Cheers, Mick, Rob and any other readers. A very happy new year to you and yours as well.
I have some D & S clerestories in the pile somewhere. I recall you said they were a pain.
Back to the sides today, once I'd reattached the roof rib which came off when I was washing the whole thing down.
Droplights were the next job. I generally hate these as I get them both cockeyed and too high/low. However the vertical formers for the hinges also serve to locate the droplights vertically, so all you have to do is decide whether you want them open, closed or at a point in between.
There were actually two too few droplights. This wasn't a problem as I have plenty left over from the GE rake I built last year and I wanted to do something different with the lavatory windows. Nick Campling's book shows one open, revealing that it is a hopper window (it is hinged at the bottom and opens inwards from the top). I wanted to show this on the model and so a bit of scrap etch and a spare droplight and away we went.
Droplights done, I went to grab handles. I do these last so I don't risk deforming them by pressing on the back of the side when working on something else. They're slightly cranked at the top then curve in towards the side as they go down. I bent them up from .33 wire and then used a bit of card to space them off the side and soldered them from the back. It's also worth going back over all the holes you drilled out in the sides at this point as you may well have filled them with solder, droplight (if open) or both.
Once these are done, grind/file/sand the back of the side smooth. That will help when you glaze the coach and also ensure that the sides fit over the floor, which has a small fold up section at each side which holds the sides straight. It was now time to put sides and ends together. Bill provides these fold up bits of etch to help attach sides to ends.
That done, I moved onto my own method of attaching body shell to floor. I put a brass strip with two captive nuts across the end of the coach and then use 10 BA bolts up though the floor to fasten it all together. I found that the lower attaching bits above fouled my brass strip so I ground them off again at this end.
I could have attached sides to roof, but I wanted to give it all a thorough wash first. I also still need to attach the vents to the roof. I moved on to the floor. This is quite thin brass and has become curved across its width while still in the etch. I expect attaching the internal partitions and buffer beams will help straighten it out. Here all I've done is attach the bogie mounts - captive 8 BA bolt inside - and make the holes to screw up into the body to marry the whole thing up.
Finally here it is looking much more like a coach. Note that I haven't put all the end gear on - alarm gear and the like will be attached after I've soldered roof to body as there's too much of a likelihood of it falling off if I put it on now.
Last thing is another scrub in shiny sinks and into the airing cupboard overnight. Only one of the grab handles came undone, so I must have had a good day with the iron.
