About 3 weeks ago I got married. It was a great day for me in what has not been the best of years. The Honeymoon was very enjoyable. I lost count of how many times we used rail based travel (which is truly a great thing!!!). So I thought I would share my (not very good quality) photo's.
Starting at St Pancreas I was greeted by 3 Eurostars:
We travelled to Brussels and caught the tram from Brussels Midi to Die Brocke. It was not the best journey with heavy suitcases and a packed tram. Still
Today I worked on extending the short Kato chassis so that it would look more prototypical in length under the body of my X 5800. The Kato chassis was about 2cm too short but luckily only one bogie was powered. Therefore I removed the non powered bogie and fashioned an extension from Plasticard (including the downward pin for the Bogie to sit in) and hey presto. An extended chassis.
From this
to this
I tried many different angles and set ups on the camera and this was the best that came o
The past few weeks have been hectic to say the least. I am getting married in less than 4 weeks time and the amount of organisation involved is quite vast. Therefore a few of the larger projects have taken the back burner for a short while until I get the right amount of time (and money) to spend on them to do them justice. However I have kept going on the X5800. Some good progress has been made as well as some bad.
First the good. The front and rear buffer beams have been added as well as
I will start with the future and some possible modelling projects over the course of the next year or so:
The X2200 railcar does not have the personailty of the older railcars but I quite like it nonetheless. I think it is quite charming and I am looking at ways to make a model of it. I am going to see if a kit has been produced but if not (or if one is not readily available) then I shall have a go at scratchbuilding one of these. I am not entirely sure what technique I would used yet but
The DU65 Draisine is pretty much completed. I have added some details such as the vehicle number.
I also painted the sections of the Draisine that were more difficult:
I will continue to try and make the Draisine look more realistic with detail to the underside but this will be done over time as I find the parts that I require to undertake that work. Over this build I kept thinking that it is a compromise, there was the height of the vehicle which I got as low as possiuble but had to se
With the Draisine largely completed I have been thinking about my next project. I am looking to convert a Del Prado X3800 into an X5800 unit with a bit of chopping and slicing (or cutting and shutting as I believe it is called.
The X 5800 is shorter than the Picasso X3800 units. They have a number of different features but the non driving end is very similar and the main dimensions are enough alike to consider the conversion feasible. I will have to construct some of the details out of
After looking at the last pictures I had posted I noticed that the engine housing was slightly off centre and also angling slightly upwards. It was difficult to spot but when I added the back storage box I noticed that there was a definite problem. So I got the scalpol and cut it off, scraped away a small bit of plasticard and reattached it:
With the front and back sections added the next thing to do was to add the buffer beams. These were the hardest pieces to cut out as there were plenty
Over the past few days I have made some good progress on the Draisine. However there were a few setbacks, but more on those later. The first task I managed to complete was the glazing of the bodywork. I superglued clear ascetate plastic onto the pieces and then trimmed them to size.
Following the glazing I tried the body out on the chassis and found the first set back problem. The chassis was too wide which meant some sanding and filing had to be done to get it to fit properly. Even then it
Last night involved the following ingredients:
Soldering, swearing, excitement, disappointment, elation, a change of plans, melted plastic, flying plastic, adrenaline and a late night.
My Chassis arrived from Japan. Hooray. It was fantastically small and is a great runner. It has front and rear forward facing LED lights and runs fairly smooth for something that small. The main problem I had was that it was too tall to give my Draisine a scale height and therefore I needed to make it shorte
Having spent a bit of time last night researching the various measurements for different componants I had a go at the roof and cutting the windows this morning. This video on youtube has been of great help:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIk-dtuwCdI
Although it is a computer generated video it shows the vehicle in ways that an ordinary video could not.
Last night I completed cutting the components for the outer layer of the engine housing.
This morning I cut a piece of balsa
In my previous blogs I have mentioned that I wanted to scratchbuild a DU65 Draisine. Over the past few days I have started work on the bodywork for the vehicle and gathering as many pieces of information as I can about it. I have never really researched a topic properly before and this has been one of the more rewarding parts of the project. Planning something like this out properly is certainly the right thing to do, this is especially important considering the fact that the chassis that I have
During the past two weeks I have been mostly doing modelling activities that do not really show tangible results and as such I have not posted anything. However after a week of working away I thought it was worthy of a blog entry to give me a boost to keep going.
The first thing that I shall mention is the fact that I have now painted the viaduct (several times in fact!). I was not happy with its plastic finish so I initially gave it a grey wash to see if that would make it look a bit
Today I made some progress with the front and back sections of the baseboards. The back is bolted into place at the moment which will allow easier access to the electrics and for mounting the printed backscene when that is ready. I am starting to consider the fiddle yard/storage cassettes options now. I am currently thinking of having storage cassettes that are 2 feet in length. Is this enough?
Anyway here are some pictures of todays work:
I have started considering
I collected the two viaduct kits that I ordered today. Upon opening the package I was surprised at how much smaller the Faller kit was to the Atlas one. Not only in height but also in terms of length. While it does offer more complicated features it is over 3 times the price of a similar sized Atlas kit. I was also disappointed that the promotional picture for the Faller Viaduct shows more than you get in the box and the description on the web sites selling these things is not very helpful (see
After completing the work on the baseboards last night I got a few pieces of flexi track out and had a play around with the proposed layout. The original plan was to have the siding for the station on the viewing side of the running line. However upon closer inspection this would make the siding either very short or very long to get the desired effect. Therefore I decided to put the siding on the other side of the running line and infer that there is some sort of way of crossing the line off sce
I don't know what it is about when I go on holiday but I usually get an idea about building a layout and then I have a tendancy to actually follow through and build the thing! This time was no exception. Not only was I modelling in OO but I had some time to myself to sketch some ideas for a new module which could double as an extension to my current French layout (Neuvic Entier) or a stand alone exhibition layout.
So yesterday I went to the DIY store and purchased the materials to start bui
I have just returned from a very relaxing and very needed 2 week holiday in France. I had always said to my future father in law that I would help him build a layout and seeing as it was not possible for me to do much in the way of physical activity at the moment he suggested that I make a start on the layout. We had a few trips to the DIY store where we purchased the trestles and other bits needed to get some track down.
We used some old doors which were joined together to form a decent siz
I was about to make a start on the fiddle yard extension to Nevic Entier when I noticed that I had enough materials to construct a reasonable sized shunting plank. This made me change my plans somewhat considerably. A new micro layout would give me somewhere to take pictures of stock and also allow me to finally use all those buses my dad purchased for me.
So last night I used the scraps of wood I had left over to form a pretty crude baseboard and this morning I layed the track, created the
Well Doctors orders mean no more solvents, paints and generally other nasty chemicals can be used at the moment so I am having to take a step back from doing buildings and the like for the layout. Still I have made excellent progress and with my return to work next week I am starting to feel proud of this Springs modelling season.
It occurred to me that I had not taken a picture of the layout in its entirety. I also had a good tidy over the past few days and the room it is in now looks prese
I have surprised myself with how much I have been managing to do recently. My first building took me about 6 months to complete but the last 3 (although they all need painting and details etc) were all done in the space of about 4 weeks. I think that the method of using the Lego has worked well for me.
Today I added the roof to the Boulengerie which means that aside from detailing it and adding lighting (more on that later!) its structurally done. I have also given it a first coat of paint.
I have been plodding on slowly since my last blog. Still a lot to do but its starting to get better. Here is a picture of the SAI kits I have constructed that are built into the hill:
As well as this I have continued developing the Lego/Plasticard building. Since it has a very large shop front I decided that some sort of display for the window was needed. Therefore I constructed a crude stand for displaying the freshly baked bread:
This was then painted Red and a yellowish colour was used
I have decided to take a break from the 323 project (it is getting there though!) to concentrate on the layout and today I decided to have a quick go at building a small shop building out of Plasticard but instead of using just Plasticard I used Lego as the basis of the structure and glued plasticard to the outside of that structure in a similar way to the previous building I have made.
Below is the Lego structure constructed for the building. It is not solid so that lighting can be incorporat
Well I have spent most of the morning (and a small proportion of the afternoon) removing the front end of the 159 donor unit and replacing it with the class 323 brass etching. I was quite pleased with how well the front came off and in the end I had nothing to fear really.
The pantograph bay has also been almost completed with just a small hole needing to be drilled before I can complete the work on that entire carriage.
What did surprise me, with regards to how problematic it has been,
No not a seaside resort with a terrible name, but a small update about how the pantograph bay is coming along. I spent most of the day filing it out and it has come out about right. I believe its about half a milimetre too long but I shall rectify this wil some milliput when I install the brass pantograph bay. This will be done after I have drilled the hole for the pantograph which was donated from an old Farish class 91.
Some pictures of the before and after treatment of the bodyside
Its taken a little longer than I expected to get all the bits and pieces to get this project moving but I have been making a bit of progress on converting the Farish Class 159 into a Centro Livery class 323 EMU.
I have started painting the brass etches and I am looking at how best to colour the air dam at the front. The Electra Grapics could be used to cover these areas but I am not sure whether it might be better to paint them white and see what that looks like first.
I started strippi
