cost of doing business, I guess. (It's occurring to me only now that I didn't actually test run either locomotive on delivery, probably should have done that.)



Nothing really new to see here, same stuff I did with the last one, but it's progress. Also I'm still waiting for one of my suppliers to get the bells in stock (If anyone here is, or is friends with, a Precision Scale Co dealer that stocks O-scale parts, drop me a PM!) so I dug through the parts bin and grabbed the factory stamped bell holder with crappy cast bell from my Lionel T-1. Really just so it wouldn't look so "wrong" sitting on my shelf, waiting for me to catch up with the 2nd engine so they can go to paint at the same time.



That's all for now!