I am in the process of rebuilding a 5" guage diesel locomotive (not battery electric). The steel body has many small louvred steel panels attached to simulate those on the full size locomotive however some are missing or damaged.

These louvred panels measure 1 7/8 inch wide (just under 2 inches) and by the looks of things were probably originally obtained in long strips of say 12 inches long and then cut to whatever length was necessary.. The metal is quite thin and readily bendable..

Model Engineering sources cannot help neither can those firms who make battery electric kits.and despite searching everywhere I can think of including sites for model boats etc I cannot come up with anything at all. It may be that their initial use had nothing to do with model engineering.

Unfortunately the builder of the loco is now deceased so no help forthcoming from that quarter.

Has anyone any idea as to where panels/strips such bas these might be sourced? Any help would be appr4eciated since they are unfortunately not the sort of item one can readily make in the home workshop.

There are plenty of firms identified in Google but they all relate to large louvred panels as used in domestic or industrial situations.

Thank you for the prompt rerply.

If he used a custom punch and die then i doubt that I could follow down ths path since I wouldn't know where to start and i doubt that i could make the appropriate tools..

Re the builders type louvred plates the louvres are far too big. To give you an idea, on a length of 3 inches there are 22 louvres so we are talking about really small stuff. Not sure if I can post a photo here but if you care to look at Ebay No 221482048278 you will get a better idea of what I am referrnng to, I didn't acquire the loco from Ebay but doing a bit of research I discovered it had appeared on Ebay some time ago but did not sell.

Again thank you for your quick response.

I think when you look at this man's work he is away ahead of many if not most of us. I doubt if I could tackle most of the jobs which he has undertaken.

Looking at the panels I have I still think that they were obtained commercially since if the builder had made them himself he would surely have made each louvred panel individually whereas it is clear that these were louvred strips of metal which the builder merely cut to an appropriate length.You can see where they have been cut

If the panels had been made individually they wouls have had a small border round them top and bottom but there is nothing like that and they were definitely cut to size from a long strip which to me indicates that this was a commercial product of some kind.