Rumble in the Jungle - DG 2376

DB says:

Well I finally made it to my nice clean freshly carpeted train room last weekend, but struggled to find my knife. As such, my NZ120 pilot light was unable to re-ignite any of the half finished efforts that I did find. Somehow I got fired up enough to make some serious progress on a long running Z scale project and kitbash this N scale freak:


No, it's not exactly NZ prototype, but you might be interested to hear that I bought an N scale Kato C30-7 a few months back as I've always wanted one of these UP C36-7s with their lumpy Dash-8 style dynamic brake box. Its not a perfect model, but it will do me. And most importantly, today, when I did find my modeling knife, my modeling juices were already flowing.

Another thing I stumbled on last week was a bunch of DCC friendly PA-1 chassis hiding in my drawers (my desk drawers you understand) and this feeble piece of origami:


Which you may remember from a long-ago post on the use of modern technology in NZ120 modeling

I made this home-made brass etch by starting with a plan in 'negative form' (i.e. black everywhere except where the etch lines should go) printed onto cheap photo paper (because it is coated paper) in a [Dr Evil voice] laser [end Dr Evil voice] printer. Then I turned the printed paper upside down and carefully ironed the DG plan onto some .5mm thick brass strip using an iron (strangely enough).

This process melts the plastic laser toner onto the brass, and annoyingly, while its at it, also has the effect of sticking the paper sheet to the brass. But never fear for once its all cooled down, you can put the whole mess in water and soak off the paper thanks to the photo coatings, leaving the brass nicely coated with black plastic toner except for the grills and windows which will be etched out. This you do in a little tray with some acetone and acid and a turkey baster. Of course I'm not cleverly making this up - you can Google "toner transfer brass etching" if you really want to see how this is done in more detail. It works.

This was a reject sample - note no toner on the top edge of the piece due to poor ironing skills! This could be saved by using a permanent marker to draw over the bits you don't want etched.

Aaaaaaanyway, I thought I might see if I could put some lipstick on this pig as I really should have a model of DG2376; especially now that as I type this blog post, the orientation of the real one is in doubt thanks to the Dec 23 Chch earthquake blitz. I feel for you, Christchurchians...

Since the 'rear end' as I etched and folded it was a bit wide, I cut it out to give me two sides and then made up a plastic replacement back to match my recabbed NZ120 DG 2330. I then managed to glue all of this plus a front headstock together in a geometry that isn't too far off flat and square.

Then it was time to start the nose. Having studied DG noses inside and out for many years I can tell you they are difficult to understand in your head, let alone model, and the published plans can be misleading. The Trackside NZ120 DG seems to have one of the best nose shapes out there from th epics I have seen - the face seems to have the right angles and curvature although the front windscreen face should be sloped more and moved rearward maybe a mm or two which would make the the whole snout look the right length.

Well I'm about to dive in and attempt this with layered-on chunks of plasticard... It might have been smarter to buy a Trackside nose :)