Mogul + stain pen

The smokebox and stack have (finally) been repainted a graphite colour obtained using a mix of Polly Scale stainless steel and engine black (~80/20 ratio).

The cab received a few thin coats of E/L Maroon, which have given it a dark red cedar tone without totally obscuring the grain. The cab interior remains simply the Floquil rosewood wash. The doors and other parts will need to be matched before they can be installed.

On another note, I found a "Scratch Fix" pen that I picked up at Home Depot a long time ago and had forgotten about. It appears to contain stain in an alcohol base; like a standard marker. The contents are "black-brown" and give stripwood a nice, fresh crosstie colour. I must remember to see if HD still has these in stock, as I recall quite a range of shades were in the display stand.

latest venture

I've just started doing decoder installations for a local hobby shop. As you can imagine, very few people are asking for external assistance to drop in a PnP decoder. This means that the vast majority of work I will get from this source will be the most troublesome types.

For instance, my very first task was to stuff a DZ123 decoder into an N-scale, Kato Heavy Mikado. This has a split frame pickup like many other N-scale products. Luckily there are some basic directions from others who have done this before; however I have come to disagree with some of the steps in their process description - I'll address the deficiencies next time I have to do one of these Mikes.

All that aside, this first unit is back together and tested. I must say I'm fairly impressed with the operation of recent releases of N scale steamers. They certainly aren't like the ones I used to fight with to get running...