Happy accidents, a DSG, errr, DSJ

 DB Says:

On top of the pile of my partially, or barely, or not started projects lay a 3d printed DSG top, which I inherited from Evan a few months ago, but I believe was printed by Ben C using a design by lkernan on Thingiverse. I reckoned a DSC or DSG would be good to have at Studholme, so this would fit the bill.

It's a reasonable print, not much strata, a little bit of sagginess along the side sills, but nothing that couldn't be fixed. I had intended to backdate it to be a tatty fruit salad one without shunters refuges. All it really needed was a chassis. But I didn't have one, so there it sat. 

While I don't have a Swiss Bank Account, I do have a vault full of N scale pseudo-metre gauge Swiss RhB stuff made by Kato, and along with a recent batch of RhB railcars from the orient came a Tomix ND552 Japanese bo-bo shunter purchased on a whim because it looked about right for the DSG.

This turned out to be a terrible mistake, because upon unboxing it last night, it's way too short in length. After a little banter in the cheap seats, I had the idea of kitbashing the shell into a DSJ (the single-motored offset cab version of a DSG). And good heavens, after flagging down a passing NZR Locomotives and Railcars, and dividing it by 120, the Tomix chassis looked about spot on.

After lunch today I had another look and started playing. Because the cab is offset on the DSJ, some metal had to be removed from the middle of the Tomix chassis (the chassis halves have protruding bits that would sit inside its cab, but now need to squeeze partially inside one of the DSG hoods). I'd normally dismantle the chassis, but just taped it up (clear sellotape for the tight motor bits in the middle, and packing tape for the ends) and got stuck in with a Dremmely disc.

Be gentle with the tape going on, and especially coming off - I carefully cut it off with a sharp knife to prevent any damage to the bogies.

Onto the body. The end with the handbrake was cut off, with the nose/steps removed...

...and then the hood itself....leaving....

This surgery was all done outside in a mild breeze because the fine dust probably contains chemicals known to be carcinogenic in the State of California. Best that all blows over to the neighbours.

The intention was to use the severed end face (with the radiator plated over) to retain the nicely printed lights (no header tank would be retained as there is no motor at this end) and this would be a thinned end profile to build the short hood onto. This all became too hard, so I separated the radiator from the steps and was trying to get the lights off the top when they shattered.  This printed resin is so hard it's almost impossible to use a knife on it (other than shaving bits down) - you need to use a razor saw for fine cuts.

Soon enough, some plastic had grown in a freestyle manner on the short hood end. Now I think I'll let it set a while. 

I decided to leave the refuges in place and will make this a KiwiRail livery one. I like the original-style window details on the 3d print, so will not be cutting them out and replacing them with the fancy black powder coated ones that DSJ 4004 had before it went for a swim or 4032 has. DSJs don't have the little box in front of the cab on the port side (visible in the second to last picture), but I didn't think I could remove this easily, so have left it in place.