Sometimes trains get damaged, I’m sure it’s happened to most of us at some time.  And there’s always that one point on a model which is more prone to getting damaged than the rest.  On my C-855 shells it’s the lifters at the rear of the model.

The C-855 has four lifting points to allow the whole body to be lifted off the trucks.  There are two in the nose and two at the rear. The nose lifters can be seen below; there’s a recess behind the hole to allow a lifting shackle to be attached.

The rear lifters are raised up on posts.  This is to keep all four lifting points at the same height.  On the real locomotive the posts would have been thick heavy metal but in N Scale acrylic they’re a little thin.  And it’s these that are likely to break if the shell is dropped.

If you can find the broken part it’ll fix right back on with a drop of superglue as this material usually breaks with a clean edge.  Injection moulded parts tend to distort when they break so fixing them back on can be harder.

But if you can’t find the part a replacement is needed so I’ve created a set of four lifting posts as the C-855B has four posts because it has no nose.

The set has two left and two right hand posts and they are all 3D printed on a ring which makes them a single part and therefore cheaper to print.  I’ve made them longer than normal so they can be shortened to the right length depending on where the break is.  As the material is hard these will not cut like injection model plastic but can easily be filed or sanded to get them to the right length.

The replacement C-855 lifters can be found here.