You see, one of the best things about modelling the PEIR is all of its unique quirks and special details. But what also can be one of the more annoying things about modelling the PEIR is… all of its unique quirks and special details.

The more I study photos of #1639, the more I’m coming to the realisation that I am indeed going to have to include the retrofitted handrails. That is, iif I want to keep myself satisfied

Much like CN #2’s steam-era-inspired boiler-tube pilot, these handrails were most likely a custom fabrication job served up by the Charlottetown diesel shops. Based on prototype photos showing the CLCs arriving on PEI without them, along with comparisons to the #1640-and-up series of locomotives (which had them from factory), I do believe these handrails were another custom jobby as well.

That means they will similarly require a custom jobby in HO scale.

I spent some time this afternoon studying photos of the handrails and how they were mounted to the walkways. From what I can tell, a mounting plate of some kind was affixed to the walkway, with a triangular bracket and bolts securing the stanchion pipe both to the bracket, and to that plate.

The stanchion pipe itself stood off of the edge of the walkway, allowing the handrail to remain straight as it passed over the battery box. The stanchion directly above the battery box could not be mounted to the box itself, so it appears to have been mounted flush against the side of the locomotive instead.

I toyed around with ways I might pull this off using a soldering iron, brass sheet, and phosphor-bronze wire. I eventually arrived at two conclusions: first, I would most definitely drive myself completely batty trying to fabricate each one consistently; and second, if I want to model these handrails accurately, I will likely need to have custom photo-etched stanchions made.

I got the trusty notebook out and began sketching a few ideas for what a photo-etched stanchion might look like. I actually came up with a pretty decent plan of attack, if I do say so myself. Later, I fed my sketches and measurements into Codex and had it produce a rough concept drawing of what the finished assembly might look like.

I’m relatively confident that I can design them and draw them digitally. I’m slightly less confident that I can find someone to do the etching, and not confident at all that the finished parts won’t be too small, fiddly, and fragile to assemble.

Option two is to model the handrails as built and stick with the hood-mounted rail alone, not a bad option but I always seem to have to try the hard way first!

I’ll definitely have to chew on this one for a while before I decide.

CM/YYG