I always had a fondness for the blue and gold color scheme of this model that my dad had. He also had some N&W coal hoppers to go along with it. I bought this particular model from eBay as something to practice weathering on. I realized once it arrived that some of the hand rails had been broken, and the bell was missing. The horn broke as I removed the model from the box for the first time, unaware that the cab roof was loose (it fell to the floor). There’s also a small scratch on the front, but otherwise, the model was in good shape.
Because the hand rails are part of the chassis, the only way to replace the railings is to replace the whole chassis. So I would occasionally check eBay for replacements, but never really saw one that was a good deal. At the 2017 Great Train show, however, I found a dummy with missing trucks that had the N&W’s bicentennial color scheme (pictured below). I just have to remove the shell and fuel tank to re-use its chassis, which is molded in the same blue as the powered unit with broken railings. Swapping that part will require disconnecting the wires from the trucks, so I’m putting that off for a rainy day project. I previously added a second light to illuminate the rear headlights, but the wire I used was a bit stiff, so when I replace the chassis/railings, I’ll also replace the light’s wire with a lighter gauge wire. I originally planned to replace the horn hook couplers with Kadee knuckle couplers, and maybe also add some additional details, but later decided the cheap model wasn’t worth all that trouble. One detail that should be relatively easy to add is yellow paint on certain parts of the hand rails, to match the prototype.
