The second run of Westerns has unpainted black side fairings glued onto the model. Heljan caught the mistake and put a correctly painted set into the box, but you have to remove the installed ones and put the painted ones on yourself. All four side fairings were firmly glued into place and had to be removed with a razor blade breaking the pins which are then left glued in the cast frame.

The locating holes for the side fairing pins then had to be drilled out. Next time, I’m liable to just cut the pins off the painted fairings and simply glue them in place with five minute epoxy. This way you don’t have to worry about drilling out the old plastic pins. Of course if you are worried about the buffer beam pulling off under load…

The bib on the apron needs to be painted yellow. Paint this area white first and do use several coats- yellow doesn’t cover well especially over maroon. I ended up using Pollyscale Seaboard Airline Yellow for the buffer beams and bibs. The original Western buffer beam yellow was supposedly paler than the yellow used for the panels. The fotographer took a fuzzy picture on this one…

Swindon and Crewe both interpreted the instructions for the yellow buffer beams differently. Swindon just painted the face of the buffer beam and bib. Crewe embellished their Westerns and also painted the areas surrounding the faces. In 4 mm scale, it’s hard to see the difference between the two schemes with the exception of the angled area on the apron directly below the buffers. To illustrate the differences, the buffer beam on the left has had green added to show the extra yellow areas on Crewe built Westerns.

That $%@#&* brake gear! The brake gear locating holes in the bogies were drilled oversize and then the rods were epoxied in place. The arrows point to the places where epoxy was applied. This Western will need revised brake rods before it goes into service- as built it’s not good for anything other than a straight track. This is unfortunate because with a little selective compression, Heljan could have squeezed the brake gear inwards and produced something workable, at least for wider radius turns.

Everyone should have one of these! It’s an eight pin DCC plug with jumpers. Just the thing for hooking up a DC power supply, powering her up, and her a good running in. This plug also comes in handy for painting- spin the driving wheels up and apply a paint brush to the wheel faces…

The Shawplan etches used for the new nameplates. They are just tall enough to hide the printed on nameplates underneath. It helps too if you pick a name longer than that printed on the locomotive. Five minute epoxy is my glue of choice for nameplates. A microscopic amount holds well, and unlike “super glue” you have a minute or two for adjustments.

The Heljan instructions suggest the use of a soldering iron for melting the etched stainless lamp irons into place. Yikes! This end was done with the soldering iron, or should I say tortured with the iron…

After the soldering iron fiasco, a #78 drill bit was used to make holes for the lamp irons on the other end of the loco. Much easier and you don’t have to endure that extreme “pucker factor” when you take a soldering iron to the face of your locomotive. The Heljan lamp irons look to be too big. I trimmed them, but in retrospect, I had a set of Shawplan etches and should have used them.

A shot of D1009 with the new nameplates fitted, etched steps in place, and brake rods installed. Do those roof walkways look too chunky? I wonder if I could sand them down a bit…

The Westerns had two marker lights on each end of the loco- one white and one red. Heljan has inexplicably installed a pair of red lights on each end. These lights were intended for light engine shunting moves in stations and were either both on or off. I removed one of the red lenses as indicated by the cocktail stick and replaced the lens with a drop of Kristal Clear. The arrow points to my #78 holes for the lamp irons. Compare this with those nasty soldered “melt your way in” holes a few photos back…

It seems like everyone has a box of these carbide tipped bits. Micromark seems to give them away free with orders and the smaller sizes are just about useless. They are so hard, i.e. brittle, that an all-thumbs guy just can’t help but break them. Rather than use them for cutting, try using them for applying ACC super glue. They are easy to hold, and the tip has lots of nice crevices for holding that tiny drop of glue…

Remember those overly chunky walkways? This is what they look like after a gentle sanding on 320 grit paper. The pins that used to fill those holes on the corner had to be removed. Next time I try this, I’ll no doubt fill the holes at the walkway corners, prior to gluing the walkways down. They do look better with a thinner profile. This is only a five minute job.

The pre-weathering “what needs to be fixed?” shot.

My Wizzo on the cover of a leading magazine!

At home with the Hymek...

A bit of weathering...

Locomotive Crew Missing, Feared Dead