Realistic looking handrails for an Atlas RS-1
Having used the original handrails as a template, the new wire handrails were routed through the stanchions and attached with a small drop of cyanoacrylate (above). As this photo (below) shows, there is a noticeable difference between the stock plastic handrails, seen on the left, and the new, scale-sized phosphores bronze wire handrails on the right.
it made the process tolerable enough where I was able to finish it without staring off into space for lengthy amounts of time. With all of the stanchions drilled it
was time to start reconstruction. I start- ed on the end of the engine. The Alco RS-1 end handrail is a strange shape. I traced this shape onto paper using the original handrail layout and bent the new wire handrail using that template. The wire fit nicely into the existing At- las stanchions and mated up nicely with the pilot. A little bit of cyanoacry- late applied to the phosphor bronze wire at the stanchion was enough to hold the handrails in place. I repeated this process for the other end of the en- gine. It did not take too long to get a good looking handrail in place on that engine. Optimistic that this was actual- ly going to work, I moved on to the handrails on the side of the locomotive. I attached all of the pre-drilled
stanchions to the locomotive using cyanoacrylate to hold them firmly in place on the frame. Once again, I pre- bent the phosphor bronze wire accord- ing to pre-drawn templates patterned from the original handrails. Again, I used cyanoacrylate to attach the handrails to the stanchions. Where the handrails join the cab, I decided to just run them into the existing holes. I didn’t want to permanently attach them because that would make it im- possible to remove the body should I
74 AUGUST 2012
need to do some work under the hood. Well, I was beside myself. The hard
part was done and I didn’t really do any damage to these engines. Don and Blake had come through for me on this one. Even better, those handrails were tough as nails. I was poking them a bit and they took every bit of abuse I was willing to hand out to them. I painted the handrails using Polly Scale acrylic paints. The handrails are Grimy Black almost everywhere but at the ends. Those handrail ends at the steps are yellow. I used EL Yellow on
my Susquehanna engines because it was I had on hand. I was very sur- prised how easy it was to paint the phosphor bronze wire. I figured it might take several coats to get good, even coverage but one coat was suffi- cient. I added a second coat for good measure though. Even the yellow part was easy to paint. Usually painting yellow is difficult because it takes sev- eral coats to get an even coverage. This results in a thick looking handrail. (I could just see it now. I go through all the trouble to put scale sized handrails in there only to make them oversized with several coats of paint.) Well, I was wrong. One coat was sufficient but I went for two just in case. The handrails still looked nice and thin. The coats of paint didn’t add to the thickness at all. Honestly, that was it. It took so little effort to apply these steps to this one engine that I was actually enthused about doing this to the other two RS-1’s I had waiting in the wings. Just holding that model up to eye level, I could see the difference and I was loving it. When I compared the completed model to the model with the stock Atlas handrails the difference was blindingly obvious. This is exactly what those models need- ed. I took it to the next level and still have all of my fingers intact. Before I knew it, I had engine handrails every- where and was a phosphor bronze wire maniac. This is one of those detailing projects that gives you maximum bang for a minimum buck. It takes a little ef- fort but the results are far more re- warding than most little projects I have done to these engines. All it took was a point in the right direction from Don Spiro, a little sound advice from Blake Tatar and a little bit of work on my part and these RS-1’s turned into some smoking hot models.
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