Saturday, February 22, 2014

Haskell Na

The wait is finally over and the On30 Haskell Na has arrived. The postman brought me one this week and it didn't take long for it to hit the layout. I don't have a decoder for it yet so I had to switch part of the layout back to DC to give it a run.
 
 
So what are my intial thoughts? Well it certainly looks like a Na. The level of detail is reasonable and it runs well on DC. It happily pulled a train of 8 wagons up a 1 in 40 grade without any problems.
 
Probably the one thing I found disappointing is the colour of the smoke box. It is a blueish grey that to my eye doesn't quite look right. It got the better of me so I fired up my airbrush this morning and gave it a coat of Testor's  Model Master "burnt metal" buffing metaliser.
 
 
This gave the smoke box a very nice pale silver colour similar to how the black Na's on Puffing Billy are painted. It wasn't a difficult job as you only have to remove three screws and the smoke box comes off the model. The wiring for the light stops you taking the smoke box off completely but it made it much easier to mask than if I had left it in place.
 
There are some extra detail parts that are included but you need to install on the loco yourself. I have already added the numberplates and pilots but I will wait until I have installed a decoder before I add the rest. I may also add some extra details like the pipes and levers on the sand domes before I give the loco some weathering.
 
All in all I am quite pleased with this latest addition to the roster.