Again this week’s post will be short as I haven’t had a great deal of time to work on any of the other current projects, but I did make some progress on the HO Baldwin DT-6-2000 body shell.

As this is a HO model, some of the details that were molded into the N scale body can now be made from brass, giving the larger model more detail.  For example on the front of the loco, under the marker lights, is a grab iron which is now made from brass.

The grab irons which run up the side of the main body have also been widened.  On the N scale model these were molded in, but when converted to brass, as shown below in a picture from a few weeks ago, I thought they looked too narrow.

I’ve now widened them and I think proportionally they look much better.  Also on the image below, you can see I’ve reduced the size of the windscreen wiper as it was a bit too chunky before, making it look out of scale.

The last big addition for this week is the cab lights; for this I’m going to use a tiny surface mount LED.  The LED itself only measures 0.9mm by 1.6mm and is 0.46mm thick.  Luckily DCC Concepts sell these pre-wired as shown below.

In the view below, which is a section through the cab, you can see the LED in the roof.  I’ve designed a recess for the LED to fit into, and a route for the wires to pass through, keeping them clear of everything else.

The route for the cables positions them in the center of the shell directly over the DCC decoder and circuit board.  The wires are also tiny so they and the LED can be glued into the recess to prevent them from moving.

Looking at the model for the HO scale, I keep finding little bits to re-design or change, but I think I’m now very close to ordering the first test print.  Having studied a lot of the real locomotives in photos, I realized that different railroads had different features which were quite prominent.  So as well as changing the shell to make it available as a Pennsylvania Railroad RT-624 I’ll also change it into a Trona Railway locomotive, for numbers 50 & 51, and maybe more if requested.  Also for the Pensy, it’ll be available with the phone antenna, and in the later version, without.

Now it’s back to the drawing board to get it finished.