I read fairly recently about someone purchasing O gauge plastic lenses for ready made loco lamps. Perhaps necessary for LED operation, but for general non-working use, my method employs something less expensive and readily to hand - glue. I usually use cast brass locomotive and guards van lamps where the lens area is centre punched and drilled with a 2.2 mm bit until there is a concave lamp ‘face’. As I am primarily a GWR / Western Region modeller, a 1.5mm hole is drilled circa 4.5mm into the base of the lamp to one side – depending upon the lamp iron configuration site (above).

The lamp lens areas are painted dark grey (Humbrol 67) for forward lamps or dark gloss red (Humbrol 20) for the rear of the train etc. The lamps bodies are then painted red, white or black depending upon era and usage position. To create the ‘lens’ I use 5 minute Araldite applied with the point of a cocktail-stick to build up a convex body of glue to form the ‘lens’. If you mix too rapidly and get air bubbles in the glue while applying it to the lamp, these can be worked out with the cocktail stick. What I attempt to achieve is the ‘translucent’ convex quality of the real thing (unlit of course) – picture below. Once completely dry, the lens can be further protected or enhanced by using Revell No.1 gloss varnish (which appears not to contain cellulose).

One of the problems with old style vintage cars is to obtain the highly reflective mirrored surface of large front headlights such as 1930s Jaguars. Most metallic paints are ok to an extent with some of the newer acrylic paints being an improvement. However, to get the effect I use a combination of aluminium kitchen foil and glue. Circular foil inserts are punched out using brass tubing. I discovered by accident if the foil insert is very gently rubbed with one’s forefinger, a concave form is produced on the reflective smooth surface (as per the real thing). The insert is then carefully glued into the vehicle concave headlight and araldite epoxy used to create the lens over it. The photo above illustrates the completed lamps of a 1930s GWR bus under construction. The numberplate could be improved with an item using a photo-printer.

I also use Araldite for glass covers on backhead paper gauges (as the glue does not seriously affect the paper, unlike varnish which can stain it). Similarly, for a GWR clock in my local club layout signal box interior where I added some additional details (below). The clock was made from whitemetal off-cuts with the clock face produced from a reduced photograph printed on computer photo-paper.