Canute

Denis, make sure all 4 wheels in each truck touch the workbench/track evenly. These multipart trucks can be finicky to make square. Good for display models, but tough to operate if one wheel is up in the air. The tender body and headlight look very good. The reflector in the headlight turned out well. Are you lighting it? If so, remember these were kerosene lamps, so they should have an old time yellow orange glow. Just a thought. Do you know anybody with a garden railroad? These garden layouts can be a multitude of scales, from 1/32 to 1/16, but all use the same gauge track. Try and get some pictures of the General on a garden railroad. Hopefully the kit gauge will work with the garden railway gauge. The distance between their rails should be 1.772 inches or 45 mm. That's also the distance from inside one wheel flange to the inside of the opposite flange.

Yeah, the model airplane guys dip their canopies into that stuff and they come out nice and clear.

Take a look at this model railroad car/parts site. There is a .010 wire next to the photoetched eyebolts for comparison: http://www.yarmouthmodelworks.com/index.php/ModelDetailParts/Miscellaneous Eyebolts with and without collars, about halfway down the page.

Glad you got your dilemma cleared up, OC. I've used the toothpaste to clean up watch glass in the past. Our "family" always manages to come up with workable solutions. They're the best.👍

Wow, another build to follow. I'm in.

Thank God for Optivisors. I'll tag along on this one, too.

Mark, I'm in, also. Looks like a pretty barky.

Put the Pledge/Future/Kleer on first, then decal. You want a smoooth surface for the decals.

If you're gonna poke holes in thin sheet wood, put some tape behind/over the openings to prevent tear out. And a dab of sanding sealer, too. Yep, you're all hot to trot to get going on this little jewel, but....that basswood will soak up paint. And paint both sides or it'll look like the pleats on an accordion, if you use acrylics. Yeah, I did a similar thing. I have a model railroad stock car I started, but I have to regroup on the build, since it got a tad warped. So used to Floquil and Scalecoat, (solvent based paints) and forgot the basics.

Sounds about right for me too. Although it's model railroad stuff. Would anyone be interested? Don't want to hijack Craig's thread.

That would be me with the horn in my ear. 😁

Jet noise, shooting, rock and roll and who knows what else. My hearing is OK up to midrange , then does a nose dive at high freqs. I now use rechargeable hearing aids. Although in a crowded noisy area, they aren't much help. Ears are omni directional. Cupping my ears helps, but now I look like the old geezer with the tin horn in his ear.

Eric, my sincere condolences on your loss. It's good to have a support group at times like this.

Nice job with the paint scheme. Your indoor pix look like the 2nd live shot and your outdoor one looks like the first Slater pic. Slick.

Like the previous lads said, Mark. Whatever you need to do and wherever that leads, we can wait. I get what you're saying.

Coming along nicely, Denis. Running gear looks appropriately spindly. The engineer and fireman took a lot of pride in the appearance of their loco. Lots of brass and polish. Had to keep after any unsightly soot buildup. The tender underframe would be pretty grungy, as you'd expect. And the bottom of the engine, between the wheels. Floquil even made a Grimy Black color, kind of a charcoal grey with brown tinges. Hope the cold goes away soon and you feel better.

Popeye, looking good. Thinning the door handle is a nice touch. So will this be "Great Train Chase" Civil War or some later knuckle coupler period? If you do a civil war era, it will be a wood burner.

Denis, we have a lot of displaced Yankees down here in western NC and northwest SC. Still gets cold, bur way less snow. Have 4 actual seasons here. Summers aren't as hot and muggy as the coastal areas, due to higher elevations (Smokey Mountains - south end of the Appalachians).

Sorry to read that Jesse. It's always tough to lose family and friends.

Tamiya Extra Thin with the green cap. It's acetone based so it evaporates pretty fast. Hold parts in place, a quick swipe with your glue brush, count to 5 and it's bonded. Not super hard; should let it set up an hour or so. I generally have 3 kits going, so I can rotate through various steps in a session. May want to rough up the mating surfaces even for CA glue. That works on resin parts, too.

No love for the little ones.

I'm in Jack. Check into Gator Masks. Same guy as the glue maker. The Measure 32 schemes are complex.

Yeah, modern AA gunnery directors couldn't handle the slow speeds of the Stringbags. Greg, that glue is still around, although packaged differently. It still smells. I've been using the Tamiya Extra Thin glue, with the green cap. It's acetone based, to boot. I try and keep the lid on that. CDW, if it's a wingy thingy, I'm in for the duration.

Denis, the wood is appropriate fuel for the Civil War, especially in the South. That pile on the tender is pretty close to what it might look like. Steam engines might only run 100 miles between water fillups and if in hilly country maybe water up even more frequently. And wood could be an issue if it burned up too fast. Soft woods also weren't as hot burning as oak. For modeling purposes, I second everybody else. If you have some dead azalea branches use them for the load. Colors then were pretty bright with reds and yellows. Boilers might be what they called Russia Iron (a blue tinged iron) or green. The General in the museum in Kennesaw is supposedly in period colors, but the brake gear my be a newer system. The Russia Iron blue is sort of like a deep blue chimney color on a wood burning stove. Best google it. Can you take a picture of the couplers? In the early days of railroading, they used a link and pin device. There was a slot in the end of each car and two holes above and below the slot. The pin (think of a long belaying pin) was pushed from top to bottom in the holes, trapping a link (think paperclip shape) between the pins in each car. Back then, the brakeman, whose job it was to insert said pins into the end beams, often had nicknames like "Three fingers", since they could get fingers pinched while coupling up. After the Civil War, railroads got more safety conscious and developed knuckle couplers and air brakes. Also pushed for standard time zones across the country, instead of every station/town having it's own "local" noon.

Cripes, I did that in front of my Mom, after a year in a giant fraternity house in Thailand. Got my mitts on some fresh, hot corn on the cob for dinner one night. Asked Mom for the bleeping salt. Wham, my little 5'2" Mom back-handed 6' me onto the floor. My Dad and sister were roaring in laughter, Dad in sympathy with me (he fought in WW II) and my sister just laughing at my buffoonery.