A fellow TB member (I'll let them stay anonymous unless they want to be named!) helped me print out a set of new gears. The holes in my printed gears need a little reaming to fit the half-axles, and I cracked one printed gear before I got it right. But the printed gear fits right in and seems to perform as well as or better than the repaired originals. I think I’ve also maybe solved the puzzle that is the nose of this locomotive. Everything is in the correct relative position, but for some reason the headlight housing is vertically squashed compared to the prototype. The dimensions of the shell aren’t that far off and the proportions of the everything but the headlight are right, but something still doesn’t add up. After days of wracking my brain I think I’ve finally spotted the problem: the nose vent is the right size, but it’s molded much too high up from the walkway. Moving it into the correct position will make space for an accurate headlight. Hooray, yet another vent for me to fix. Then again, I would have had to fix it anyway. The vent on the shell is split into two sections, whereas the prototype has a single vent with a grab iron across the middle: Meanwhile at the other end of the loco, I filed the cab side main window openings to the correct size on both sides. Now I need to recreate the windows and frames that are recessed into the openings. I played around with strip styrene, but even 0.010” square strip looks too bulky compared to the thin frame around the prototype’s sliding windows. Instead I think I’ll use the approach I used on my N-scale H-12-44 and paint the frame straight onto the same clear styrene pieces I make the new windows out of. That guarantees the frame will be thin and the glass will be flush with the edge of it. The challenge will be getting the remaining cab windows equally flush. Maybe I’m just too picky about windows, but IMO ill-fitting window glass is one of those instant giveaways that makes a model look blatantly toylike, right up there with pizza cutter flanges and horn-hook couplers.
