letterspider

Working on the portals for the photocells at the moment. Sorry about the bad picture. I cut up very short pieces of 3mm hollow section plastic tube and stuck into place onto the body, where I had drilled out marked holes. A drop of quick dry epoxy is used to fill the centre - this will dry and form the 'glass' When dry this is then filed down as low as possible - about 0.5mm in my case - although it should be possible to get down to near flush. Black marker pen is then used to colour the white tubing. I wanted to use brass tube, which had even narrower walls and modelling water to make the glass but the quality of my modelling didn't justify the cost The (very poor quality) photo shows this process at various stages

This topic is about my conversion of a Bachmann VDA into an Network Rail Optical Car like this: Hopefully I may stumble upon ideas which may make the conversion easier for other modellers and which haven't been mentioned elsewhere in RMWeb. I started off with a VDA as I had one spare but apparently other wagons have similar wheelbases. The first step (and probable mistake) is to cut along the door margins as shown then fill in the door handle recesses, file and cut back all the other detail The cut out section can then be used as a template for the central vanes which can be made up for the thinnest section of plastikard which you can manage, which in my case was 0.75mm but to scale would probably be much thinner (and flimsier) The tricky part is the central section. Having looked at the protoype it appears that the construction is flat steel plate welded to a semi-section of steel tube which gave me a similar idea. You can get overflow connector pipe from Wickes very cheaply and with a cross section of about 25mm, it is the simplest and easiest compromise to build up a perfectly round top section, which is also very strong. For the handrails I used .25mm piano wire glued into place Where I am now stuck is in the portals for the photocells - if anyone has found a simple and elegant solution I would be very grateful for your ideas!