breda lrv

Breda LRV - couplings

Work continues on my Breda LRV project ...

My LRV is very nearly finished. One thing I felt it was missing were some couplings. I had some Kato 11-704 couplers which are just the right style for a light rail vehicle. I very carefully built up some supports for them out of styrene, only to discover the they needed to be lower. So I made them lower to clear the body, only to find they now fouled the rail..!! So I did some more tweaking, in the end I just drilled a small hole and used an M1.4 self tapping screw to hold it in place. Works really well! Those 1.4mm screws are very handy, I bought a 200 of them off eBay for a fiver.

And the finished result:

Breda LRV - Decals

Work continues on my Breda LRV project ...

One of the final things to do on my LRV is to decal it. This meant printing some custom decals. Luckily Luap had given me a sheet of clear decal paper to try out.

First step was to get my printer working. That involved a lot of cleaning, replacement ink cartridges, aligning print heads, etc etc. Quite a palaver! It took a while to find the right settings to print on the decal paper, in fact I'm still not sure I worked it out. Perhaps it's just the printer, but I ended up with some very slight smudging/streaking, meaning my nice crisp black lines weren't that crisp. You can see how the black is kind of "balling", and vertical lines are quite fuzzy. Also note all the little black specs of ink over the page! Quite a dirty printer!

Breda LRV - Flexible gangway connections

Work continues on my Breda LRV project ...

So the correct term for the wiggly bit between carriages is "gangway connection". I'm not sure though if that applies on trams since there is no gangway? Anyway, I needed something to bridge the gap between the two halves, as this is obviously not the look I'm after:

Please forgive the cruel close up photography!

I've been pondering this for some months now, knowing that sooner or later I would have to tackle it. Luckily I came across a technique involving carefully folded paper in a magazine a while back and so didn't have to invent something myself.

Making folded carriage gangway connectors First prepare some paper. I took a sheet of printer pa...

Breda LRV - Flywheel

Work continues on my Breda LRV project ...

No train is complete without a motor, and so it is time to motorise my LRV. I've used a chopped up Kato B-train shorty chassis for the power bogie on this train, but the motor it came with wasn't amazing. No flywheel, and pretty high speed. So a quick rummage through my motor bin netted a very long and skinny motor, 6mm high and 8mm wide, and about 20mm long. But it still lacked a flywheel...

Which brings me to my other new toy, a lathe! Xmas was pretty good to me this year, with a very large box under the tree waiting for me. All this came about after I had a brainwave to sell a few unused models and tools, and after a few lucky (for me!) bidding wars on my auctions, I soon had more than enough for a brand new lathe.

Breda LRV - Laser-cut window masks

Work continues on my Breda LRV project after many many months of silence...

After a rather long break from Utrainia I am back and building things again. Perhaps I should explain the gap... first we rebuilt our bathroom, then as Christmas approached I built a garden railway, then I discovered we had a free laser cutter in town, and then I caught the bug and built my own laser cutter.

It's a little rough & ready and needs some fine tuning, however the important thing is, my 2.5W laser cutter is surprisingly useful. I am easily able to cut out cardboard up to 1mm think, and my offcuts of 1.3mm picture framing mat board cut beautifully. I can cut out thin balsa and basswood up to 1.6mm thick, as well as pap...

Breda LRV - Painting and weights

Work continues on my Breda LRV project...

With the sides made and the chassis mostly done, attention turned to detailing the bodies. I needed some rooftop detail, and since the roofs are what you normally see of model trains, I wanted something reasonably detailed. Knowing I couldn't make anything that detailed from scratch, I turned to my parts box to see what I could scrounge:

The grey bit on the rear shell is a small air conditioning spare part from a US loco. The black bit is a winterisation hatch from another American loco. The smaller cream part is a chopped down casting of a roof top air conditioner from a series 24 Japanese coach, while the two large cream parts are duplicated A/C units from a Japanese Yamanote line train...