A few days hence, DB returns to the safety of the train room.
When we left our last exciting episode, things were pretty much complete above the side sills, so that left the nether regions to do. The DFT s(and DFs) have a big girder under the sills, but I don't have any plastruct girders and attempted to make something credible up out of some flat strip with a tiny square rod stuck on one edge. These are lying under the DFT cab in the pic below although they're pretty hard to see in this pic.
I also fabricated headstocks - the front one has a little more detail than the back as I rarely look at the back of these things when they're chugging around a layout. These were each attached to a big square styrene rod to keep things at 90 degrees to the floor. These rods will also be the mounting place for the couplers later on. Speaking of couplers, as I'm not 100% sure where they will sit at this stage, I made a reasoned guestimate and cut a decent sized hole for them in the headstocks that I can with paper later on if need be. Good old paper.
The homemade faux-channel was then glued under the floor between the ends of the rods - all carefully calculated so the 'girders' would sit outside the Kato mech's pickups.
For my other DFs I made all the fairings, steps, jacking pads/sandboxes/etc by cutting them out of the paper plan and simply glueing them on. These have for the most part held up pretty well over the past 20 years but this time I went to the other extreme and made them all out of styrene, mainly out of solid rodding (I just love all those strips and shapes and squares and rectangles and things).
The main air tanks could have been stolen from the SD40-2 shell as I've done in the past , but they are a little small in diameter, so this time I made them out of airplane-kitset-sprue stuck in a big drill and attacked with sandpaper to round off the ends. The poor man's lathe. I didn't bother with that last step for the two wee cyls under the cab on the port side.
I went to town and made a few other details that I could see in the grainy protype pictures available on the web from plastic and wire (traction motor cables). The most silly being the wee lifting eyes above the bogies and on the headstocks. I'm not sure whether much of this will be visible when the paint goes on... A few lift rings for the roof, a sinclair radio antenna, ditchlights, wipers and brake hoses came from my collection of US N scale detail bits, but could just as well have been made from styrene and fine wire. Or left off. The headlights front and rear came from US shells, as probably did those horns, which are actually pretty awful. A lot of these details seem to vary by loco so again, mine might be a bit 'representative' rather than an exact copy of a specific loco. It's the effect that matters in NZ120.
Despite that comment, those with 20/20 memories may have detected that the cabsides (and the previously grossly oversized MU connector on the nose!) have been replaced since last time. I was going to make a black DFT with powdercoated sliding side windows, but have since decided to do 7132 in blue, which still has the original style side ones.
When we left our last exciting episode, things were pretty much complete above the side sills, so that left the nether regions to do. The DFT s(and DFs) have a big girder under the sills, but I don't have any plastruct girders and attempted to make something credible up out of some flat strip with a tiny square rod stuck on one edge. These are lying under the DFT cab in the pic below although they're pretty hard to see in this pic.
I also fabricated headstocks - the front one has a little more detail than the back as I rarely look at the back of these things when they're chugging around a layout. These were each attached to a big square styrene rod to keep things at 90 degrees to the floor. These rods will also be the mounting place for the couplers later on. Speaking of couplers, as I'm not 100% sure where they will sit at this stage, I made a reasoned guestimate and cut a decent sized hole for them in the headstocks that I can with paper later on if need be. Good old paper.The homemade faux-channel was then glued under the floor between the ends of the rods - all carefully calculated so the 'girders' would sit outside the Kato mech's pickups.
For my other DFs I made all the fairings, steps, jacking pads/sandboxes/etc by cutting them out of the paper plan and simply glueing them on. These have for the most part held up pretty well over the past 20 years but this time I went to the other extreme and made them all out of styrene, mainly out of solid rodding (I just love all those strips and shapes and squares and rectangles and things).
The main air tanks could have been stolen from the SD40-2 shell as I've done in the past , but they are a little small in diameter, so this time I made them out of airplane-kitset-sprue stuck in a big drill and attacked with sandpaper to round off the ends. The poor man's lathe. I didn't bother with that last step for the two wee cyls under the cab on the port side.
I went to town and made a few other details that I could see in the grainy protype pictures available on the web from plastic and wire (traction motor cables). The most silly being the wee lifting eyes above the bogies and on the headstocks. I'm not sure whether much of this will be visible when the paint goes on... A few lift rings for the roof, a sinclair radio antenna, ditchlights, wipers and brake hoses came from my collection of US N scale detail bits, but could just as well have been made from styrene and fine wire. Or left off. The headlights front and rear came from US shells, as probably did those horns, which are actually pretty awful. A lot of these details seem to vary by loco so again, mine might be a bit 'representative' rather than an exact copy of a specific loco. It's the effect that matters in NZ120.
Despite that comment, those with 20/20 memories may have detected that the cabsides (and the previously grossly oversized MU connector on the nose!) have been replaced since last time. I was going to make a black DFT with powdercoated sliding side windows, but have since decided to do 7132 in blue, which still has the original style side ones.
I wish it still had the original front windows rather than the cross-eyed triclops look as well...
2 comments:
Could this be the best scratchbuilt diesel yet seen in this scale?
Would certainly have too rate, looks as good (at a distance, how far away is NY?) as many 3/16th locos!
DB you'll have to do a cost analysis and see how it economical it is!
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