G`day Folks, Ray has kindly forwarded on another tip to me which may be of use to anyone trying to find a replacement buffer head to repair a loco or coach. I quote Ray here below. " I recently bought an old Lima shunter which I glazed and repainted. However one of the buffer heads was missing. I took an empty plastic yoghurt pot (Muller corner pot) which is not too thin and used a paper hole punch to punch through the top (Empty the chads out of the punch to make finding the plastic one easier). The resulting chad is slightly oversize but when flattened out and painted is barely noticeable. Simple superglue in place! " The replacement buffer is the one on the right Gormo
Strawberry flavoured buffers ....... yummy. Another great example of thinking outside the box. Genius.
Great Tip ! Another simple way to either replace or enlarge the buffer heads is using drawing pins and a bit of plastic or brass / aluminium tubing. If the complete buffer has broken off just cut a piece of tubing to cover the drawing pin, leave a bit of the pin showing which can then be glued into the buffer beam. If it’s just the buffer head that’s broken off then just a simple task of drilling out the shank and then push the drawing pin into the hole. I’ve enlarged the buffer heads on both my Hudswell locos, cut off the pin from the drawing pin head and simply glue on to the existing buffer. You will find lots of small shunter pictures on the internet, had larger buffer heads to help with shunting on tight curves....the same applies with shunting on a small layout with tight curves as it will reduce the chance of buffer lock. Kim
Thanks Toto & Kimbo, Kimbo that`s a great idea.....but I assume it`s probably easier to achieve in O gauge, given the size of drawing pin heads...???? Gormo
