BR 99 (VI K)

Rebuilding the superstructure

	Now the parts are stripped bare, it is essential to get rid of the old glue. It has proved to have turned brittle and any remainder of the glue will hamper any attempt to reaffix the parts.
	The plate that keeps the wheels in place also holds the brakes. Two brake shoes had come loose in the box and a third one gave way during cleaning. So before anything else I tried the remaining five. Guess what? They all broke away without any form of persuasion.
	So I cleaned the plate and cleared the notches out from any remaining CA. I also cleaned all eight brake shoes (eight, that's funny, the loco is a ten-coupler)
	I checked a drawing. It is a ten-coupler allright (yeah sure), but it was only braked on the second and fourth wheelsets and then double-sided. That explains the number eight.

	I wanted to know whether the white metal of the loco was solderable and and to what temperature I could go. Well, yes it was solderabe and the melting point was relatively high, well above an estimated 300C
	Pre-drilling the cast brass parts is necessary to take up the pipes and solder them securely. Normally I would do this before mounting the brass parts on the boiler but now I had no option than to try to get to those holes as a retrofit. I soldered a 0.6 mm drill in a brass tube to elongate the drill...
	...to boldly go where no drill had gone before.
	Adding handrails, left and front. The drawing said I had to install them at the other side as well, but other already glued piping was in the way, so I omitted the right hand one.
	The loco's superstructure had fallen apart during stripping which is a lucky fact in more ways than one. Now I could drill the necessary holes in the front of the cab.
	Then I soldered the boiler and the cab/tank assembly together again on the struts halfway the boiler and at the rear end of the boiler
	I installed two right hand pipes between cab and a steam valve. They were inserted in a hole in the cab and then soldered in the holes I drilled in the valve,
	and finally I fixed them by letting a drip of CA flow in the holes in the cab's front. In this case I preferred CA above all else for its capillary action.
	Likewise I installed a pipe on the fireman's side.
	This pipe could be soldered on both sides
	It is a case, by the way, of high art of three dimensional bending.
	This pipe had to fit in a very shallow hole in the air pump (right) and a next-to-nothing dimple at the underside of the steam admission valve (left). It kept jumping away again and again. When I had it in place and I wanted to reach for the soldering iron it simply always moved. I felt the irritation rise in my throat. Then I remembered a trick: fix it with Blu-Tack. Now I could position it more easily and once in place I had both hands free to solder it. Done!
	Finally I installed the generator exhaust pipe
	I had overlooked a pipe at the driver's side, which I installed later. This pipe could be soldered below the water tank.