Peter's Model Railroading | The Equipment | Box Cars | SP A-50-6
Construction: Roof
With the sides of the car done, it is now time to focus on the roof. The walkway is a laser-cut piece of wood, so since the two glue surfaces are of a different material type, I prefer to use 5-minute epoxy. I put a small amount of glue on each of the support bars, and then placed the walkway on top, making sure to center it across the length of the car, and also making sure that it sits straight. Then, it was just a matter of placing some metal weights on top of it and letting the glue cure.
The corner walkway boards I installed by applying some superglue on the two roof braces and placing the part on top.
Next, I installed the support braces under the ends of the walkway. Unfortunately, the leg of one of them was broken in my kit. These are delicate, 3D-printed parts, and probably got jostled around too much during shipping.
I eye-balled where the two holes should be for the mounting pins, and then drilled them. Next, I put some superglue on the bottom of the walkway, and a tiny amount into each of the holes and carefully installed the part. The other one, the one with the broken leg, I did in a similar manner, but installed the broken leg part after the main part was installed. Superglue now holds the broken leg part in place, and it is hard to see if you don't know what to look for, so all's good.
The final part for the roof are the grab irons at the walkway corners. The 0.015" brass wire and the two eyebolts are provided in the kit.
I drilled the three holes through the walkway and into the body. Next, I formed the wire by carefully aligning it, visually, with the positions of the holes, and then bending the wire as best as possible. When the bending was done, I trimmed the part from the rest of the wire, and threaded on the eye-bolt. The eye-bolt's hole does fit the wire, but it is an extremely tight fit. By using a pair of tweezers and grabbing the eye-bolt close to where it makes contact with the wire, I was able to wiggle it left and right until the wire went through the hole (probably removing a tiny amount of material from the interior of the eye-bolt), and then I could carefully slide it around the wire until it was in the correct position. I then placed the hole grab iron into the holes, and followed that up with the application of a tiny amount of superglue at each of the holes.