In news just to hand, A fire at the Woodland scenics plant in the US. No idea what this will do to the avaliablity of the popular range of scenic bits yet, but it could be a boon for other manufacturers.
As far as we can asertain, Brian Roulston of Scenic textures is not currently overseas.
Friday, January 06, 2012
Tea Break
Am_Fet Ponders:
And so planning continues afoot for the rolling stock needed to populate the 1940's rural idyll that is The Forks. After pondering on the plethora of highsiders needed, attention soon turned to the box wagons. Now, my wishlist was for a couple of Xa's and a K or two, but I got seduced slightly by memories of a 1:64th Z wagon we had as kids, to which I have recently located a plan:
And luckily, there is one up the road in Silverstream waiting to be crawled over with a camera....
So one of those is a must, and the 2mm bogies that the Blogmaster has assembled fit the "Type 97" bill quite nicely. Thoughts then turned back to the 4 wheelers. By pure chance, I found this in a book called "Journey to The Pass":
(Apologies for the photo, it was the easiest way to get a copy.) The photo is from the Aylesbury smash of 1937, and the real interest is the signwriting on the soon to be written off K wagon. It all looks rather "English"...in fact its one of the first times I've seen signwriting on an NZGR Red Oxide van. Uber_Druff managed to find this artifact somewhere on the interweb:
So its time for a bit of guesswork. First thing is the way the wording on the wagon is offset to one side; could it be that the logo was painted on the van side to the left of the door? If you squint at the original, are there a few patches of white that could be the paintwork around the ravens head? How many more wagons were done like this?
Anyway, it will make for a distinctive wagon on the layout. And as Euan McQueen from the Rail Heritage Trust said, "Another fascinating area of research yet to be mined"...I dont know if that was a hint or not!
And so planning continues afoot for the rolling stock needed to populate the 1940's rural idyll that is The Forks. After pondering on the plethora of highsiders needed, attention soon turned to the box wagons. Now, my wishlist was for a couple of Xa's and a K or two, but I got seduced slightly by memories of a 1:64th Z wagon we had as kids, to which I have recently located a plan:
And luckily, there is one up the road in Silverstream waiting to be crawled over with a camera....
So one of those is a must, and the 2mm bogies that the Blogmaster has assembled fit the "Type 97" bill quite nicely. Thoughts then turned back to the 4 wheelers. By pure chance, I found this in a book called "Journey to The Pass":
(Apologies for the photo, it was the easiest way to get a copy.) The photo is from the Aylesbury smash of 1937, and the real interest is the signwriting on the soon to be written off K wagon. It all looks rather "English"...in fact its one of the first times I've seen signwriting on an NZGR Red Oxide van. Uber_Druff managed to find this artifact somewhere on the interweb:
So its time for a bit of guesswork. First thing is the way the wording on the wagon is offset to one side; could it be that the logo was painted on the van side to the left of the door? If you squint at the original, are there a few patches of white that could be the paintwork around the ravens head? How many more wagons were done like this?
Anyway, it will make for a distinctive wagon on the layout. And as Euan McQueen from the Rail Heritage Trust said, "Another fascinating area of research yet to be mined"...I dont know if that was a hint or not!
Thursday, January 05, 2012
DG2376 - The Grunge Years
DB concludes:
You may recall from our last exciting DG episode, that despite low scores from the judges in a somewhat disastrous painting event, I managed to emerge toward the back of the field but still in the running thanks to a spectacular recovery while narrowly avoiding a potentially career-ending decaling nightmare. Here in the final shot at glory I hope to redeem myself with some intensive weathering - always a safe bet when you are trying to make a shambles look a little less shambolic. This is why builders invented plaster, panelbeaters invented filler, and women invented makeup.
As a preparatory step (distinct from previous preposterous steps) I coated the freshly laid decals with a coat of clear acrylic varnish to protect them before attacking what was left of my etch detail with a thin wash of black to highlight grills and doors.
The next target was the roof, which was ambushed by acrylic washes and random drybrushing in eclectic shades of gray, brown and rust. After all that shock and awe, a coat of Testors Dullcote matt varnish was then gently sprayed over the whole model from the can to protect the whole mess and make things a little less shocking and awful.
Finally, weathering chalks were applied - mainly copious amounts of black around the exhaust/radiator area, because DGs always had a grime not (just) from the exhaust, but also because oil mist from the engine room was piped into the radiator area to be expelled by the fan. A little dark brown chalk was added to the top of the nose and some rusty bits in various shades of brown to the roof.
In and around and hereabouts before or after that, I also added:
- MV lenses for headlights
- tail lights (painted red)
- that little spinny ventilator on the cab behind the front facing horns
- handrails (freestanding nose ones from a BLMA N scale GE handrails set)
- brakehoses (thin black wire from a DCC decoder - not thin enough!)
- side windows and portholes - black paint into the half-etched shapes
- front windows - ended up just painting them freehand - eek!
- the round main radiator roof grill (brass mesh)
- air tanks each side of the fuel tank
- steps under the cab doors (old Ratio UK N scale signal ladder etches)
- that little sticky-out step under the end doors front and rear
- painted the headlight surrounds black
- painted the headstocks a delightful shade of bumblebee by hand - eek!
- painted/washed the bogies/fuel tank/air tanks brown and black
- added some plastic last seen doing a rather shoddy impersonation of a cowcatcher.
Ta da....
One slightly sloppy silk purse as requested, sah. No viewing from less than two feet away please. Them's the rules.
Uninterestingly, 2330 was the second NZ120 loco I built (in 1993 maybe?) and has stood the test of time pretty well with its hand-scribed grill detail, freestanding handrails and paper NZR logos. It is still one of my favourite NZ120 locos.
Yes, all of these pics do look a little awkward (although most of the distortions are my modeling!) having been taken with a wee point and shoot camera.
Its a little shonky from some angles but I'm pretty happy with it overall, especially as its the first real model I've made in a long time. The chassis could be a little longer (or the body shorter), the roof is a little tall, I probably need to have another go at the metal around the fuel tank and of course there are those windows, but it looks 'good enough' to sit behind a recabbed DG or a DJ on a train. Especially so if you are viewing from across the room with all the lights off.
You may recall from our last exciting DG episode, that despite low scores from the judges in a somewhat disastrous painting event, I managed to emerge toward the back of the field but still in the running thanks to a spectacular recovery while narrowly avoiding a potentially career-ending decaling nightmare. Here in the final shot at glory I hope to redeem myself with some intensive weathering - always a safe bet when you are trying to make a shambles look a little less shambolic. This is why builders invented plaster, panelbeaters invented filler, and women invented makeup.
As a preparatory step (distinct from previous preposterous steps) I coated the freshly laid decals with a coat of clear acrylic varnish to protect them before attacking what was left of my etch detail with a thin wash of black to highlight grills and doors.
The next target was the roof, which was ambushed by acrylic washes and random drybrushing in eclectic shades of gray, brown and rust. After all that shock and awe, a coat of Testors Dullcote matt varnish was then gently sprayed over the whole model from the can to protect the whole mess and make things a little less shocking and awful.
Finally, weathering chalks were applied - mainly copious amounts of black around the exhaust/radiator area, because DGs always had a grime not (just) from the exhaust, but also because oil mist from the engine room was piped into the radiator area to be expelled by the fan. A little dark brown chalk was added to the top of the nose and some rusty bits in various shades of brown to the roof.
In and around and hereabouts before or after that, I also added:
- MV lenses for headlights
- tail lights (painted red)
- that little spinny ventilator on the cab behind the front facing horns
- handrails (freestanding nose ones from a BLMA N scale GE handrails set)
- brakehoses (thin black wire from a DCC decoder - not thin enough!)
- side windows and portholes - black paint into the half-etched shapes
- front windows - ended up just painting them freehand - eek!
- the round main radiator roof grill (brass mesh)
- air tanks each side of the fuel tank
- steps under the cab doors (old Ratio UK N scale signal ladder etches)
- that little sticky-out step under the end doors front and rear
- painted the headlight surrounds black
- painted the headstocks a delightful shade of bumblebee by hand - eek!
- painted/washed the bogies/fuel tank/air tanks brown and black
- added some plastic last seen doing a rather shoddy impersonation of a cowcatcher.
Ta da....
One slightly sloppy silk purse as requested, sah. No viewing from less than two feet away please. Them's the rules.Uninterestingly, 2330 was the second NZ120 loco I built (in 1993 maybe?) and has stood the test of time pretty well with its hand-scribed grill detail, freestanding handrails and paper NZR logos. It is still one of my favourite NZ120 locos.
Yes, all of these pics do look a little awkward (although most of the distortions are my modeling!) having been taken with a wee point and shoot camera.
Its a little shonky from some angles but I'm pretty happy with it overall, especially as its the first real model I've made in a long time. The chassis could be a little longer (or the body shorter), the roof is a little tall, I probably need to have another go at the metal around the fuel tank and of course there are those windows, but it looks 'good enough' to sit behind a recabbed DG or a DJ on a train. Especially so if you are viewing from across the room with all the lights off.
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
Fixing things
While some of us have been lucky enough to be doing 'sexy' model making, others have been back to basics.
I've been doing an hour here and there this week checking up on my early track building efforts. This involved the exciting task of going over everything with the NMRA track gauge (did I say buy one. Its a must have as far as I'm concerned now). Mostly I've found that the flange ways are either too tight or too loose, or the track is out of gauge. What i have found easier to do is to mark any areas that don't conform with a red marker pen. after I've done an area I can then go back with the soldering iron and do everything in one go, rather than a start/stop process.
Here is an example. The circles labeled 1 have flange ways that are too wide. I simply slip a 0.8mm sleeper into the gap and then carefully close it up with the application of heat. the area labeled 2 has the opposite problem, and the remedy is to slide the sleeper into the gap while applying heat to shift things out. again this works fine. Number 3 is where the gauge is too tight.
After fixing these I then remove the red marker. It has been making quite a difference to the smoothness of the running, though there is still quite a bit of clunking round in some areas. Still in terms of looks (and possibly running) it does beat the hell out of the Peco offerings. As an interesting aside I now find Peco points hideous to gauze upon. Its right up there with not painting the sides of the rails. maybe I'm just getting too snobby?
Fortunately I have been getting better at making points as I've gone along. Having now made about 30 I think I have got most of the 'kinks' out. At some point I will make some videos to show how I have done it. Maybe even the convention organisers might be interested?
There has also been a bit of work done with the paintbrush.
'I've got too many things that are red'
I've also added pickups to the rear wheels. I'm not sure if they are doing anything useful. The tensioning of these has been a bit problematic. Too little and there's no contact, too much and the wheels (and hence the whole thing) don't roll. Tests on the layout have it now moving quite well forwards under its own 'steam', but not at all in reverse. Not really a big problem.
I've been doing an hour here and there this week checking up on my early track building efforts. This involved the exciting task of going over everything with the NMRA track gauge (did I say buy one. Its a must have as far as I'm concerned now). Mostly I've found that the flange ways are either too tight or too loose, or the track is out of gauge. What i have found easier to do is to mark any areas that don't conform with a red marker pen. after I've done an area I can then go back with the soldering iron and do everything in one go, rather than a start/stop process.
Here is an example. The circles labeled 1 have flange ways that are too wide. I simply slip a 0.8mm sleeper into the gap and then carefully close it up with the application of heat. the area labeled 2 has the opposite problem, and the remedy is to slide the sleeper into the gap while applying heat to shift things out. again this works fine. Number 3 is where the gauge is too tight.After fixing these I then remove the red marker. It has been making quite a difference to the smoothness of the running, though there is still quite a bit of clunking round in some areas. Still in terms of looks (and possibly running) it does beat the hell out of the Peco offerings. As an interesting aside I now find Peco points hideous to gauze upon. Its right up there with not painting the sides of the rails. maybe I'm just getting too snobby?
Fortunately I have been getting better at making points as I've gone along. Having now made about 30 I think I have got most of the 'kinks' out. At some point I will make some videos to show how I have done it. Maybe even the convention organisers might be interested?
There has also been a bit of work done with the paintbrush.
'I've got too many things that are red'Tuesday, January 03, 2012
DG2376 - Now in Technicolor
DB Says:
With the first wave of detailing complete, it's time to slop some paint onto the model in the hope of hiding all the messy bits.
My plan is to make the model as 2376 looked at the end of her career. From the pics I have seen, 783 (her original non-TMS number) seems to have been South Island based for her whole life. She was originally a DH and was involved in the Palmerston crash (see the April 2002 NZMRJ for pics).
She was a fairly extreme example of DG tattiness when snapped by kiwirailengineer at Wharanui in 1979 (note the TMS numbers on the headstock):
The ÜberDruff notes that the track on the above layout hasn't been ballasted yet. My memory also recalls a nice unpowered old-nosed DG that he made once. Wonder where that is now?
783/2376 received a partial Dulux makeover at Hillside in the 1979/1980 timeframe when she was overhauled and became one of the DG 'slave' locos. Ken Devlin took the following pic shortly after then. Comparing it to the Wharanui pic, it looks like the red was been repainted as were the bumble bee headstocks, but not the roof or bogies!
AA654 has a pic of 2376 in 1980 at Arthur's Pass in his phenomenal Flickr photostream and you can see the loco was starting to get a little grubbier:
DG 2376 was withdrawn in late 1982, so I'm aiming for the above with a little more grime. I quite like this look with the fading red, the yellow nose moustache and the white TMS numbers on the sides.
Right, enough deliberating, lets sniff some paint. I used Floquil UP Harbor Mist Gray for the roof base, as it's a medium-light shade and Floquil Santa Fe Red on the sides. That red is a little pink and flat for Santa Fe in my eyes, but it's not bad for the DG here.
Floquil paints are not my faves in terms of applicability though, and I fear I've made a bit of a mess troweling on the paint and covering up all my nice etch detail. But the proof will be in the pudding I suppose, and we shall be tasting that soon enough. I've also partially drilled out the lights to take lenses in a future installment, and added a pair of horns stolen from the PA-1 top and their little mounting ears (a technical term coined by Mr AH). Although they look a little Prince Charles-ish in this pic...
I was not looking forward to the decal challenge.
Firstly because those nose stripes are going to be damn fiddly to get right by trial and error; and secondly because my ALPS printer only works about once every three years as it is possessed by Throckmortons.
Fortunately I had somehow accidentally printed up a set of TMS numbers while trial-and-erroring my DX cabside numbers last year that were completely the wrong size at the time but miraculously they fitted into the available space on the DG (!) so that was one problem down. Shortly afterwards I was staring at a set of N Santa Fe warbonnet decals and the beans started rattling around in my head...
These SF stripes are yellow with a thin black stripe on one side only, but after a little fine-line permanent marker for the bottom line (that marker also used for the joint line between the red and the gray roof) and some cutting, within 30 minutes I had the following (presented here in uglyvision):
Close enough for Government work.
Scayla, the god of modeling, is smiling on me this day.
With the first wave of detailing complete, it's time to slop some paint onto the model in the hope of hiding all the messy bits.
My plan is to make the model as 2376 looked at the end of her career. From the pics I have seen, 783 (her original non-TMS number) seems to have been South Island based for her whole life. She was originally a DH and was involved in the Palmerston crash (see the April 2002 NZMRJ for pics).
She was a fairly extreme example of DG tattiness when snapped by kiwirailengineer at Wharanui in 1979 (note the TMS numbers on the headstock):
The ÜberDruff notes that the track on the above layout hasn't been ballasted yet. My memory also recalls a nice unpowered old-nosed DG that he made once. Wonder where that is now?783/2376 received a partial Dulux makeover at Hillside in the 1979/1980 timeframe when she was overhauled and became one of the DG 'slave' locos. Ken Devlin took the following pic shortly after then. Comparing it to the Wharanui pic, it looks like the red was been repainted as were the bumble bee headstocks, but not the roof or bogies!
AA654 has a pic of 2376 in 1980 at Arthur's Pass in his phenomenal Flickr photostream and you can see the loco was starting to get a little grubbier:
DG 2376 was withdrawn in late 1982, so I'm aiming for the above with a little more grime. I quite like this look with the fading red, the yellow nose moustache and the white TMS numbers on the sides.
Right, enough deliberating, lets sniff some paint. I used Floquil UP Harbor Mist Gray for the roof base, as it's a medium-light shade and Floquil Santa Fe Red on the sides. That red is a little pink and flat for Santa Fe in my eyes, but it's not bad for the DG here.
Floquil paints are not my faves in terms of applicability though, and I fear I've made a bit of a mess troweling on the paint and covering up all my nice etch detail. But the proof will be in the pudding I suppose, and we shall be tasting that soon enough. I've also partially drilled out the lights to take lenses in a future installment, and added a pair of horns stolen from the PA-1 top and their little mounting ears (a technical term coined by Mr AH). Although they look a little Prince Charles-ish in this pic...
I was not looking forward to the decal challenge.
Firstly because those nose stripes are going to be damn fiddly to get right by trial and error; and secondly because my ALPS printer only works about once every three years as it is possessed by Throckmortons.
Fortunately I had somehow accidentally printed up a set of TMS numbers while trial-and-erroring my DX cabside numbers last year that were completely the wrong size at the time but miraculously they fitted into the available space on the DG (!) so that was one problem down. Shortly afterwards I was staring at a set of N Santa Fe warbonnet decals and the beans started rattling around in my head...
These SF stripes are yellow with a thin black stripe on one side only, but after a little fine-line permanent marker for the bottom line (that marker also used for the joint line between the red and the gray roof) and some cutting, within 30 minutes I had the following (presented here in uglyvision):
Close enough for Government work.Scayla, the god of modeling, is smiling on me this day.
Monday, January 02, 2012
Resolute from the start
Fettler_Half_Hand writes:
Well, here we are...somehow. I think my current feelings as we turn the yearly corner are best summed up on stuff.co.nz by Moata (The uber-cool blog writer) when she wrote "It may be ungenerous of me but as the year draws to a close, I can't help thinking "don't let the door hit your arse on the way out, 2011". Truly this is a year that I will not miss."
Sure, she'd just lived through the year of hell that all Christchurch residents have survived, but her sentiments resonate with me in a big way. My year can be summed up as "Worked too much, Fire, Didnt work at all....Damn".
In the end, I spent 11 weeks off work and probably went back too early to boot. I'm in weekly physio and bandage changes to break the monotony as well as wearing a compression glove 24/7 for scar management. Oh, and I've been nicknamed "The Claw" or "Crispy" at work, and you just know thats gotta stick.
So as you can image, those 11 weeks gave me a lot of time to think and plan/dream, and as we turn the corner it seems a perfect time to start turning the plans into reality....call them resolutions if you will. The fun bit will be looking back in 12 months and laughing uproariously at this list when I've achieved none of it.
The first ones are reasonably generic: Work less, exercise more, look at starting my own business (seriously this time), learn more about coffee (?) etc...
So what about goals tied in with this blog? Well....Waihao Forks will be delivered from Schloss Dandruff at some stage and will need to be finished with structures and scenery (Goods shed, station, backdrops, etc), so thats goal number 1. Then, I'll need some stock to run on it (such as a Wf and a plethora of 1940's wagons, all to finescale standards), so that will be goal number 2. Then there will be doing whatever Herr Dandruff requires for Paekakariki (such as the turntable).....and that might just be enough to keep me occupied.
First goal however, is to get this puppy sorted:
Dual boot Win7/OSX Snow Leopard (sure, it isnt the latest, but the name is way cooler than "Lion") running CAD, CorelDraw, Rhino3d and Office 2010 making it a Laser Cutting/RP power house....just the thing to start the new business with.
Oh, and another resolution: More Blog Posts!!
Well, here we are...somehow. I think my current feelings as we turn the yearly corner are best summed up on stuff.co.nz by Moata (The uber-cool blog writer) when she wrote "It may be ungenerous of me but as the year draws to a close, I can't help thinking "don't let the door hit your arse on the way out, 2011". Truly this is a year that I will not miss."
Sure, she'd just lived through the year of hell that all Christchurch residents have survived, but her sentiments resonate with me in a big way. My year can be summed up as "Worked too much, Fire, Didnt work at all....Damn".
In the end, I spent 11 weeks off work and probably went back too early to boot. I'm in weekly physio and bandage changes to break the monotony as well as wearing a compression glove 24/7 for scar management. Oh, and I've been nicknamed "The Claw" or "Crispy" at work, and you just know thats gotta stick.
So as you can image, those 11 weeks gave me a lot of time to think and plan/dream, and as we turn the corner it seems a perfect time to start turning the plans into reality....call them resolutions if you will. The fun bit will be looking back in 12 months and laughing uproariously at this list when I've achieved none of it.
The first ones are reasonably generic: Work less, exercise more, look at starting my own business (seriously this time), learn more about coffee (?) etc...
So what about goals tied in with this blog? Well....Waihao Forks will be delivered from Schloss Dandruff at some stage and will need to be finished with structures and scenery (Goods shed, station, backdrops, etc), so thats goal number 1. Then, I'll need some stock to run on it (such as a Wf and a plethora of 1940's wagons, all to finescale standards), so that will be goal number 2. Then there will be doing whatever Herr Dandruff requires for Paekakariki (such as the turntable).....and that might just be enough to keep me occupied.
First goal however, is to get this puppy sorted:
Dual boot Win7/OSX Snow Leopard (sure, it isnt the latest, but the name is way cooler than "Lion") running CAD, CorelDraw, Rhino3d and Office 2010 making it a Laser Cutting/RP power house....just the thing to start the new business with.
Oh, and another resolution: More Blog Posts!!
Sunday, January 01, 2012
Details, details.... DG 2376
DB says:
The penultimate step in the saga of creating a new loco is to add some details. But before this, I needed to do some emergency rhinoplasty with my model as I'd decided overnight that my beautifully shaped nose was a bit lopty and a bit wide. This was (surprisingly) easily fixed by throwing a dremel through the thing, pulling the two halves together and gluing the gap shut.
The penultimate step in the saga of creating a new loco is to add some details. But before this, I needed to do some emergency rhinoplasty with my model as I'd decided overnight that my beautifully shaped nose was a bit lopty and a bit wide. This was (surprisingly) easily fixed by throwing a dremel through the thing, pulling the two halves together and gluing the gap shut.
That's not a very flattering pic, in fact it looks like something out of one of those 'Saw' movies, but the nose now looks a little better overall even if its still a little lopty in symmetry although this is only really noticeable when you look from front-on up-close. Pretend I didn't just say that and continue to ooo and ahhh. Or ewww and awww if that's what you were doing.
After that excitement it was onto the details and finishing up the cab front windows.
I stuck on roof hatches above the diesel engine, electrical cabinet behind the cab, and the WHB compressor down the back (almost opposite the dynamic brake shutter cutout). I also added the hatch in the roof of the nose that it would seem was used for cleaning the front windows. These were all made from thin plasticard or paper.
Then I added the nose door, headlights (made from plastic rod popped into a drilled hole), tail lights and MU receptacles.
I'm not sure how I will do the front window glazing as I write this, but as you can see below, I have at least filled the hole that was there previously.
For connoisseurs of over-engineered British design practices, the cab front windows slope back from the vertical (more steeply raked than the nose front face), but the two little front windows also slant back when viewed from above ever so slightly. The cab roof also slopes down toward the front from above the rear of the cabside doors. This is where the side tapering begins too. Thank God for sandpaper and modeling putty.
The back end of the body does not slope down, but the sides do taper in. I'm sure that makes no sense. So I'm not even going to consider explaining the shape of the roof cover over the WHB compressor...
Up until now the pictures that have accompanied the journey have looked a bit daggy, but now all of a sudden, its starting to look almost like a DG:
I particularly like the MU connectors - they are a thinish (.5mm) sliver of the plastruct rod used for the headlights, which was then cut that into 4 sectors/segments/quarters and these are those, so to speak. I like they way they are curved a little like the real thing - at least from a distance!
I smell some paint approaching...
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