Narrow Gauge Railbus from A1 kit

[ColinK]

While I’m waiting for bits to arrive for my 00 Pacer and plaster to dry on my G scale, I’m starting work on these two little beauties.

 

 

They are 3D printed railcar bodies produced by A1 Models (aonemodels@ymail.com) .  I saw the first print on his stand at Pontefract Model Railway Show last year and ordered one.  It fits on a Hornby Sentinel chassis and I already had one spare at home.  The more I’ve looked at it, the more I though, “I haven’t got a turntable on my 0-16.5 layout, so it would look much better if I had a pair and ran them back to back”.  So I bought a second one.

 

There is minimal work required.  All you really need to do is wash the one piece moulding, paint and glaze it.  I’m going to go a little but further and add door handles (holes drilled using a simple jig as a guide (hole in a coffee stirrer) and a bit of an interior.  The Hornby chassis needs very little modification and apparently can still be used under the Sentinel shunter.

 

The 3D print quality is excellent, no flash to remove and the sides pretty smooth.  While the instructions suggest smoothing it with the back of a knife blade, I’m going to try spraying it with microfiller primer.

[ColinK]

Having decided to build a pair of these little railbuses, I had to obtain a second Hornby Sentinel; Arcadia Models in Shaw have closed their physical shop, but are still doing mail order.  So a quick call and a loco arrived the next day.

 

Another of the jobs on my workbench is to paint a couple of locos for a friend, so it made sense to paint the railbuses at the same time.  First I gave all four models a couple of thin coats of primer, I used Alclad 11 grey primer & microfiller as this would help reduce any marks on the bodies from the 3D printing process.  It does help.  On Sunday I decided to apply the body colour.  My friend wanted his locos in Sky Blue, which is a Tamyia acrylic colour.  Rather than have all the faf of cleaning the airbrush out to change colours, I decided the same colour would be fine for my railbuses.  As always, the best way is several thin coats with about 1hour between them.  The first two coats went on fine.  While spraying the final coat the airbrush stopped working, so I had to stop painting and clean it out before resuming.  I did this and it stopped again. Another clean and put some paint in, but it still would not paint, instead paint was coming out of the airbrush trigger opening, which it most certainly should not do.  Hence I quickly finished the painting by brush and it looked OK.  I’ve not yet sorted the airbrush though.  What I suspect happened is that some paint dried inside the airbrush causing it to block during a fairly long spraying session.  Now had I decided to paint my railbuses in a different colour, I would have had to clean the airbrush between colours and may not have had the problem.

 

Having painted the radiators and headlights by brush, while they dried I started to look at the chassis tonight.  First the body comes off, just a couple of screws.  Next the side screens come off, these are lightly glued in place and I managed to break one pulling it off.  This leaves the chassis.  The only essential modification is to cut off the small plastic lights on each corner.  Assuming you can live without these lights, the chassis can still be reunited with the body so you still have a 00 Sentinel shunter.

 

When the new body is placed on the chassis it looks like this.

 

 

While most people could probably live with it like this, I’m a bit fussy and wasn’t too keen on the chassis steps that go nowhere.  Hence I’ve made some simple plasticard overlays which I’ve stuck onto the chassis with EvoStick - superglue might stick better but one small drop in the wrong place and your chassis will no longer work.  It now looks like this.

 

 

When the chassis are painted it will look much better.

[ColinK]

Bit of a disaster today.  Gave the railbuses and two locos I was painting for a friend a brief spray of matt varnish (Testors Dullcote from a spray can), left them to dry,  side of one loco has gone like this,

 

[ColinK]

Railbuses now finished.

 

 

Very nice model, very easy to build. Well done to A1 for producing it.