# New brass pilot for a Hartland Woody



## steam5 (Jun 22, 2008)

I thought I’d share this little project I did over the weekend. I recently pick up a Hartland Woody from Reindeer Pass Railroad http://www.reindeerpass.com Once again they were absolutely great to deal with and had the woody to me in Australia in no time!











It just didn't’t look right at the front, something was missing, so I knocked up a pilot out of brass. I free lanced it using pictures of prototype Galloping Geese and this is what I came up with.











































Now just as I write this I looked on HLW web page to get a before picture and something jumped out at me! It has a pilot! Somehow mine was missing from my box. I’m not too worried because mine looks better



















The pilot is quite simple, I first started on the bottom and drilled mounting holes for the vertical rods. I soldered in all the vertical bars slowly getting them roughly in the right position, but many more adjustments were required all through the build. I then worked on the top bar, I didn't put holes up there just soldered them inside. The last bit was the middle bar and the mounting bars. I attached the middle bar to the woody using some brass nut square pins from Phil's Narrow Gauge (another great guy).

The pilot feels nice and strong, but time will tell if it needs a it more brassing. I'll get to painting it a bit latter.

Enjoy
Alan


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## Tom Bowdler (Jan 3, 2008)

Very nice Alan, 
Artful soldering at its best! 
Have fun, 
Tom


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## steam5 (Jun 22, 2008)

Thanks Tom. 

I looked at the pilot this morning, I'm going to add another brace from the bottom of the pilot to the under of the woody. 

Alan


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## steam5 (Jun 22, 2008)

I decided to add a bit more strength to the new pilot, it now has no flex in it all, and should be able to take a good bump now.


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## Larry Green (Jan 2, 2008)

Very nice addition, and a neat soldering job. No need for "paint to hide" on your work. 

Larry


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## Dave Meashey (Jan 2, 2008)

Alan; 

Ditto from me concerning the soldering. Such beautiful smooth joints! Do you use an iron, a torch, or resistance soldering? Oh, and the pilot looks great, and strong. Looks like you could push small possums off your track with that pilot! 

Best, 
David Meashey


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## Stan Cedarleaf (Jan 2, 2008)

Very nicely done, Alan.... Very creative idea....


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## John J (Dec 29, 2007)

Great looking pilot


Did you Solder everything together ?

JJ


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## steam5 (Jun 22, 2008)

Glad you like the outcome, I’m very pleased and it does seem a shame to paint. 

Everything is soldered using a temperature controlled soldering iron, but you could use a simple iron. I work a fair amount in building HO brass and white metal loco kits and use low melt solder, which is what I have used on this pilot. 

I really like working with brass and solder, its a nice medium for jobs like this. 

Alan


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## Dwight Ennis (Jan 2, 2008)

Please remember everyone that the maximum allowable width for images posted to the forums is 800 pixels.


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## steam5 (Jun 22, 2008)

Dwight, brain fart on my behalf. I resized then to 800, but height not width. OOPS! 

Thanks for the reminder


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## Dwight Ennis (Jan 2, 2008)

No biggie Alan.







I resized them in the posts. But several members have posted oversized images lately, so it seemed a good place to mention it.

I use a notebook with a widescreen display and a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080. My browser (Google Chrome) takes up around 90% of the screen width when open. But images greater then 800 pixels wide still cause me to scroll side-to-side to both see all the image and to read any any text in any posts on that page - which is the reason behind the rule in the first place.


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