Are you going to splay the sides like the example in the link? I can't imagine that the wagons would have stayed so neat and tidy for long. I'd be interested to see what the prototyped ravenscraig wagon looks like under a spray of primer. Any form of resin (or plastic) is a swine to photgraph in its 'natural' state.

Adam

I'm going to splay the sides, but not quite so violently (I have some tight clearances on the layout). I'm experimenting with setting about one of them with a small punch and hammer to create lots of little dents in the bodywork. I'm always worried that this type of damage always seems to look overdone in 4mm.... maybe it's just the way I do it!

The Ravenscraig wagon was an experiment which has been generally successful, but has also shown a number of limitations of the process. The process builds the model up in layers, like an inkjet printer in 3 dimensions. The downside is that this gives rise to some "grain" effects in what should be smooth panels. Should reproduce wooden panneling really well though! I'm informed that this just needs a gentle rub down to remove, but I'm going to spray it first with a coat of primer to seal it and them get the wet and dry out. Also, the wagon does have a few rivets here and there, which are on the model but don't show up on the photo. Whether they'll survive the rubbing down I'm not sure. However, this model should allow me to figure all this out before I move onto the Brush-Bagnall shunter that I'm ultimately planning to use this technique for.

It's definitely an emerging technique - the quality of these compared to prototypes I remember seeing only a few years ago is outstanding at much lower costs, so I can easily see a day when it's a technique in more widespread use in modelling (particularly when today's computer whizzkids get going!).

I ventured out into the garage yesterday and it's now just about warm enough to spray (with a bit of pre-heating of the model and paint) so I'll hopefully get a photo up of the wagon in primer soon

Cheers

Alastair

It was the layers I was thinking of, some of the earlier versions look like some of the brutalist buildings you somethimes see with the witness marks of the rough timber shuttering used during the pour. This looks a lot better, as far as I can tell.

Adam

It's a bit variable - one direction appears less affected by striations than the other, but as yet the rapid prototyping service I use doesn't allow you to specify the orientation of your part on the machine (at least, not at a price I can afford!).

Alastair

Hello Alastair,

I'm building steelworks wagons in 10mm scale and found your blog page very interesting and encouraging.

Clearly a 10mm scale etch of 977 would be quite a formidable undertaking with 16 times as much metal, but still possible of course.

One good source of brass wagons for me is eBay - a badly battered etched kit at a good price saves not only the work of building it but the extra work of battering it as well :-)

Just a note that with the demise of fotopic Paul Bartlett has moved his picture of wagon 977 to:

http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/workingtonsteel/h8766dcd#h8766dcd

David 1/2d

Retired railway engineer, Derby