I picked up a Weaver U25B recently with bad electronics - while it's in pieces on my workbench I decided to spruce it up a bit.
First change was adding a center post to the windshield - all Weaver U25Bs were made with the early large single window, and for this road number (New Haven 2525) I needed a split window. I also added a drop of dark gray paint to the molded in marker lights, to make it look more like an unlit lens.
I designed a cab signal box for a New Haven RS-3 project earlier this year, and had several more printed. One will be added to the front walkway on the engineers side.
The pilots were really bugging me - the U25B has a very busy pilot, with a horizontal grab iron, coupler cut bar, 8 MU hoses, and trainline connection. The stock Weaver pilot looked too basic, and had the usual large pilot gap with 3 rail models.
First I made a jig for forming the coupler cut bars out some scrap wood. The cut bars themselves were formed out of phosphor bronze wire.
Then I ground down the molded in detail on the Weaver pilot, and made supports for the cut bar out of .060" square styrene. After it was mounted, I filled in the rest of the pilot with various styrene shapes. I am going to cut a sheet of .020" thick styrene to the outline of the top of the pilot to cap this off. MU hoses and trainline details are on the way.
Meanwhile, the handrail stanchions extending over the bright red frame of model was distracting. Using a color matching app, I recorded the RGB values of the red paint in various lighting conditions. I then order a few 1oz bottles of the closest Pantone color from MyPerfectColor - Custom Spray Paint and Touch Up in Any Color . We'll find out later this week how close I got.
~C. Vigs
