Superstructure

Assembly of the loco's superstructure is very straightforward. The only thing where I deviated from the drawing is that I kept the boiler separate from the rest of the superstructure. This made airbrushing and lining a lot easier. The boiler will later be held on two places:

• via the bolt through the smokebox at the front
• by the front sheet of the cab at the firebox end.

At this stage a choice must me made which version to build

If you want a correct depiction of a any of the ten loco's study photo's carefully. Small details differed between the members of the class like the type of air pump, placement of the sandbox and bell and routing of tubes.

As I was scared of soldering white metal I decided to glue the model with cyanoacrylate adhesive, CA or colloquially: superglue. After all it was in the manual. I was to regret this decision very much, especially for the detail parts.

What was the problem? I soon found that CA becomes brittle when exposed to thinner. I was still in a learning curve when it came to painting so I dunked the superstructure many times in the thinner to remove the paint again and start all over. It didn't take long before small parts developed the habit of falling off and it took me quite some time to figure out that the thinner had aged the CA glue extremely quickly.

Intermezzo construction methods

The kit is designed for both gluing and soldering, says the manual. Again with the knowledge of hindsight I recommend soldering. I use three methods of joining, in order of preference:

1. Soldering is my first choice. A soldered bond is always stronger than a glued bond. It is also more durable and solder fills small seams and gaps.
2. If soldering is not possible I use five minute epoxy. The bond is reasonably strong once set and can still be manipulated in the first five to ten minutes. Setbacks are that the bond initially is not very strong so it takes time to develop, and it breaks up under heat. So once glued there should be no more soldering in the direct surroundings or the bond will come apart. Like solder it is durable and it fills gaps. As far as I can see epoxy is insensitive to cellulose thinner.
3. Third option and absolute last resort is superglue (cyanoacrylate or CA glue). Advantages are that it sets fast and that it creeps into joins by capillary action. My experience is however that is will become brittle over time and I suspect that the bond will inevitably break up over time. That process is greatly accelerated by cellulose thinners so if you dunk you model in thinner to clean it after a failed painting attempt, be sure that some of your CA-glued parts will come astray. I tend to avoid CA at any price.

Learn to solder is my motto. If you are afraid of soldering, many people daunt the prospect, this is your chance to acquire dearly needed skills if you intend to build more models in the future. That being said it is obvious that I will solder all my metal models wherever possible.

For now the loco went together well. But soldering the white metal would have filled the seams better and in hindsight there were many advantages in soldering as discussed above. It is the only metal model I ever glued completely