Electric blues

I have a bit of a problem with my modeling sometimes. As it turns out, I'm somewhat of a perfectionist (those of you who know me will be somewhat surprised at this admission). Perfectionism takes many forms (I read it in a student pamphlet so it must be true). my particular cross to bear is that I often struggle to get something started if I don't think it will finish out the way that I want it to.

Cut to something that makes sense. My Ed project has been stalled for a month or so as I was not sure about how I was going to do the ends. These are a complex mix of geometry stuff and I was really not looking forward to them. Fast forward to the current modeling bench session and I'm looking around for something that does not involve guards vans and might actually finish some of the 1/2 complete projects on the bench.
I started off by cutting a strip of 0.5mm plasticard about 1mm over the height required for the front. Measuring off the plan gave a 5mm flat front piece, and I added in about 8mm for the bent back front bits, and then cut 4 pieces of plasticard to size. I scribed some lines into the back of the plasticard and then bent the front plate slightly. I chamfered a small bit of plastic of f the side panels. these were then glued into position and left to dry. I rounded the corners with a file. Suddenly flush with this massive break in my psychosis I then leapt on and started with the roof. The Ed has a recess in the roof where all the electric bits fit, that I decided to emulate by laminating 2 pieces of 1mm plasticard together. The first piece was just a flat plate measured up off the body dimensions. I first sanded the top of the body flat by rubbing it on a piece of flat fine grade sand paper, and then glued this first piece into place. Smaller rectangles were then used to form the second layer with the recessed part where the pantographs would fit.

(Note to self; If you had taken more/any pictures while you were actually doing this then you would not be reduced to explaining it extremely badly would you...dumbass).

I then used a variety of implements to shape the plasticard to the roof contours that I wanted. Again its one of those things that you have to make a personal decision on when to say enough.


heres a picture with the pantographs placed on top just to see what they look like.

Next up will be the overlays for the ends (to add the windows) and the detail on the sideframes.

2001, a Space Odyssey : Hi-tech modelling

DB says, in a most verbose way (one should always be sober while blogging (or texting if you haven't seen this)): I saw 2001 yesterday for the first time and despite being made in 1968 it hasn't really aged. Not like, say Prince's Purple Rain did - Martin Malloy in Australia famously said "that film was dated by the time people left the cinema". I enjoyed 2001, although I think Stan and Arthur may have hit the whacky backy cookies a little hard over lunch just before they wrote the third act.

But that, my friends, has no relevance to today's story, and neither does this: I've struggled for ten years to describe what I do at work. It's not illegal, its just vague. But one part of employment that I often do get to enjoy is solving business problems with technology.

A required attribute for such work is a healthy skepticism toward anything labeled 'new and amazing' that people dribble a lot while in the presence of. Being a Male from New Zealand, it's pretty easy to to keep emotion out of such things and determine in a Spocklike manner if it's really going to be 'new and amazing' in an outcome-beneficial and cost-effective way, or merely 'lucrative' for those selling it to us, and 'fun' for the dribbling people who get to put it on their CV's and dick around with it for six months as an escape from their real jobs until it collapses in a disastrous heap.

Despite this dogmatic pragmatism and clagmatic astigmatism, I am, finally, prepared to move 'laser cutting' out of the "I'll believe it when I see it" pile into the "I believe it" receptacle.

I almost believe it

Experiments in Failure

I found a laser etcher near me a year and a half ago in the hope of etching brass or aluminium with long hood diesel door details. Alas it would appear you need planet-pulverising laser strength to do this in metal. But wood and acrylic would be ok. For reasons now unclear I passed on this dangling thread of inspiration and came home to my frustrating home brass etching experiments.

Do it yourself brass etching isn't hard, but it's hard to do well. And even harder to do well consistently. I well remember the look on Andrew Wells' face after asking him how many iterations it had taken to produce the impressive fret of DA parts in his hand. It takes quite the investment in time and equipment to get right. Or you can outsource the work, which is what everyone ends up doing anyway, but then you lose the instant feedback. If you've tried to modify these kits (a part doesn't quite fit), accidentally crushed a model, suddenly had the layout stop because the body shorted on the chassis or track, or can't solder for peanuts, you'll also know that brass has its limitations.

DIY NZ120 DG etch

More recently I've contacted CNC controlled rotary sign engravers (a Dremel attached to a computer), but they don't seem to be able to do consistently straight, constant-depth, fine lines.

When Evan and Mark started talking about lasering styrene, I almost started dribbling. Styrene is quick and easy to modify, doesn't conduct electricity and can be stuck together without a Black Belt in the Dark Arts. But can you laser styrene? Isn't styrene allergic to heat? You know, heat from soldering irons, heat from the sun, heat from a styrene melting laser ...

Well, to make an unnecessarily long story even longer, after their initial success, I downloaded the IA plan, cranked up my AutoCAD and shortly thereafter headed off to the laser dudes for some samples. And so far I've been impressed. Definitely a useful technique.

DX Parts. Right idea, wrong size

Lasering should also be getting cheaper, as outfits with lasers crop up in more towns. Look for people offering custom engraved picture frames, trophies and corporate giveaways. You don't need Death Star power to cut styrene, their little desktop jobs will do fine.

Taking one more tentative step out over the technological abyss, I've also drawn up a DX bogie frame in 3D for Mark Gasson to RP in NZ120 just for the heck of it. Don't knock it till you've tried it I guess. If the experiment works out, I may do some other parts: if it makes sense.

Teach yourself AutoCAD in three frustrating weeks.

A New Era?

So how do us luddites feel about these young kids and their fancy computer stuff? Is this the end for those of us who like to handcraft things out of plastic and paper and things we find in rubbish bins?

No, of course it isn't. Etching and RP are tools, just like your knife and ruler are. Sometimes it will make sense to use them, sometimes it won't. It is easy (and expensive) to forget you are in NZ120-land and spend weeks techying up something that you could have knocked out in an hour on the workbench for near-zero cost, albeit perhaps not in such an exacting way. Horses for courses.

And don't think for a minute that many years ago, the first small scale modeler to turn up at the 9mil model railway clubrooms - filled with smelly old tobacco-chewing fellows gathered around lathes and drill presses - with his X-acto knife, didn't get a few sneers and under-the-breath comments. "Look at that tosser - that fancy knife and plastic shite will never take off. It's crazy-talk and the work of the Devil. Pass me my hammer and the big chisel."

Why I don't like modern steam trips

For some reason I find myself not overly amoured of modern preserved steam locos running on the main line. While I'll happily spend hours hunting through books and magazines looking at old pictures,todays stuff just leaves me limp. Maybe its the lack of dirt and grime, the old time wagons trailing behind, or maybe its the entourage of service wagons that they cart round with them. I'll even bear 1 or 2, but something that looks like the tank train to Palmerston North just looks really silly (cheers to Darryl Palmer for passing this on).

'Maybe its one tank per passenger? Another gin sir?'

It was therefore quite refreshing to see a trip that looked like it could have been shot 50 years ago (cheers to Drew for this). Only the Fm on the end is out of place, and at least it is red as well.

'A provincial relief express minus the grime.'

However, after looking at the clean fresh carriages, maybe it is the dirt after all...

Yippee-IA : a laser-cut IA wagon

DB says: As will be discussed in excruciating detail in a future installment, I've found me a local laser cutting outfit and here is the first output - the IA.

Despite getting mine cut in .010 styrene - whoops, half the designed thickness - I was surprised how well this went together. Flawless, would be a word that springs to mind. Thicker styrene would have helped the deck stay flat when things were glued to it, and with general warpiness, but the addition of a little extra bracing seems to have rectified most of the wobbly bits.

Three B challenges:

Bogies/couplers. You'll obviously need some. Trackgang, Microtrains, Farish, Kato, etc -all have been discussed in previous posts. I'm using some Kato Taki bogies stuck on with cut down screws; bogie-mounted Rapido couplers at one end and MT couplers on the 'long end' deck.

Beam Clearance for Wheels. Depending on your bogie and wheel choice, you may need to remove the end sections of the hex-cut central beams to give enough clearance for your back-to-back N scale wheels to swivel on model-radius curves. You can see how much I removed in the top picture - the beams used to go right to the headstocks. This required the creation of new bolsters as well, and looking at the prototype pic here now, it looks like I should have used thinner bolsters to have the deck sitting lower.

Ballast. These completed wagons are light, so you need to weigh them down and stiffen things up, but I didn't want to plop containers on the top and hide all the nice deck and beam detail. I'm looking for some 2x4mm steel strip that doesn't obscure the hex-holes, but in the interim have used some K&S brass scrap packed with lead weights. I've mentioned these lead sheets before and I'll not tell you again to ask your dental office manager what they do with the lead from the xrays. These wee foil sheets can be rolled up into tiny places. You can see how all that was done in the top pic.

In the two middle pics, you can see how little squares of plasticard were added for twistlock bodies (underneath the laser cut protrusions) and the handbrake stand is yet to be added.

Overall rating: impressive. See the posts/instructions/CAD files in the 'projects' section on NZ120.org if you want one. Now for some goldies...

Corpwit image

Snapped last week by amateur fettler. The Over(due)lander about to leave Wellington. You would have thought that the powers that be could have organised something more impressive to pull the North Islands only remaining passenger train than a loco with a paint scheme that is at least 25 years old, and a loco which has been tagged.

'You're IT'

Especially when there are more up to date locos available (from Micheal Kilgour)

'They could have cleaned the bogies...'

I've often thought that if Kiwirail had invested some money rebuilding some Dc's into decent looking passenger loco's (like the sexy high speed trains from overseas) it would have at least improved the tourist maketability, not 'look, the scenery is great, but you are riding behind 45 year old locomotives'. It will be interesting to see what happens to the current passenger train fleet being used in Auckland once the electrification scheme starts up in a few years

Topping it off

When we left last time, it seemed that all I had to do was put the ply trackbed on and that would be it. Well, in the words of the bard,The best laid schemes o' mice and men gan aft agley' and mine definitely have gan aft agley today.

I realized this morning that the unsupported spans were probably going to sag, and on consulting Barry Normans book again discovered that my raised bits should probably have run the length of the modules, rather than across like I have done. Just as well it wasn't terminal and all I needed to do was make some more beams that spanned the gaps, and then I could just screw the track base down to them. So, back out to the garage and more gluing, nailing and cutting in store. A few hours work later and I think I'm finally done with this bit.

Still, if I want it to last a few years (ie more than about 5) I may as well make a decent job of it now. the trackbed was then screwed on top, to finally finish things up

The surprising thing is that even with all the extra engineering stuff, the all up weight is only about 4-5 Kg, which is manageable by one person fairly easily.

Guards van time again.

We don't seem to have had a guards van post for a while. It must be time for one again.
Today's job was to do the end railings. I used the jig I had cut out for the 47" van railings, as these were about the same size. The railings basically fell together. however by the 3rd one the MDF had got a bit wet with the soldering flux and had started to expand. The railings tend to look a bit like this when they come out of the jig, but after a bit of a filing cleanup, they are fine.

This also tests how good the soldering joints are, and any poor ones should be fixed at this point.
So, apart from the couplers (I'm waiting on some new castings with the headstock and coupler all as one piece) and some painting they are just waiting bogies.


With these ones basically finished I'll have to look round for some other vans to make. I intend to buy the 30' steel and 56' vans from Trackgang (supporting local industry and all that). I could consider making a 44' van (or possibly a 37' van , though they were a wee bit too modern), but after that I would have to start building 4 wheel vans. If anyone can show that the 4 wheeled vans survived into the 60's in the lower north island, I'll build one. I suppose the only other ones left would be the Fell vans.
(as an aside, if anyone has some 5mm OD brass tube could they send me a short bit so I can make some ploughs for the plough van. About 60mm should be OK)