Rear View of Gem B6sb Tender

Top View of Gem B6sb Tender

Side View of Gem B6sb Tender

Here is a quick look at what I have on my workbench. It’s a Gem PRR B6sb tender.

I started by removing the marker castings, handrails, and rear headlight.

I made up the missing rivet strip for the middle of the tender by punching rivets in a piece of sheet brass and cutting out the strip. This was not as easy as working with styrene, although similar it had a very different feel to the process. Once it was made, it was soldered in place. The rivet strip in the photo was actually my second attempt. The first one looked OK until I asked myself a question, “If this were a styrene model instead of brass would I keep it?” The answer was no, so out came the torch and off it went. It only added an extra half hour to make the new part and solder it in place and it was time well spent.

Next came the new markers from Precision Scale (PSC) . My friend Matt Forsyth suggested placing a small square of brass under the markers feet since they did not sit well on the Gem brackets. That worked out great. It was tough trying to hold them while soldering them in place they tended to want to walk, but I applied pressure from the top to try to minimize this movement and was able to get them soldered on.

I next added the lifting brackets and a new headlight from Trackside Specialties. The headlight bracket was a pain because of the tiny feet on the casting. I left the mold spur at the bottom of the casting and alloud it to go through the bottom of the headlight platform on the tender. This allowed another surface to be soldered and gave the whole assembly some added strength.

Tonight, I added the conduit for the markers and headlight. I formed brass wire for one side of the conduit based on photo of the rear of the tender. This was fed through the casting for the junction box. The second side had to be formed with the casting on the wire. after that was soldered in place the two vertical conduits were formed and soldered in place.

Still to go is the remake of the handrails for the back of the tender and a little more clean up on the coal bunker.