I've had the latest prints back from Shapeways of my Westinghouse Brake distributer and Roevac vents and I'm slightly underwhelmed by them. I'm sure that I have had prints in the past where I have seen details that are 0.2mm in diameter which don't appear to have come out on these. Perhaps when they are cleaned and primed they will look better? This is the problem with Shapeways - massively variable results!
4mm Westinghouse Brake Distributers:
You can just about see the detail on t
I'm not the first person to attempt to make an JMA from the Bachmann HHA, but given that I had already done a version of the bogie for this wagon, it seemed silly not to see how quickly a couple of them could be bashed into shape. The first step was to acquire and dis-assemble a Bachmann HHA. Take all the screws out from the bottom of the wagon and twist. The wagon snaps apart into the pieces seen below:
Next step is to chop the detail off the wagon sides:
The grid at the end (interna
The need to place an order with Shapeways for components for the PTAs has seen some frantic work in completing a few other bits that have been on the back-burner for a while. One of these is a version of the LTF-25 bogie designed for the national power JHA/JMA:
There are actually an awful lot of differences between this bogie that is fitted to these Finnish-built wagons and the one fitted to the ARC JHAs (built in the UK). Again, there are two versions of the bogie, one with a hand whee
I finally finished off the rake of 5 scratch-built wagons that were built by prominent modeller Andy Elliot who built a number of models for Foster Yeoman before he sadly died five years ago. I obtained these last year from Gridwatcher who was a mate of Andy's.
Andy constructed the wagons in styrene sheet and they are surprisingly detailed. I've done them as a rake of 2 outer wagons and 3 inner wagons:
There was a actually quite a lot to do in the end:
- Creating mounting points
Unfortunately the latest prints of the revised design haven't come out too well: they exhibit the rippling effect that many people are seeing and Shapeways have now agreed to re-print these for me. This seems to be a common problem at the moment with frosted ultra detail from Shapeways and people are speculating that it is to do with the calibration of the machines. You can make your own mind up and read more about the problem on this thread on Shapeway's forum: http://www.shapeways.com/forum/in
I've been working again on the 3D model and refining it to the next version ready to print:
Refinements include:
Revised secondary dampers (shown in blue) with extra strengthening (these broke in the first test prints). These also now have their own sprue (shown in green) to try and stop them breaking off during the printing and cleaning process. Spare dampers are also included in case of breakages.
New mechanism for inserting the wheelsets. With two Markits brass bushe
More progress on the LTF-25 bogie and the JHA this month.
Back in August, I was offered the chance to acquire 5 scratch-built JHA bodies. This seemed like a good solution in order to get a mini rake of 5 wagons up and running quickly. Colin Craig kindly supplied me with a few more wheelsets at Scaleforum so I've now been able to put the first wagon together with the better pair of my test print bogies.
Although the wagon bodies could do with a bit more detailing, rather than go to t
The test print arrived last week and I couldn't wait to try it out with Colin's Wheels. Here it is with a white background:
And here it is against black (seems to show up more detail and yes, they are the same wheels!):
I was initially worried about the material (frosted ultra detail) not being strong enough and/or warping but it was gratifying to see that the bogies are nice and strong and totally "true". I added a bit of sprue between the ends of the frames (evident
I've been working on a little project lately to produce model of an ARC/Hanson JHA (build code JH016D/JH017D). Not wishing to bite off more than I can chew, I've started with the LTF-25 bogie. If I never make the wagon, I can at least make a rake of National Power JMAs by re-bogying the Bachmann HHA (+ a little work) as these use a very similar bogie.
First a little background on the prototype. Each bogie is different and non-symmetrical. One is hand-braked, the other isn't and the secondary
