Adventures in Casting - part 2

(Kiwibonds with more on his casting experiences)

I think I’m enjoying this… Getting all the bits cast, painted and assembled is pretty slow going, but fairly rewarding. As with most things, it’s not the slog but the eventual reward and that makes it all worthwhile. So much so, that I’m not sure why I was so scared of casting things back in the NZ120 Middle Ages. The KPs are decent if unspectacular one piece molds on Pecos chassis and their only real failing, other than not having headstocks, is that the door ribs seem to pick up a few air bubbles that need to be exorcised by some Squadron Putty or whatever brand it is I have. The rest comes out well though - I don’t know why the end corrugations don’t have similar set of bubbles, but there you go.

I’m surprised at the detail that is coming out in the green side opening containers now, with (rounded down to) only a handful of bubbles of note despite the complex pattern – these are on Micro trains ‘roller bearing’ bogies with ‘ext’ (medium) extension couplers:


And the pièce de résistance (as I didn’t waste my time learning French in the 5th form - I couldn’t even master English - I have no idea what that actually means. Even in English it doesn’t make sense. Those crazy Frenchies.)


No recollection of the ‘80s would be complete without those things buzzing around between freezing works and port. Decals courtesy of my old ALPS printer which I spent about 8 solid hours trying to get working on Windows XP a few months back. Those need some practice too. All in all, it’s hardly VCC Models Comes to NZ120, but they’re not completely awful either. If there is any room left in my NZ Summer Excursion suitcase, I’ll throw a few extras in and put them on Trademe in a few weeks time.