Buying the loco one drawback was the lack of a crew so decided maybe a custom job just may be the way to go and as the railroad is one for promoting staff I had a look around for what I had in spare donors,Bachmann fireman and a brakeman seemed the perfect solution,taking the engineer first(fireman) I cut away the legs at an angle just behind the knee and then removed the rest of the legs at the top of the thighs and discarded them to give just the torso,next cut off the very lower part of the front torso to allow a sitting position,now the transformation,I checked the torso for height on the seat in the cab and the right arm on the armrest,seemed ok so started rebuilding the legs,new thighs cut from balsa dowels and a groin area made up to suit the cut torso,roughly shaped and cut to length of the discarded thighs,then glued the lower leg section back on,sitting position now sorted checking he fits in the cab at regular intervals,next the arms,heat applied to the left arm and bent at the elbow to align up with the controls,left hand removed and superglued back on turned over to assume a "grab",arms positioned and then glued on place and filler to hide the gap,filler,sanded and painted,not sure on the colour may repaint slightly darker,
now for the fireman,I wanted the arms folded taking a rest look as seen on some US models and thought I might just be able to do it.Started off by removing the arms,then cutting the legs in two places,just above the boot line and at the top of the thighs,then turned the legs around and they were almost exactly the same so were glued on to give the bend effect then the boots stuck on,as there is no prominent knee bulge so i think I got away with it and once in the cab it doesn`t notice at all,as for the arms,the forearms were cut off just before the elbow and balsa dowel cut to make new upper arms then doing one arm at a time angled the forearm onto the dowels to give the folded arm effect and glued in place.then the dowel shaped then glued to the torso.As the dowel is a little flimsy I used slivers of ciggy paper and super glue to hide joints and to give the effect of material,the heads of both figures are movable ,not sure about the colour on this one either but the facial expressions will be redone on both,they should look quite effective when finished.
now for the fireman,I wanted the arms folded taking a rest look as seen on some US models and thought I might just be able to do it.Started off by removing the arms,then cutting the legs in two places,just above the boot line and at the top of the thighs,then turned the legs around and they were almost exactly the same so were glued on to give the bend effect then the boots stuck on,as there is no prominent knee bulge so i think I got away with it and once in the cab it doesn`t notice at all,as for the arms,the forearms were cut off just before the elbow and balsa dowel cut to make new upper arms then doing one arm at a time angled the forearm onto the dowels to give the folded arm effect and glued in place.then the dowel shaped then glued to the torso.As the dowel is a little flimsy I used slivers of ciggy paper and super glue to hide joints and to give the effect of material,the heads of both figures are movable ,not sure about the colour on this one either but the facial expressions will be redone on both,they should look quite effective when finished.
-
1
- Show all
