building

Mt Adams Railway benchwork progress

Progress continues on my latest module...

Today I did a little more on my new module. The polystyrene foam had glued up nicely overnight, so I cut out some 7mm ply for the station base. I cut some beading to size to hold it in place along the front edges, and for the sides against the foam I cut some thin MDF to size.

This nicely finishes off the polystyrene, so there are no rough edges to catch and start spreading little staticky white beads everywhere!

While I was at it, I glued some thick LVL to the insid...

New module!

Exciting news from the Utraina Dept of Interior Development: at long last, a new module is being built!

It seems like forever since I last built a module for Utriania; in fact, I started Ranuska back in Janurary, 2014! Ranuska took a long time to get built, and since then I have suffered a bit from analysis paralysis, as I wondered what my next module should look like, how it would fit in to my mix of large scale railroading (earlier modules) and light rail & trams (Ranuska), what the track plan should be, etc etc. Basically I wanted my next module to be perfect, especially if it was going to take 2 years to make again!

But then I was browsing JNS forum one night and came across an amazing Hakone Tozan themed micro railway:

The Crossing Hut

Well, after much delay, the replacement parts for my laser cutter have finally arrived. It seems the driver board took three return trips between Moscow and NZ before finally landing in the right place. How frustrating! Once it arrived though I wasted no time in getting it all set up and recalibrated – if anything, I think it cuts better now.

Here it is cutting out the parts for an HO loco:

Unfortunately my laptop went flat halfway through, hence the large charred spot!

Having proven it worked, I wasted no time in building something. I decided a fun little project would be a Soviet style crossing hut. At least I assume that is what it is. Here is the inspiration:

Introducing the Snake Train

My LRV is coming to a close, so I decided to tackle something different. In my stash I had a couple of B-Train Shorty Izukyu Series 8000 kits, which are a fairly generic looking fictitious commuter train, used as a backdrop for some kind of Japanese teenage drama. Anyway, they're pretty cheap to get hold of, and ripe for modifying.

I figured that with a little work, I could turn these into an interesting commuter train. I thought perhaps some flexible gangway connections, and changing it to use Jacob's bogies would make it interesting.

I started off by assembling a body, but leaving the floor off.  A replacement chassis/floor was easily made up from some 1mm styrene. The end-most bogies I mounted using the existing lugs on the bogie. The pivoting Jacob's ...

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...