Tender chassis

The tender chassis went together quite quickly with all the 3D printed parts. Upon reflection and further measurement, the rear coupler was .01” too high. I shaved the bolsters down, and then everything looked pretty good – apart from the temporary coarse-scale wheels!

The trucks are Kadee HTC caboose trucks, which are a reasonable facsimile. The hardest part of replacing the wheels was to find some with the right axle length in my collection. I must say it makes a big difference in appearance.

The two end beams are printed, while the side sills were cut from .06x.10 styrene strip. If I design something similar again, I will make pockets in the end beams for the strip so that I don’t have to cut the strip to precise length.

Overall, the chassis sits too high. It lines up nicely with the cab floor, but now that I see it in the flesh, I realize there should be a 4″ high platform on the tender deck to bring it to the height of the cab floor. I’m still considering how and if I will fix this.

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