The cab is all plastic, being laminated from 4 layers of 1mm thick plasticard, with lots of glue ( for this I use the thicker glue by Revell or Matchbox in the pistol grip shaped containers) to ensure a good and total bond of the layers. The front of these cabs were fitted with a large iron or steel sheet, bolted to the cab, that covered the joint between boiler and cab, this is generally painted a dull black, possibly with a satin sheen. The front has a cutout to fit over the boiler, mark it against the boiler tube only, that is without the firebox tube in position. Remove the lower edges by cutting them off with a vertical cut, the small triangular bits are glued to the boiler, where the front of the cab will fit: the vertical edges of these small triangular bits are the edges of the metal sheet, but are the full thickness of the cab – they fill the lower portion of the slot for the cab to sit in between the boiler cladding tube and the cab firebox bit of tube. This lets you remove the cab with ease when required. Here are some photos of the cab when it had been painted.

The cab handrails are 1.7mm plastic covered wire by Plastruct, with O gauge handrail knobs drilled out to accept the thicker wire; drill a slightly smaller hole than the fixing (and threaded) spigot and they can then be screwed in, a tiny dab of glue will hold the rail in position. The handrail is brass & the handrail knobs are black


I tend to ‘go to town’ on the cabroof, they are one of the things that are first seen and I think they deserve some work to make them look good. Starting on the inside, the planks of the roof are indicated by some of the Slater’s Plasticard 4mm planked sheeting, this is so it can be painted in contrasting colours (light & dark brown), as in the photo of the inside, note also the pull handles for the safety valve, and whistle, made from thin copper wire, with a piece of tiny (contrail hollow tube) where it goes through the cab roof. These bits are fixed. The levers from the steam dome are sufficiently flexible to gently move them aside so the roof can come off if needed.

On the prototype the outer covering of the roof was thin sheet lead, the joints of which were soldered together. This was to stop sparks setting light to it. My roof which is 2mm thick, and is laminated onto the curved roof sticks I finish off with a layer of paper, this is marked out in 22m strips in this case, and then scored across the strips, again I settled on 32mm here. The line of the strips was then covered with a piece of .010 rod down the line, and looped over the ends. When all is done the rain deflector is added from 1mm square strip. The position of these is very variable! I paint the roof a medium grey, and then weather it with darker and very variable colours.

The fixing the 'glass' (well clear styrene sheet) into the cab windows was given some thought. Eventually I decided to add (because I did not think of it earlier!) around the edge of the windows a frame of 1/2mm (.020) plastic card strips. These are close against the outer edge of the cabside.

When the new frame's glue has dried I then tapered off the (outer)edge to leave a triangular section. To the rear of this the glass is glued.

I attempted a photo which was no good, so I have roughly drawn out a vertical section of cab side to show what I have done and here it is - -

This gives you a larger area for gluing the window material into, and also covers the extreme edge, in addition it should also hide any excess glue at the same time.

You don't get excess glue?? Then you are much better than me! The trick is to find a way of hiding it!

This reduces the window size by 1mm all round, next time I build a cab I will incorporate the 1mm in the window cut out if I can. The windows which are cut from the clear portions of CD ‘Jewel’ cases – a useful and cheap source of 1mm thick clear styrene sheet. When the cab has been painted and the windows fitted give them a coat of the Johnson’s ‘Klear’ – this gives the clear styrene a ‘sparkle’. Aero and military modelers use this tip a lot. The cab has only one window per side, the rear window, which I believe slid forward is left off, a lot of photos seem to show it like this, and I suspect that the sliding windows were removed by the crew and left in the dark recesses of the roundhouse!