New loco: Kato DD16

I always get excited about new arrivals to the roster. The latest new loco to join Utrainia is Kato 7013, a model of the DD16 diesel locomotive. This was developed by JNR to replace light weight steam locos, and is has an axle loading 12 tons, total weight 48 tons. It has a diesel hydraulic transmission, as is common in Japan, with a maximum speed of 75km/h and length of 11.8m.

In other words, it is a very small loco. I had seen it listed online and it immediately appealed, however I was too slow to buy it and it sold out! So I placed my name on the waiting list at Hobby Search, and a couple of months ago I received an email alerting me that more had come in. I ordered one that night and it arrived a week later in a well padded box from Japan.

Modular building, part 3

My modular building project continues on from part 2... 

Nearly two months since the last update! Gosh. Now that the spring warmth has arrived, there is a lot to do in the garden. Combine that with numerous other small jobs and building a new laundry, there hasn't been much time for blogging. I haven't been idle though, just nothing of much note has been happening. Then there was the entire week that I spent debugging and fixing the electronics after I sent 15VDC down the RS485 bus by mistake. Took out most of the ICs in the system with it. Sigh!

Anyway, late in August I gave the whole building a zap with black primer.

This helps stop any light leaking through from the inside. It looks pretty racy all ...

Modular building, part 2

My modular building project continues on from part 1...

Construction

Once I had all the components, construction proceeded very quickly. I made a wall at a time, using lots of bracing on the back, and sections of 0.75 x 0.75mm styrene trim on the front to tidy up the corners.

The bracing on the back made joining together the corners pretty easy.

While shopping at our local discount asian warehouse I came across some rather neat miniature wooden clothes pegs that I knew would make great clamps:

Modular building, part 1

I'm building a new building for Ranuska, a small hotel by the seaside. Of course, it has to be interesting and a little different, and I'm trying out some new techniques too.

INspiration

My inspiration for this build comes from a few places. First is a residential building from Bobrujsk, Belarus, from the Soviet Modernism era of architecture:

Closely related to this is the Nakagin capsule tower, built in the 1970s in Tokyo:

 

(Read a

Funicular mechanicals

Part two of my funicular building series...

Track

Funiculars need something to roll along on, i.e. some track. I didn't want to use regular N scale track though as this would look a bit over-sized for my tiny funicular. Instead I quickly (read: crudely) soldered up some code 40 track to 6mm gauge. To help with traction, I added a sheet of metal under the sleepers, the thinking being that if I magnetised the funicular, it would stay stuck to the track.

With the aid of some hot glue I attached the track to the scene and built up the surrounding landscape with some plaster. Some ballast was added, and then the whole thing toned down with some dirt-coloured watery plaster. This does a nice job of making the track look a bit worn out.

Cable

What I really wanted was a moving funicular. I decided fairly early on that a DC gear motor underneath the baseboard would be the way to go, driving a continuous loop of "cable...

Building the funicular - part 1

My funicular is now finished and operating well, so I thought I'd go back and talk about how I made it.

Inspiration

Right from the start I knew I wanted a funicular for guests to Ranuska to get to their accommodation. Early on I discovered the Elevador da Bica in Lisbon, Portugal and was immediately drawn to its nice colour scheme and cute design:

However I struggled adapting the design to the 36º slope that mine would have to climb. Then one day while browsing my regular blogs I happened upon a post by Phil Parker from BRM (a great train magazine by the way) where he had discovered this wee cutie in someone's garden: