WB: LNE Hopper Cars Update

Well, the thing that dominated this past week was getting my second shot of the Covid vaccine. It had me moving a little slow this past week.

My Pearl kept me company. She stayed with me as I moved from room to room looking kind of silly at times.

The LNE offset twin hoppers were still on the bench. I was hoping to get them through the weathering stage this week. That didn’t get as far along as I had hoped.

Before that could happen, I needed to add the coupler cut levers to the cars. After examining some photos, I was able to determine that the bracket that held the coupler lever was mounted to a diagonal plate running from the step to the end sill.

Here are four sets of the brackets I built up. I should have paid more attention to the brush I grabbed to apply the solvent. Apparently, there was still some paint residue on the brush. The set on the left got swapped out for some of the extras, but some how it made it into the photo. Don’t know why I didn’t photograph it again.

Then it was time to bend the levers and attach them to the cars. Here I’m attaching the cut lever. I secured the one end with a tiny amount of ACC to the coupler box. You can see the bottle of Dull Coating used to hold the lever in place while I glued it up.

A little touch of black paint and it looks like it was always been there. It is amazing, you take the time to install these details and when the black goes on, it’s like they disappear.

Not looking bad for Lionel cars. Next up, DullCoat and weathering. I hope.