Rivetted Panels

This is just a quick post to show I haven’t been completely idle over summer. The GW Models rivet press has proved it’s worth and I can say that the locomotive’s superstructure is now complete.

I’ve now riveted up the main exterior tank panels and these are in place. I had a small disaster on the rear tank at the bottom of the side you can’t see in this photo. In cutting the panels up I sheared off one of the lines of rivets and this wasn’t fixable but I decided to use it anyway. I can probably mask it with a pipe or a tool of some sort later in the build.

The rivet press works better than I could have hoped but my technique for applying the overlays onto the base tank still leaves a lot to be desired as I made a mistake in chopping up the overlay and sheared off one of the lines of rivets. I’ll disguise this minor problem with something later but for the moment I’m going to press ahead.

In the photo you can see, if you look carefully, that the loco has a distinct lean at the rear which is caused by the weight of all that NS in the cab and tank area with no compensating weight at the front. I’ll test some lead weights on the front to even this up a bit but again, for the moment I’m going to go ahead and start detailing the loco.