AO11 - Encore!

 DB adds:

Back when my TranzAlpine saga started, I had high hopes for a really long Tranz. The longest one I photographed was 12 cars and two vans. 

I stopped at 4 cars and my two vans. But I've always kept a few spare cars in reserve, retaining the best 4 of the solid resin 56 foot car blocks made way back when. 

This week I decided to give them a coat of blue.

After a count up of my spare Kinki bogies, I figured I could only do three additional cars, having just used a set of bogies under the FM van. Further availability of parts and time made me scale this down to two. In the picture below, there are some decals, reflecting mirror windows and dark window outer materials that have been sitting in the ziplock bags behind for a dozen or more years. Here the underpieces start to go on. And then the windows.

Within a short few days, these two new AOs had their unders done, bogies and windows installed, and decals applied. The final step was the addition of the hokey inter-carriage connections made from basswood. Finally, a decent length TranzAlpine for Greymouth!

Just need to sort out some detail for the back end carriage now. I should probably put a Microtrains coupler on that end too to allow it to be hauled both ways.