Where are all the rivets?

Over three years ago, I started work on the tender shell for 622. I went through a lot of pain and sandpaper trying to preserve the rivets, while making the shortening scar invisible. After all, conventional wisdom says that tenders are full of rivets, and the ones on Bachmann’s casting were too nice to just discard! I never did get the scar to go away completely, and the shell sat in the box awaiting further progress for an alarmingly long time!

Then this week, as I am getting serious about the modelling aspects of this model, I started printing photos and posting them above my modelling desk, and I re-discovered this one of 622’s unfortunate sister at St Polycarpe.

624 in a wreck at Ste Polycarpe, Quebec.
Mattingly collection, National Museum of Science and Technology MATT-1513. A copy exists in the Loren Newman collection at Algonquin Park Museum and Archives, APMA 400

Wreck photos are always valuable because you can quite often make out details that are invisible when equipment is on the rails. This photo supports the appearance of smooth tender sides, and is also the only photo of the back of one of these tenders. There are rows of rivets at the top and bottom, and two vertical rows on the back, but otherwise the tender side is smooth.

So, all that work to retain Bachmann’s beautifully riveted tender sides was in vain. A few swipes of a file and a bit of scuffing with sandpaper has smoothed out them out, including those pesky scars. I’ll come back with Archer rivets and add the ones that should be there later.