Large Scale Kitbashing

It is another rainy spring day here so I'm indoors for the day.  I decided to do a little more work on kitbashing this large scale 4-6-0 steam locomotive.  

Long ago, I decided that I wanted to add marker lights to the front end of this steam locomotive whenever I got around to repainting and kitbashing it.  Back when this type of locomotive was manufactured for real-life railroads, there was no such thing as marker lights on locomotives.  Instead of lights, these early locomotives used flags.  However, these 10 wheeler locomotives were still in use when marker lights became more common in use rather than flags.  

If I remember correctly most of these 4-6-0 steam locomotives added marker lights to the lower part of the front end mounted just above the cow catcher where the flags had been located.  I seem to remember seeing these older locomotives with marker light mounted this way.  However, I've always preferred the marker lights being mounted up higher on the sides of the top half of the boiler so this is where I wanted to mount these new marker lights on this model.  It is my kitbash for my little railroad so I'll configure my trains the way I prefer them.

At first, I fabricated a crossbar out of balsa wood to mount these marker lights.  After spending some time cutting and filing to shape a few different versions of this balsa wood crossbar, I realized that balsa wood is too soft for this application.  I felt it would be far too easy to accidentally break these marker lights off the balsa wood with just one small bump to the marker lights.  I needed to find a different material to use for fabricating this crossbar.  

Here is one of the original balsa wood crossbars...  

I went searching through the house for something made of plastic that I can use for this crossbar.  During my search around the house, I found a small piece of scrap heavy gauge sheet aluminum.  This was the material to use next!  I knew I could fabricate this crossbar out of sheet metal using basic hand tools and a belt sander.  

First, I cut out a rough rectangular shape by hand and then scribed a more refined shape onto the newly cut rectangular shape.  I used a belt sander to get to the appropriate rough shape and then refined the shape with jewelers files until everything looked just right.  

I drilled two holes on each end of this crossbar.  I needed to file these round holes into square holes so I could insert the square mount on the back of the marker lights.  Surprisingly, this process went fairly quickly.

Below, is a photo of this crossbar placed on the top of the boiler just under the headlight.  The headlight is mounted on a small stand that is the same exact height as the top of this crossbar.  The marker lights are inserted into the crossbar.  It looks pretty good!

This locomotive is currently silver and red but I'll be painting it charcoal black.  This new crossbar supporting the marker lights will also be painted charcoal black just like the boiler that it is mounted on so it won't be as noticeable as it is in bare metal.  With everything painted charcoal black, everything will seem to belong.  These marker lights will be illuminated too and that illuminated green marker light will stand out against the charcoal black crossbar.

I've also sanded all the parts and pieces of the locomotive and tender in preparation to being painted.  After sanding, I had to clean each of the parts and detail pieces that will be painted.  In this photo, below, everything is drying in our garden window over our kitchen sink...

Since it has been raining, there has been a bit of a delay in painting.  Everything in the house is completely covered in fine pollen that blows right through our window screens so I'll probably need to clean each of these parts again before painting.  Most of the heavy cleaning is done now though.

Next, I think I'm going to tackle adding windows and window frames to the cab.  I just need to first figure out how I'm going to do it!

EDIT:  Before heading to bed, I wanted to provide an update on this locomotive kitbash project.  Before dinner tonight, I worked on cutting out windows for the cab.  I was able to get all the windows cut to a rough size larger than I need.  Tomorrow, I plan to use a belt sander to grind the edges of these panes down to the exact finished sizes I need for the cab.  Once I glue the panes in place, then I'll add some wood trim on the inside of the cab around the windows.  

In the meantime, I'm still waiting on the weather to improve so I can paint everything outdoors.  I won't be gluing the window panes in place until everything is primed and painted charcoal black so the priming and painting weather delay is beginning to hold things up.