Handrails

Back to the little tank engine. After the roof, whistle guard etc., it sat forlornly for a few weeks while I worked on other things. "I need to finish this," I thought, so I started to work on replacing the handrails. They're very simple: made from the core of a single-strand plastic wire (large roll from Maplin) - the same wire I used for the whistles.

I drilled out the holes in the body where the old handles went (with a tiny drill bit held in my fingers, as I have bits but no drill - my wife's idea and far more effective than it sounds). Next I cut and bent the wires to shape and stuck them in. Not bad, not brilliant. The one which goes up onto the roof gave a bit more trouble because of the angles.

I now have to decide whether to remove these handrails and try to make "knobs" out of blobs of solder for them, or to keep it as it is. I suspect the latter course will win out, in which case all I need to do is take the body shell off and bend the wire ends a little so they can't come out. That, and maybe paint them a dirty black colour, but again I doubt I'll get around to it.

But still before I can finish the engine, I need to stick on the whistle guard and whistles (which I'll probably have another go at) and fix a missing buffer. That'll probably take another couple of months to get around to.