I'm back to work on the K-2 Pacific conversion, starting with an old Atlas/Rivarossi Pacific I picked up from Ebay.
The tender is just about done, so I turned my attention to the boiler.
At this point I'm just experimenting with my steam skills.
Here's what we started with...
The WM K-2 has a larger sand dome that's located closer to the steam dome, and the bell should be located between the smoke stack and the sand dome, sort of like this...
I electronically "spliced" the boiler of a Bachmann Spectrum Consolidation on the front there to give you an idea of what I'm after. I'd still like to do that, but I'll need two Bachmann shells, which I don't have, and with the budget being limited, I'll just make do with what I have. So, I started by relocating the headlight.
Using a sharp Xacto blade, I simply trimmed the original casting from the nose of the smoke box. I then drilled a small hole in the top edge of the smoke box door to run the wires for the lamp into the boiler shell.
I used a grain of rice bulb, 1.5 volts, which was much smaller than the headlight housing. I filled the gap in with gloss finish Mod Podge to create a full lens, which also has the effect of making the light appear brighter.
If I was a little brighter, I would have painted the inside of the housing silver, which would have added to the brightness... I also cut off the stock pilot to make it ready for a working coupler and a plow per WM practice.
Next, I turned my attention to the sand dome, which had to go. I picked up Mr. Dremel, and went to work.
I used a small file to square up the hole. You can also see the back of the headlight here. The wire for the grain of rice bulb angles down into the top of the smoke box. To cover it up and prevent light leaks, I filled the area in with matte finish Mod Podge and let it dry. I then finished it with a bit of flat black acrylic paint. Eventually the smokebox will get a gun metal color.
One of the problems with the Rivarossi Pacific is that the nose tends to be a bit light. There's a brass weight in the smoke box, which was designed to hold the original light bulb, and it is fine where it is. But there's a gap of about 1/4" between it and the motor frame, directly below the existing sand dome. This was handy, because it gave me someplace to add some weight. So, I filled the hole where the old sand dome came out with a chunk of lead I have in the garage, left over from a leaky old sewer pipe in the house that was replaced.
First I scrubbed 90 years worth of turds off of it, then used the Dremel to file it to roughly the shape of the boiler.
I then used jeweler's files and very fine grit sandpaper to finish it off.
I also used some strip styrene to modify the walk boards. Next I need to fashion a new sand dome out of lead. I'm going to try to fashion an original out of wood or styrene, then make a mold with some plaster to pour the lead into. That will give me a little more weight on the drivers.
Now I just have to dig up a photo of the engineer's side of the damn thing!
Lee
