I just bought three C44-9W southern pacific locos. I have A couple of question. one is what do you do to keep the railing upright pieces from moving on the hand rail. and do you paint them or leave them. Some I have look at they have paited them were the stairs are white and left the rest alone. I would like some input and pics would be nice.
After you have installed everytyhing allign them as carefully as you can. Then place a drop of acc on a hard surface so it won;t be abosrbed and dip a toothpick into the acc. Apply a small amount at the junction of the vertical and horiziontal handrails and they will be locked in place. I always paint the handrails. They are just bare steel and will eventually rust if you don’t do that.
You can flow a little bit of Krazy Glue into the stanchions’ loops to keep them in position on the handrails, then paint them up.
Personally I don’t bother with the stock stamped-steel stanchions and handrails in the older Athearn BB kits. I rather bend my own handrails out of .015" wire, which looks much nicer and more to scale than the stock rails. I also use the much-nicer-looking Smokey Valley cast-brass stanchions instead of the stock stuff.
Speaking of which, here’s my latest project in progress:
Hand-bent .015" steel wire handrails, soldered to Smokey Valley brass stanchions using silver-bearing solder (which sticks to steel).
It’s a CNW GP50 I’m working on there, using an Athearn blue box GP50.
Tom,
Those handrails look great!!
Somebody said in one of the other threads that the Undecorated Railroad was a joke. [:D]
My solution to the problem is put masking tape down on the side of the model. Then clean out the holes where the grab irons and the stanchions go with an appropriet sized drill. Install but do not glue down the hand rails and stancions. Then I solder them for the ultimate in durability and streangth. after everthing is soldered up. I carefully remove them. If this is a factory decorated loco.I paint the appropriet colors and reinstall. If its a custom paint job. I finish painting and decaling the loco. Painting the hand rails the appropriet color when its loaded in the air brush. (Hand rails tend to be one of the main body colors with white at the very end which I hand paint) and install them after the decaling is done.
Hope this helps.
James
Davekelly:
Thanks! Hopefully I can get the rest of the handrails mounted so the end bends are more visible. They really add some visual interest to the model.
ToomDiehl:
LOL yea it won’t be undecorated for long.
Oh… And here are how the finished handbent handrails and Smokey Valley stanchions look like on a finished model:
to keep handrails in line- get a rail properly lined up- pinch the top (where it slides) with a needlenose pliars.
thanks to all who replied. LOngIsland the hand rail do look realy good. An thanks for the pic it will give me some kind of idea of what colors to paint and and where.