OO9 Ruston Proctor part 3 - mounting the chassis to the body and adding a little weight.

The first job was to clean the body, the usual way seems to be to soak the print in white spirit for a couple of hours to remove any wax. I then gave it a scrub with Cif and a toothbrush. White spirit has a strange effect in Frosted Ultra Detail, it turns the material white which helps to show up any detail.
To mount the chassis I made up an inner footplate from .040" plasticard, which sits inside the body. Two 10BA nuts were soldered to scrap etch (to give a larger surface area for glueing) and epoxied onto the footplate which was in turn epoxied into the body;

The inner footplate sits on a ledge, so plasticard spacers have been needed to sit between the footplate and the chassis.
I've started adding weight as well by epoxying lead strip (aquarium plant weight) into the body sides, this puts the weight exactly where its needed, over the wheels. So far the loco weighs 27 grams.

The cab is quite thin, about .6mm thick, which makes it a little too flexible for my liking. So, being slightly paranoid (I keep reading about printed locos being dropped and broken), I've rolled a piece of brass to sit under the cab roof and added a brass 'spine' to the inside of the cab backsheet. Both are made from scrap etch and epoxied in place, and hopefully the 'spine' will be hardly noticable when the loco is painted.

Here it is sitting on its chassis;

The next job is to make a start on the frames, which will be made from plasticard and attached to the underside of the printed body.

Paul.