Another brass loco project - repairs and painting.

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I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was undecided on how to install a speaker in the Vandy tender of the C&O J2. Well, I decided to gut the coal bunker to gain access to the barrel of the tender.



I used the Dremel cut off disk and started removing small sections at a time. I cut the side slope sections out and the bottom piece came out next.





Continued in a few.

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I drilled small holes in the back of the coal slide.



I then used a pair of Xuron nippers for cut the brass between the drilled holes. Once this section of the bunker was removed, I filed the brass to enlarge the area.



Continued after a Diet Pepsi break.

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The 1" X 1" speaker fits flush on the bottom of the bunker.




The DCC decoder also fits. Shown is a Tsunami DCC decoder but the TCS WOW decoder will be used.



More in a few.

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I also drilled a few holes for the sound on the bottom slope of the tender.



I drilled these holes so they wouldn't show when the tender is on the track.

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I've been a little slow on keeping the thread up to date. Sorry 'bout that". I've been painting a few things.


The loco is actually painted and I'm getting it back together. I'll share a few photos of the process.

I didn't plan on a few things but when I did some research, which should have been done first, I found that the J2's were first passenger locomotives prior to being relegated to freight service. This meant all the tires needed to be "white walled" and the main loco running boards needed white paint on the edges.

All the side walls of the wheels needed the black paint removed. I used a new #11 Xacto blade to remove the black paint. I then applied the first coat of white on the tires.

In the photo below the left driver tire has the black paint removed and the one on the right has the first coast of Scalecoat White hand painted on.



Yes, I could have painted over the black but this step is a lazy one and makes the tires look "paint heavy".

First coat hand painted, baked and then the second white coat applied and baked. Time to paint the first coat on all the wheels/tires, 20 minutes, time to bake the first coat 45 minutes, time for the second white coat another 20 minutes, second coat baked another 45 minutes.

The look of the finished rims - Priceless.

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Here is my next victim. A  brass PFM USRA Pacific.

I'll paint this one and decal it for the SAL RR. SEABOARD will be spelled out on the tender.

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Tom,

You mean you have another one just like mine? you are a brave person. Did you paint it or is it still in the box? does it really look like mine? WOW. Maybe I should buy it from you!!! Only kidding. Have a great day my friend.

Frank / Erieman



Frank,

I'm sorry I forgot to respond to your comment. Yes, this one is like your only in that it has the tensions wire for the journal supports. Enjoyed our conversation on the phone the other morning.

I did paint it and this one is almost finished.



Tom

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I forgot to mention another issue I had with the boiler of the C&O J-2.

The motor and gear shaft were very tight and hard to remove. I noticed the bottom of the boiler tube was very narrow just in front of the firebox.

You can see in the photo below the brass on the bottom isn't trimmed  to meet the front of the firebox.



I used the Dremel cut off disk to carefully remedy the problem as shown below.

[bparrish]

Tom...

You are very brave, sir..

see ya
Bob

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Tom...

You are very brave, sir..

see ya
Bob

Well, someone has to do it!


Tom

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I now have the C&O J-2 finished. I'll show the final pictures later in the post but first I want to share a few other things.

The loco has a boiler weight but it sits to far forward in the boiler. Meaning it was only over the front driver and the pilot truck. This is another bad design I guess. So, to give me more weight over the other three drivers I added more weight to the boiler.

Notice the screw on the bottom of the loco? Just to the right of the screw is where the boiler weight stops.



I used a Walthers product called Templow.



Continued in a few.

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The Lowtemp material melts at a relatively low temperature. I used my Weller solder gun tip to melt the Lowtemp.



I melted off a little over 1/3 and placed the pieces in the boiler. I then used the tip of the solder gun to remelt the metal in the top of the boiler. Of course, I turned the loco over on the top to do this.



The big question I'm sure everyone has is did this also melt the nice paint on the top of the boiler? The answer may surprise you in that NO, it didn't and doesn't. The metal melts to a liquid but not to hot of affect the paint.

The photo below is of the top of the boiler with the metal melted in place, inside the top of the boiler.



Continued in a few.

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On brass Vandy tenders, there is usually some brass that looks like wood. I've always just painted these black along with the tender and then painted them a wood color.




This time I decided to add HO scale lumber to the top of the brass walk way. I measured the brass pieces and found them to be 2 X 12's. So they didn't look very thick or out of scale when I added mine, I used scale 1 X 12's. I used Hunterline  Light Grey weathering mix to stain the boards. I applied two coats to the lumber.



Here is how the finished boards look on the tender.



Continued in a few.

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All that is left to do now is to install the DCC decoder, speaker, coal load and the appropriate weathering.





The tender light was very thin and fragile. I didn't want to drill through it so I installed an MV lens in the tender light. I used #L 173 MV lens.

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