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The remaining item to make is a big oil burning headlight – These are somewhat fiddly and messy to make but the results are well worth the effort.
The photo shows the headlight whilst being built, it is all made from plasticard, with Gunze Sanyo ‘Mr. Surfacer’ filler to fill the inevitable gaps in the curved shape at the top, the top is made from multiple layers of plasticard, cemented together left overnight to set hard then sanded to the curves – if possible do it outside as there are bits everywhere!
The headlamp design came from the ‘Mason Bogie Masterclass’. The headlight unit has a reflector made from the hemispherical part of the plastic spoons that come with baby’s milk tins, I have included a photo of the style of spoon I mean, cut it off at the line where the parallel part begins and paint the inside silver. This reflector slides in from the bottom, and bits of scrap plastic hold it in position. The headlight reflector has a hole at the bottom drilled into the center of the bottom curve from reflector back to front. This allows a piece of tube to be fed up into the reflector - this tube will later have a grain of wheat bulb fed into the top of it. The wires attached to the bulb pass down the tube and exit through a slot cut at the rear of the tube. They then pass through the base of the headlamp shelf, are fixed underneath, and immediately pass through another hole in the top of the smokebox; this hole is in the small space between the smokestack base and the front edge of the smokebox (ensure that the smokebox front will clear the incoming wires though).
The wires can then be led through the boiler (mine are fixed to the side) to the cab end and there they go to a plug under the cab, I have extended mine for ease of connection, second thoughts on this suggest a small plug to make disconnection easier - this may well be done soon. I have (because I have not found any higher voltage bulb) used a 12volt one, and hope that the bulb lasts a long time. After a lot of tries with various methods of lighting the bulb I am at the moment using a 9 volt battery in the tender for power, therefore the bulb is not close to its maximum and I should have a long life. If not I will continue to look for 18volt ones, David Fletcher tells me they are available from Hartland in the USA.
The tube + GOW bulb is fixed to a small piece of plasticard, and that fixed to the headlamp shelf, the I added some positioning blocks that the headlamp casing will fit onto, as the first photo, checking that the headlamp casing is reasonably tight over the corner pieces, so it will stay put in normal operation. Route the wires through the holes made earlier, mine run backwards inside the boiler starting above the inner shelf that provides a second and stiffening location inside the smokebox for the smokestack. You need to have the smokestack left 'removable' by the way so you can get at the fixing screw below the smokestack hole if required
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