Link of the week: impressive modeling from India

DB says:

Greetings, Antipodeans, from the homeless International Nomadic Branch of Motorised Dandruff Inc.

I was recently sent a link to some Chinese steam pics on Vikas Chander's website and as one does, I had an explore. By Jiminy, I stumbled upon some impressive modeling detailed in there that is really pushing boundaries.

While we all have our weaknesses, why he models German prototype is beyond me... but, for example, check out his layout lighting in the link here. That is just the coolest thing. subtly different colours in lit windows, dusk doloured skies behind buildings. Wow.

He also has laser marked cork road bed (derived from 3rd planit files) for laying out his staging yard, clever module mating and track alignment ideas, resistance solders his feeders to tracks to avoid melting sleepers, and details some of the most impressive (if bewildering) electronic implementations.

We can only dream... but it's well worth a browse!

Warning: avert your eyes if you're on a limited budget

Starting and Finishing the Shapeways ZM

DB concludes:

One of the wonderful things about the items from Shapeways is that they obviously let you spit out a model much neater and faster than making something completely from scratch. Throw some bogies, couplers and paint on this thing and you could be done.

I started by pondering the bogies and couplers situation, firstly finding some Kato bogies as reviewed way back here. The WSF material is easy to drill out using the pre-marked bolster holes as guides. I chamfered the reinforcing strut linking the bolster to the coupler pocket so that there was plenty of clearance for swiveling wheels and also widened the coupler pocket to take a pair of MicroTrains couplers. The Kato bogies have a pretty big bolster hole so I added a set of bearers 'just in case' before attaching them with screws and the couplers with carefully applied contact glue.

With the hard lifting done, it was time to turn ones delicate thoughts towards the pretty bits. After staring at a few ZM pics on the web, things that stood out as candidates for some additional detailing were the big steps under where the centre doors join, the lifting door handles themselves and a small horizontal strip near the top of each door. The latter items are tiny slivers of plasticard attached with white glue - the door handles look ok, but the plasticard is a bit big for the horizontal strips, but no dramas when viewed from the federally mandated distance. The steps were cut off an N scale wagon top which also furnished corner steps which were added as an afterthought. All those steps were  attached with my ancient contact glue. A few rectangles of paper for number and chalk boards completed the effort (although those hadn't been added when the pic below was taken).

At this stage, as tradition dictates, rather than letting all this dry, I slathered on some paint to see how things looked. Those more experienced with Shapeways models over on NZ120.org spray some primer on as a first step before doing anything else, and that's probably a good idea, as I found this WSF material sucks up paint like a sponge. I brushed on Humbrol Matt 160 (German Red Brown) if you're keeping score. The next morning the paint had dried except for a few tacky bits where I glued with the wood glue, so I wonder if something strange is going on there although it all seems set now. I'm sure one of our resident chemists can offer an opinion on that. Interestingly, the paint seeped through on the inside through what are probably minute joins between the doors and a few other places. I hope these won't be weak points in future.

You can see some of that seepage in the above pic which also shows my tacky attempts to weight the lighter-than-air model using steel nuts and washers contact-glued in at strategic locations above the bolsters and bracing.

A little weathering with some acrylic washes (rust, brown, black and gray) together with some yellow to pick out steps and door handles and things are starting to look close to finished.

Although the appearance of these wagons has changed over the years -and especially so since spraypaint vandalism has became so popular - the one remaining step for me will be to put the yellow stripes on the doors, but that can wait till the rest of the paint has dried! Actual working time getting the wagon to this condition was less than two hours. Prototype pic from Ken Lankshear's NZ Wagons Flickr set.

Overall I'd not hesitate to recommend this model of a hard-to-build prototype. I must take a pic of it beside my 20 year old resin cast ZAs...

Shapeways ZM and CE first look

DB writes:

A quick look at NZ120.org recently reveals that the scale - probably for the first time ever - has moved off the endangered species list and is entering its third and greatest age ...and going mainstream to boot.

Firstly, Russell at Trackside continues to churn out his range of kits, and as soon as he produces those lovely RTR items they seem to get snapped up. The availability of RTR (or close to RTR (btw, anyone remember Ready to Roll? Cringe.) items is a must for, and an indicator of, the scale's long term success, as not everyone who wants to run trains in NZ120 has the confidence, patience or time to make kits up from nothing or to scratchbuild things.

Secondly, there seem to be a lot of 'new' names on the forum, and not just armchair lurkers either, as the photos and videos of some really nice models and layouts show.

And lastly, over the past year a plethora of 3D printed NZ120 items have appeared as Shapeways models thanks to the efforts of some talented CAD designers. I've always wanted some CEs and more bogie box wagons, so being inherently lazy I recently ordered Peterlanc's ZM bogie box wagon and a few CE coalies from listers_nz to give the Shapeways channel a try...

Piggyback Train (2013, Darryl K Bond, resin, brass, wire and paper) as installed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art 

Initial impressions are that these shells are impressive. As the Dandruff Head intimated earlier, it's a little off-putting looking at models that are so straight and square next to my handcrafted items or even my assembled kits which tend to be less of both. In particular, the precision of the door and roof detail on this is really eye-catching compared to my earlier efforts in dealing with with the complex designs of the ZA/ZM/ZP/KS/etc box wagons.

After some discussion amongst the peanut gallery here behind the scenes at Motorised Dandruff Inc, I ordered these in white/strong/flexible material - primarily because its the cheapest. While it maintains a great level of detail it has a rough to-the-touch finish like sanded tile grouting, and while a coat or two of paint might cover that up, i'll probably run some sandpaper over the large surfaces to smooth things out.

Positively, with one exception there are effectively no signs of strata on the surfaces, so these are a lot better than some Z scale containers I received a year or two back. Yet the Shapeways printers are in a far lower league than Mark Gasson's Magic Machine, both with the rough finish, but also with fairly noticeable stair-stepping on the angled CE ends. Again, nothing a little sanding or filing can't deal to but I'll put them aside for now and look at the ZM. Not sure if you can see this clearly in the terrible phone-photo pics:

No ribbing please.

Note that the angled ends of the CEs are the only place I see this strata- it's not visible anywhere else.

Having spent a lifetime looking at ZAs and not being terribly familiar with ZMs, I was initially worried that the roof pitch seemed a little shallow and that it was supposed to have four underframe braces and that I'd been swindled out of two. After finding a few ZM pics, the model of the more modern wagon is correct and I can stop worrying about this and concentrate on global warming, the future of endangered species and my receding hairline instead.

So, as predicted on this blog a few years ago, it's good to see CAD and 3D printing coming of age and revolutionising NZ120, and indeed all modeling. While building up a train of these models is still a fairly pricey and time-consuming exercise, the costs will fall in the next few years as more 3D printing services spring up locally. And of course the quality is improving all the time.

Nice work dudes!

Wheels??

Any takers asks Cabbage...?

Have been working with a local Wellington Jeweller who has a wax RP printer with 0.0254mm resolution
The first thing I decided to try making was a wheel for the Druff's K/J/Ab project. I had tried this through shapeways in Ultra fine frosted detail but was somewhat disappointed with the result. So it was time to try something else, the wax printer makes a master that can be cast directly, only problem is each wax costs $30, but once cast the brass is good enough to use as the master
We tried the same design I had sent to Shapeways but the spruing and how to turn the final wheel were still unproven and looking difficult. My Jeweller suggested we sprue the wheel from the front hub and this is the final design.
The plan now is to send this back to Morris and Watson as a master for casting in bulk (well maybe 10 at a time as I'll need two tyres of practice to get eight good ones)

The front

The castings is designed to be held by the big sprue on the front to turn the axle then held by the axle to turn the tyre and clean up the front

The rear

The tyre profile is to be NRMA but I still have to figure out how to do this.

Exercising the old clickin' finger...

Am_Fet writes:

Well, finally the planets fell into alignment this week, and by some miracle I had some time/wasnt tired/actually felt enthused for a change/all of the above....so I finally sat down and worked on a wagon I had been promising myself for ages, the UGA bogie Horsebox.

(Cedric Green plan)

The plan is for the major structural part of the wagon (including the headstocks and solebars) to be cut from 0.8mm ply. The final side layer will then get added on from rastered 0.4mm ply with the strapping added in 0.25mm Mylar (just like the J5).



With any luck I will get to pick it up today and then have the weekend to play with it. Herr Druff is after a white "Vegetable Traffic" version for Paekak, whereas an all red one wont look out of place on "The Forks". Round it off with some 2mm society bogies and it should look quite fetching. The finishing touch might be some brass etched dog-box doors and handrails, but I'm not getting carried away yet. Maybe for Easter??

As an aside, MD has asked me about whether I'm allowed to publish the drawing here. I'm pretty sure Cedric Green worked as a draughtsman for the NZR when he did them (for whom I now work), but 'm just trying to find out who is the proper "owner" of his drawings. In the meantime, I'll leave it here but will remove it at the first hint of legal action.

Containers

Magikan scribbles...

After a discussion one day with Am-Fet about his plans for the saltworks and his need for GSY containers, the following conclusions were reached:

The GSY container

We felt that Rapid Prototyping was going to be the most effective way of reproducing the side door container. Given that these have been around since 1997 potentially quite a few could be used (and not just by Am_Fet), so the plan was to produce an RP pattern for resin casting.
So a couple of evenings with CAD produced this.

The CAD file ready to get sent for Rapid Prototyping.

A week later and a package arrived in the mail with the results.

The RP pattern

A little silicon rubber and we are ready to start casting more.

The Rubber Mould

The end result, GSY's by the train load

The resin cast GSY containers

To complete these we still need to sort out decals and we are currently working with our New York office to produce these.
At least these containers have worn the same paint scheme for their whole lives so only one set of decals will be needed.

Son of DFT in a Day... maybe

Well some things are happening, even if it is slower than a snails pace.

I've finally got around to mounting the DFT sideframes onto a Kato SD40-2 bogie, notice I said "a bogie", the other one still has it's original N scale HTC sideframes.
See the photos below for a comparison of NZ120 and N scale sideframes, it makes you wonder how we suffered with the "N scale bogies are near enough" theory for so long.

N Scale HTC sideframe

NZ120 DFT sideframe

Hmmm, I think I need Z scale couplers, and yes I know the cab area needs some remedial work, buts that's not what we are here to see now is it?

I have also done the preliminary CAD work for the mark II version, the plan here is to add the "rodding" between the axleboxes to the sideframe. This will hopefully allow more of the N scale sideframe to be removed and let the DFT sideframe sit a little closer to the wheels.

With any luck, one day soon, work related study may not take up so much time and things may even accelerate to a turtle's pace...

Son of "DFT in a day" - part 2

Perhaps "DFT in a year" may be more appropriate.

And its not really the DFT this time either, well not the laser cut bits anyway.

After our Long Island branch kicked off with the impressive DX bogie sideframes, it was decided we had better follow suit with the DFT version (or DF if you prefer).
So after a bit of mucking around with CAD (and a few emails and some gold bullion later) we have some results.

I'm impressed...

And a closeup

These are designed to drop on top of the sideframes on the Kato SD40-2 using the same "file flat" method as Kiwibond's DX sideframe replacement.

Borrowed bogies, so I couldn't really butcher them, although I could

probably use sideframes as compensation

Comparison with the DX version.

As for cost we are potentially able to get it down to approximately $15-$18 per set if enough sets are ordered (I haven't done the exact maths as yet).

Anyone interested?

Plastic Fantastic - The Batch Built ZH part 2

DB verbosely concludes:

Day 2 of the ZH mini-saga involved sticking on the other three doors and finishing up. As you might have noticed from last time (pic 2 in the previous ZH edition), rather than fold the supplied two door etchings per wagon (one for each end) right over the top, I elected to cut each in (almost) half to make 4 seperate doors, discarding the central bit that represents the roof beam.

This was for many reasons - firstly, this kit is in 'beta' mode and this was my first attempt at it, secondly, I doubted my ability to make all the folds perfectly all the way around the wagon (to match the crosswise formers they would be glued onto) , and thirdly I'm sure by the time I finished applying plastic cement to all those formers and surfaces that need to be glued, most of it would have set already.

To ease the door folding process, it is important that they be carefully scored along the supplied lines, which is tricky without going through the thin material or scoring folds so thin that they split when folded - ask for a spare and use a blunt knife! The score line intervals must also match between the various doors (there is some judgement required here as the lines are fairly thick) to get a pair of doors that match in their complex profile for each side. However if you do all this and then fold it up a little more tightly than needed, everything slots into place like magic and the whole door-attaching exercise ends up being less stressful than expected.

If you go this 4-door route, you then have to rebuild the top roof beam (the discarded middle section of the door etch) out of plastic strip, but as long as you remove any protrusions on top of the crosswise formers, you'll have a nice straight line along the top of the main lengthwise bulkhead to base this on, something I didn't have with the ZG and thus things went a bit wavy on that one.

As it turns out, I have ended up with a nice model, the only glitch being a tiny bit of glue melt right in the middle of one of the doors where it is attached to its inside former (on the other side!). Nothing a little weathering can't hide.


Finishing touches included the roof beam as mentioned, a tiny .020x.040 rail across the bottom of the doors that is painted blue here, the grey 'ears' on top of the ends (I suppose these are roof stoppers?), fixing up the melted outer underfloor trusses (the middle ones can't really be seen) and a quickly bent bit of overscale wire stuck on each end as a nasty representation of the door opening mechanism.

You could really go to town on the ends if you wanted, with handrails, the upper vents, footsteps, and the rest of the door opening mech. I splashed some of my Southern Blue (which has dried up (arrrgh!) on the ends and unders, and gull grey on the main roof beam and ears. I didn't paint the white styrene doors at all.
So with some weathering and decaling yet to be applied, it's taken about 8 hours (moving quickly) to construct and paint an impressive model of an impressive prototype, but it seemed a pretty scary build. I say seemed, because most of my fears were unfounded, however I did take those shortcuts with the roof that probably made life easier despite being less elegant than the indended design. The doors are also quite thin, so they seem a bit translucent when backlit, and if one of them decides to unglue itself and pop free of its formers, particularly the centre formers, I will probably be bundled up and moved to a different mental institution.

To finish: I also have an ongoing niggling niggle about these laser-cut wagons. Certainly other than RP-ing one of these ZHs, which would be an expensive exercise, you would struggle to get such a crisp looking end-product any other way.

But, I also wonder if one of these was assembled up and tweaked a little that it couldn't form the master for a one-piece casting (or worst case a middle and 2 ends) and then you could churn them out by the bucketload. I wanted three or four ZHs (including the Coca Cola one of course!), but at 8 hours a pop, I'm not so sure any more. Still, the next one might be faster. Glad I'm not modeling pulpliner trains that's for sure.

For those keen to take a plunge in the shark pool, register your expression of interest through Am-Fet via this blog. You'll also want to pick up the Oct 2000 NZ Model Railway Journal (Heisler bush lokey on the cover) which has a superb spread with some great detail pics of these wagons and there are a few colour broadsides toward the back of the Sept 1996 Railfan as well that show the various paint schemes (Standard railcar on the cover.)

Plastic Fantastic - The Batch Built ZH part 1

DB Says:

After a recent visit to Am_Fet's top secret lasering facility somewhere in the depths of Petone, I ordered a few ZHs and started building one today. Some of the lasering is a little 'hot' in places, with some melting around the underframe trusses and the ends. Still, nothing a little plastic rod here and there can't fix.

As detailed much earlier in the ZG article, as long as you scrawk out the laser cuts to remove any raised melty bits along cuts (and especially the cutouts where parts slot together), things go together really nicely.

Look at that superb door detail...
And as you can see in the pic below, I started to make a few DB mods (should have thought of these before I started assembling the thing, but hey...

First up, if you want to apply bogies or couplers (and given that it's a railway wagon, why not) you may want to cut holes in the lengthwise bulkhead so you can screw in a bogie from underneath without running foul of it. For MT couplers you'll also need to remove most of the headstocks. I'm using bogie mounted ones as we will see in a moment.
As a safety feature, I put some extra bracing and gluing surfaces for the doors to glue to because they are thin and I had a feeling I wasn't going to be successful in folding them up and attaching them in one piece per the design. They also provide a backing for the door grab cutouts.

Per the below pic, I also made up some DB bogie bolsters of plastic rod (about .080x.100 inch stuff from memory, chamfered for wheel clearance and drilled with a hole), attached the bogies, and put in some weight. My bogies are outboard a little more than the prototype so I could use the couplers-as-attached. I figure you won't really see the bogies anyway as the doors hang so far down, and I'd rather have bulletproof running over prototype rivet-counting anyday. The weight is the rolled-up dental x-ray lead that I'm sure you're sick of me harping on about. Also note how I cut the ends off the center pair of underframe trusses so they won't foul the bogies. I'll fix up the laser-melted truss bits last, as if I did them now I'd just break them.
As as you can see, it's coming along nicely (and you can see why I made the 'screw holes' in the bulkhead below....!)

Clayton's Modeling

If you read any of the "unnamed" magazines mentioned by Am_Fet recently you will no doubt notice they all look at winter as the season for modeling projects to get moving.

So with that in mind I have plenty on the go...

...But winter seems different down under, so for the last couple of months at least the sum total of my modeling efforts have been of the armchair variety.
So to show that I have at least been thinking about modeling, here's some idea of what has been thought about.

Firstly the DFT.

Well this hasn't really progressed any further than the last peek we got at it.
The mkII version is at the laser cutters.

Okay so the fleet will be retired by the time this one gets finished!

Now I know Steve is chomping at the bit to get one of these to play with. Unfortunately for him (and me) Am_Fet with his ZH test managed to jump the queue at the laser shop. I'm not quite sure how he pulled that off, perhaps I need larger bribes!

Next the "modern" re-clad GT.

Yes I know, original GT's but you get the idea.

The first version of the CAD work has been done for this, but not yet test cut. This will be a similar idea to Am_Fet's ZH, formers with a thin wrap for the cladding.

Matangi (ears pricking up maybe?)

Nothing serious here.

Just playing with the CAD files from Hollywood Foundry to see how "low profile" the running gear could be, this has potential.

And finally something to temp anyone?

So can I argue that a CAD on a laptop in the armchair constitutes modeling...

... Probably Not.

DX bogie sides: Last Call for Eye Candy

DB Says: Well, look what the mailman bought me today... fifty sets of these:
Huh? Bogies, loads and loads of bogies. Note the thinner main frames, proper 'round' cylinders and freestanding brake linkages (click on the following pic for full effect):A bit of an improvement over the prototypes.

The majority of the pile in the first pic will be in the mail on Monday heading to paid-up members of the DX-bogie-side club on a first-paid first-served basis (payment instructions within)
I ordered almost enough for everyone as I'm not stupid enough to plop all that money down to be left with a load of leftovers. Be in or ...not!

DX Bogie Update

DB says:

I've been informed that a whole swag of DX bogie sides are winging their way to me from Mark4's Magic perFactory.

This is where we stood from the call for expressions of interest:
Soooo, drop me an email, let me know your address, and I'll tell you where to drop the low-denomination unmarked sequential bills. $12.00 each including shipping:

Earthing Google...

Again, Am_Fet writes:

Well, again it looks like I will be carrying the hopes and dreams of this blog, unless Kiwibonds can get some time of from trying to take over the world (or at least large chunks of it). The Head Druff and his good wife passed through for lunch today, picking up a J5 and confirming the mystery guest photographed this week.....and to say I was envious......

Anyway, onto todays post: Actually using Google Earth for something...well, useful really. My planned Patea layout will feature the old Cheese Store complex as its view block on the right hand end. Its a massive collection of crumbling, decaying old buildings....and its gorgeous. But how to work out how big this sucker was going to be?



Thanks to the genius inherent in the design of Google Earth, it actually wasnt too bad. The first thing was to actually find the cheese store and zoom in on it. Level of Difficulty? about 0.00001.



Next, select "Show Ruler" from across the top toolbar:



Now, just click between two points on your building and read off the distance (you may have to set it to kilometres). Sure, you will need to do some conversion to the correct units, but its metric....no hassles. As you can see, the complex here (including wharf) worked out to around 120 metres.



Now for the calculations. True to scale, the complex would be a metre long (thats 120m / 120 = 1.) Now, I never build things true scale unless I've got an aircraft hangar to put things, but I've settled on only foreshortening items by a third. So, a third of a metre is 660mm. From here , I can load the image into Autocad, scale it to 660mm long, then run dimensions off it to suit. (in fact, on this one I went a bit bigger to retain the length, plus I designed the layout to be able to accept it like that).



Dont think you need AutoCAD to achieve such trickery either. It can also be done with a drawing board, a ruler, calculator and some clear logical thinking (i.e not after a few glasses of alcoholic punch!)

The Boys are Back in Town?

DB says: I enjoyed reading this recent post from The Fettler of Amateurs. That day, my mind wandered onto: "so what shape is the scale really in in February 2010?"

Well, we're very fortunate to have had Russell bring Trackside/Trackgang back to life and I hope he's selling boatloads of kits. If I didn't have a million other projects on my list I'd be tempted to pick up one of those railcars. Maybe I will....

On a different plane, NZ120.org and this blog has helped bring an online Fellowship of the Thing together and that has to be good for the scale.

But other than those sparks, in a hobby where people come and go with the changing winds, really, how many active NZ120ers actually are there? Because isn't that what really matters?

For although we've managed to inject a little enthusiasm and generate some interest from the sidelines, there doesn't seem to be that much going on out there in the real NZ120 world. Or is there? I don't visit NZ120.org nearly as often as I should, but I only see a few people there actually 'making models' or layouts . There are a handful of regular commenters on this blog, but I know many of them aren't NZ120 folks - they visit in support or because there are so few venues for the NZ modeler to productively pee away 10 minutes of ones workday surfing the web. Maybe there is more action on the Yahoo Group (feel free to prove me wrong and post a comment here, a picture on NZ120.org, or send Rhys something at the email address at the top of this blog).

I sent some pics to the journal, and I sorta hoped to attend the convention this year, or at least send some models or something over, but that is looking unlikely at this stage. I hope those that do make it can fly the NZ120 flag proudly.

What more could one do? I still think that to really take off, NZ120 needs more, or dare I say 'better', wagon chassis options. The current trackgang offerings aren't an option for Darryl as discussed previously, so I've mainly been Microtrainsing amongst other experiments that you may have read about in earlier postings over the past year. The better my models get (and yes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder thank you very much!), the more I'm looking at the Peco and Microtrains underframes they're sitting on with a look of concern. I was surprised how much better the RP bogie sideframes look on the DX than the modded Dash 8 ones. Heck, even that 'finescale' code 55 Peco track is starting to look a little daggy in pictures.

Rambling back to wagons for a second: there are moves afoot to make something that not only looks more prototypical, but it also runs well and is easy to use - myself and the MagicMan are keen to make a correct CAD-mastered one-piece modern image brass bogie available. Other elves and vegetables in the wilderness are pondering a two-to-four-piece 4w chassis. All idiotproof, lookin' good and runnin' fine. Otherwise there's not much point is there?
The hope is that with such chassis options, some of the fence sitters will be tempted to take the plunge, and see just how easy and rewarding NZ120 can be. That is important, because if Rhys wants to go off and play toy soldiers for a while and Darryl moves into a tiny hole with no room for modeling, and... what happens then? Does NZ's most fragile scale go into hibernation again?

Yes, we've got the band back together, but it still feels like we have fewer members than Dire Straits...!

DX in Half a Day But Spread Over Two Months: 7

DB Says: I'm not sure why this plan to spit out DXs by the dozen has taken so long to bear fully-formed fruit from my fruity loins. Its not as if I've spent that much time on the first model, but I certainly hate doing handrails - and that, coupled with my tendency to get distracted by other things, stalled progress for a while.

So here's an update on those yummy RP bogie sides we saw last time. As you can see, the outside of the Atlas bogie sides were filed down until the bearings started to show, the RP sides were thinned a bit on the inside and some superglue applied to join them together. A beam of plasticard joins the rear sections together. All in all they look pretty good, they don't stick out too far, and I have a few thoughts on making a 'mk2' version of these.

I've also spent an hour or four popping some handrails on, attaching couplers (Z in front, N at the back), headstocks, rear rads, paint, decals and a few other details as 5293 has moved slowly towards completion.

The sinclair radio antenna, wipers and brake hoses are leftover N scale detail items. Dodgy painting is all my own work. The handrails are .006 brass - superfine but decent-looking, making the ones on the other DX look like drainpipes. Trouble is, they won't be very robust, so I'd better take another look at my trackwork and signalling systems... The handrails flanking the rear steps are the thicker wire used on older 5039 for solidity. I'm going to enforce a rule that you're only allowed to look at the front of my models.

Now that we're on the home stretch, you can see that the lasering has turned out even better than expected. Those partial-cuts (etch lines for panels, grilles etc), which looked a big daggy on the white plasticard have come out really well with some thinned paint thrown at them - just look at those nice dynamic brake intake grilles behind the cab on 5293. The grilles on the intake ducts are part of the duct casting and were borrowed from a US N shell for the master.

So what ever happened to "DX in half a day"?

I've come to realize that when it comes to churning these things out, it's not the 'big bits' - the shell and the panelwork - that that takes time, it's sticking on the bloody handrails. I might have to cheat a little on later models or I'll be dead before my tunnel motor collection is complete.

Virtual Reality Detour: DX Bogiesicles

DB Says: You may not remember reading this cheap-champagne-fueled dribble a few months back. It was all a load of nonsense anyway, but let me replay the relevant nanosecond here:


Whoopdee-doody, a few evenings fuddling in AutoCad. But today, thanks to Mark Gasson's Magic Perfactory Machine, some semi-transparent reality arrived in the post.

Insane.

Insane. These are 40mm long each and match Atlas N scale Dash-8 axlespacings give or take a few hairs. That's officially tiny. Click on the pic above and check out the bolts around the axles. Blown away.

Now to see if I can cast these things as it's going to get pricey to have him run them off by the dozen...