LMSfan72

From this point on it's pretty simple to put together. The steps are:

- glue the body and sand, fill and prime....

- Remove the bogies form the donor and flatten the sides to take the new bogie sides

- remove the appropriate underbody detail and end detail from the donor chassis

- glue the new detail into place

- prime and paint

- fit glazing to the body (using a tinted film)

- apply transfers (once again, Steve at Railtec came up trumps to make the transfers for the current version of the protoype)

....  I am going to set myself a challenge to adapt this one further with interior and lighting................

A full kit of parts to build on a Bachmann Mk1 chassis.....

These are the 2 body halves,..

the 3 underbody tanks and a set of bogie sides...

The bogie sides will be glued onto the side of the existing donor bogies which will require the detail on those to be sanded back to as this and flat as possible without impacting the axle mounts/bearings....

The prints are cleaned up and the joining edges check to ensure the best fit. They are printed with tabs to aid glueing together.

I used Vallejo Model Air and the finish came out great!

the chassis detail comes out nicely and the Replica Railways B5 bogies go in to the pivot mount holes with only minor cleaning out to get the pivot action nice an smooth.

Some transfers from Railtec and we have a nice model:

A really straightforward build - all the hard work done at the design and print set up stage!

The prints come out very nicely:

A quick mock up of the parts before glueing:

very happy!

A little bit of clean up to ensure the join line is square and the body is glued together, surface finished and primed:

The chassis was glued and primed and painted. I will glue the chassis and body together but it could be drilled and bolted or double sided tape….just paint before assembly…

Almost there! Just decals to apply although I am going to try and make some windshields for the high level windows and I must do the generator exhaust. Very happy with the lighting...but I might reduce brightness slightly as there is a little bit of light bleed coming through

I had a nice neat installation planned, but, with 24 wires to connect, tiny connections and keeping the wires short which restricted my working space I still ended up with it being a bit messy!

I used a Zimo MX688N18 function decoder. I had planned to have all the lights on separate function wires and then adjust how they operated through mapping giving me great flexibility. However, I ran into an issue. It wasn't initially that clear in the decoder manual that F03 and F04 are only logic level. That would be fine, though, I can use F05 and F06 instead....except the LaisDCC Next18 socket only breaks out F03 and F04 and NOT F05 and F06... that to me is an oversight. I'm sure more of us use the full power functions before the logic ones....oh well.

So, I wired them up to the 4 functions on the socket breakout board and then mapped them. The great thing about the Zimo decoder is that you can set it up to operate off 2 addresses (not needing a consist). That way I can have it set to the same as 2 different locos - based on which rake I have it in - and the functions are mapped via Swiss mapping to do what I want that loco throttle to do....

Lastly, I put in a stay-alive...

..and concealed it all behind the end...

The blog continues here:

I have worked out how to continue the blog in 1 place so this is now locked and you can follow here:

I have worked out how to update the blog in one place now so the rest of this continues here: 

Well, having got the interior in and past the wires I have started to unravel them all and work out routings and how to connect it all together. I had to fit the bogies and wire those in as well as the chassis so that it can all collect together. I still have lights to add in the raised roof but I should be able to feed them out when I've got the rest "contained"! As I mentioned before, I have made the coach end removable at the generator end so that I can house the decoder and other components in there since the chassis and body all have a number of wires connecting them and I don't want to have to keep disconnecting them to get access to the decoder.

.... PS did you spot my simulated open top window!!

You'll see in my other blog about glazing that I decided to go with tinted windows on this one. In went the glazing and interior and a quick test of the interior lights with a battery.....

..... I'm quite pleased with the effect through the tint, it is more of a glow like you would get from monitors. I will light the raised section separately so that will add some general brightness to the coach too, I hope!

So, it does work, but, it's quite unpredictable.... until you have polished the prints back you do not know if there are tiny air bubbles in them. I also found it difficult to get the clear coat to dry evenly.... I was dipping so maybe spraying might work better.

Anyway, I am also trying some tinted film. I printed the body so that the walls at the window level are thinner so that there is a channel to put in glazing strips of transparency.

Either work quite well, but, it is much easier to get a consistent result with the tinted strips. 

Added some paint, crew and some overhead lighting:

Really very happy with the detail now

The new interior turned out well for a first attempt. There are supports printed under the conference table chairs that I can't get out. I think I might print the chairs separately in resin (then I can re-use them too!). I want to stick with PLA for the main interior section as it's much less brittle than a resin print and I can live with the slight detail reduction here.

and now a revised interior after looking at Big Jim's previous conversion

Now I just need to see if I can print it!

I now need to fit the interior and work out the best place for the decoder (I intend it to be in the generator compartment and then the end can be removed to access it). Big Jim pointed me to his interior so I thinK I'll be re-designing mine and probably printing it in resin - or maybe printing pieces and replacing parts for my current one...

but

I also need to finish the glazing first as once the interior is in I won't be able to access through the bottom, so, maybe some trial fitting first!

...and the roof spotlights.

The printed light housings have slots in the bottom to feed the wires through to the hole in the roof and into the body.

The LEDs sits back in the housing:

and tested

Now that I have worked out how to continue the same thread, and insert pictures in line.......

......I fitted some LEDs into the underbody housing. A bit of Glue'n'Glaze to hold them in.

Holes are pre-printed for the wires. The roof is in paint and once that's done the roof mounted spotlights will get added too...