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.
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....!)
4 comments:
are these kits now available to buy ? why don't you body mount the couplers on these cars ? why don't you body mount the couplers on your AO cars ?
cheers...
steve w.
squis = a wet quiz
1. Ask Evan Fettler!
2. Easy - body mounting them would be more effort, more chance of height/angle mis-alignment which causes problems with long trains. Seems like a no brainer to me when they won't be visible?
3. See 2! Plus they are bulletproof Rapidos so I don't waste money buying MTs to replace them. These are visible but was able to mount them in prototype location.
Philluxe - Vacuum your stubble off.
no further questions - AT ALL !
'deade'
Well to be honest I'd feel a bit like a charlatan having them for sale as-is, especially as we still havent settled the Melt problem.
Having said that, if you just cant contain yourself I can run off a couple of the next design iteration...I cant promise what sate they will be in , so you'll have to take your chances! I am thinking of including some of the design bits DB has mentioned, however.
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