N Scale FQX OCX test Sample 2

We have received the second set of test samples. A couple of key improvements finish wise over the first set. They have been painted to show up the detail, enjoy!

FQX OCX underneath detail

FQX OCX deck detail

FQX Side 1

FQX Side 2

OCX Side 1

OCX side 2

 They will come with XSC bogies with 36in fine scale wheels and Microtrains 2001 underslung couplers to give the correct ride height. The test bogies run very nicely :)

Cheers

Rob

N Scale NSW 400 Class Railmotor

When I received the first kit from Peter Boorman of his 400 Class railmotor (3D master by Rob Popovski) I just has to make one up! A beautiful little model and another well designed kit. In addition to the cast body an etch for the roof radiator, lost was horns and decals make up the kit. It requires a modified Tomytec TM-04 chassis to complete. Over the last two months or so I've been putting it together and now it is finished!

Peter Boorman Workshop NSW 400 Class Railmotor

The castings out of the box are crisp and paint up well. The brass detail items require soldering for the footplates between the railmotor and trailer, otherwise they attached with superglue.

The chassis needs to be cut on the ends and a little bit of filing back to get a nice fit.

This one is also fitted with a TCS M1 decoder :)

Detail shot of the decoder fitting showing where wires are soldered on.

The model looks good and runs sweetly, although if you had to pull more weight should be added.

Another fine kit from Peter Boorman and more fantastic 3D work from Rob Popovski!

Cheers
Rob

October Victorian N Scale Collective meeting

Yesterday the October Victorian N Scale Collective http://home.vicnet.net.au/~vnsc/ was held at my place with 25-30 members turning up at various times during the day.

So what do you do at these things?

Talk in small groups:

Discussions such as how to paint models, airbrushing techniques, paint manufacture (Thanks to David Haymes from Haymes Paints),  demonstrations of assembling Microtrains couplers (I felt no pressure at all....), Fairmile Class small boats of WW2 and a range of other topics...


Here another group of intrepid enthusiasts discuss Flinders st station (thanks to this book http://www.readings.com.au/product/9781921488030/), Darren's crazy obsession with trestle bridges, Luke's obsession with Bendigo and my crazy obsession with having a million projects on the go...

The meeting spilled out into the shed where Nowa Nowa was running (but not Bairnsdale yet), sorry no pictures; into the carport where Michael had a variation of T-Trak on display (pictured) and a Free-moN reverse loop (which I forgot to photograph). Are we having fun? The answer is obvious!

I don't get to VNSC meetings often but when I do I always have a fantastic time, learn a lot and share my knowledge. The Collective has members at all levels of skill and interest in the prototype and is a great pleasure to share with other enthusiasts. Belonging to a club / group brings many benefits especially when it is as great a bunch of people as the Victorian N Scale Collective.

I even got to do some modelling!

N Scale L Class Electric Part the Fifth

Due to holidays and work, both involving extensive travel, I haven't been able to do much. So tonight I have somewhat hastily weathered the L. Need to do a bit more but it is now looking the part, now to find some overheads to run it under!

N Scale L Class Electric Part the Fourth

Well it is nearly finished, just have to do another set of numbers and weather... the later is very important because...

I was feeling lazy and decided to hand paint on the yellow rather than mask and spray. In the end it probably took me longer and more effort, however I wanted to document the process for those modellers without air brushes how to get a good effect.

Here is the (almost) finished article prior to weathering:

When weathered the colour (which is a Citadel "Bad Moon Yellow" paint from Games Workshop) will blend in with the decals and the paint imperfections will go away... well that is the plan!

To get to this stage I first:

Applied a grey undercoat. I should have used a lighter grey. It is good practice to put a grey undercoat under colours like yellow and red to give depth.

This yellow (like many) is quite "thin" so I applied a number of light coats of paint.

Layer one looks terrible!

Layer 2 not much better!

Layer 3 is getting there.

Layer 4 are we there yet! yup good enough base to then weather!

Now to do the last few decals and then the fun part, making it look dirty!

Cheers

Rob

N Scale L Class Electric Part the Third

Managed to do the decals in the last two days, the following pictures show what it looks like on the second test, just about right!

It looks like we need to modify the master to remove the old MU? connectors on the ends so the decal fits. These may have to then be a seperately applied part. You can see where I cut them off after I had applied the decals, I think a coat of paint and weathering will fix it up!

Here it is side on. the decals are in four parts, the cab ends and stripes around to the cab doors is one large decal, the stripes top and bottom on the side are the next two. you can see where the decals overlap by a bit.

I was going to try and do another decal that goes over the nose, however I think this will need to be painted, that will be the subject of the fourth part!

N Scale L Class Electric Part the Second

Again busy with work, however I have a coat of blue paint on the L and the decal artwork underway...

During the week the Bachman/Graham Farish Class 31 Mech turned up, as did some Kato Pantographs. So motivated this afternoon I set to work.... here is where I'm at.

The Panto is just sitting on there for effect until the paint job is finished.

The Bachman mech runs pretty good, but is not DCC ready unfortunately :(. It takes a bit of filing (about 30-45 mins of filing and test fitting) to get the shell to nestle down on the mech. This images shows the comparison between an unmodified mech and the filed down one.

The bogies are tricky as by cutting off the moulded on coupler the bogie sideframes will no longer "clip" on to the bogie. Instead I had to use some Selly's "Plastics Glue" (available from Supermarkets) to glue the Delrin parts together.

I had better get on with the decals now!

cheers

Rob

N Scale L Class Electric Test

Two posts in two days...

Rob Popovski has been busy following up the 442 with a Victorian L class electric!

It looks supurb in the flesh now I need to do some decals for it and find suitable pantographs. They will be available for sale in a little while.

It will fit on two chassis so far, the Atlas RSD4/5 and the new Graham Farish 31 class, the later looks better!

L on Atlas RSD 4/4

L on Graham Farish 31 Class.


So many models, so little time!

Cheers

Rob

N Scale FQX/OCX

Wow how time fly's! been really busy with work and personal life...

Anyway the first of several new posts to come.

Today we received the first test shots of the N scale FQX/OCX. As expected couple of things to fix, however overall they are very impressive!

The deck detail is very fine and the container brackets look superb. The bogie's and wheel look great and run smoothly on tests, more to follow.

Here you can see the brake rigging and the two main versions, FQX to the top and OCX underneath. This is similar levels of detail to current HO models. The central beams are die cast to give weight.

Click on this one to see how it looks painted.

Off to do some testing on the layout and to undercoat one in grey.

Legs

G'day All, over the last few weeks we have done a little bit on the layout. The most obvious being the addition of legs instead of using the fold up tables. We have been think about this for some time and have finally settled on 25mmx25mm Aluminium legs into sockets for their light weight, small size and strength

The layout will have two sets of legs, a high set for all of the layout when it is away from home and a low set for the part of the layout that will be on the Cubelok benches.

Here is an overview, at the moment the legs are clamped on to get the feel of things.

This next picture shows the shorter legs on the Cubelok bench work

Interesting things occur at the tops of legs... this is the plan for ours.

A 100mm aluminium square will be welded to a flat plate by Ashley (thanks!) to form a socket. The plate will be screwed to the frame. A bolt will be use to go through the socket and through the leg and be tapped on the other side of the socket. This way the legs will be unable to go up or down, and will be easily removed by one bolt per leg. well that's the plan, we haven't done one yet!

This way short, long or maybe even medium sized legs can be easily put on the layout. Cross bracing will be clamped on a couple of modules and it should all stiffen up nicely.

N Scale 442 Painted

I couldn't help myself, I just had to paint one of the rapid prototyped models. I have wanted a Candy 442 for some time so here it is!

I used the Alps printed decals supplied in the kit. I undercoated the model in Tamiya Fine undercoat (Which is white), masked the white then painted the body Accuflex Signal Red. I then masked and painted the black. Gave it a gloss coat from a Tamiya spray pack, applied the decals, then a coat of Testors Dullcoat.

Need to give it a good weathering now, most of the time the "white" roof was black from Alco grime!

I'm very happy with the model, it looks great painted.

Cheers

Rob

Rapid Prototyping Australian N Scale

G'Day all, been busy with work, sod it, but this week saw a parcel arrive from peter Boorman with some extra goodies on top of a restock of items.

This is a 442 cast from a Rapid Prototype master designed by Colin Bolin (who is an exceptional modeller using "normal" modelling techniques, and now using 3D design!).

A number of us have been playing around with this technology over the last 3 years, I've been aware of it and watching its development for around 10 years (I first saw it at a Simulation Trade Show in 2002). The problem has been that while it does "organic" designs well when it came to building flat surfaces it struggled

The H car above was an earlier attempt a few years ago, I commissioned the model from David Germain who did the 3D artwork. Even after finishing the model with sandpaper you can see the layers in the side.

In recent times company's such as Shapeways (do a search on "N scale") are opening up the opportunities for people to do it easier... provided you can draw the 3D drawings!

However until relatively recently the results you could obtain by etching and assembling a brass master provided a superior result and finish... now however, based on these samples, I think the pendulum has just swung.

Detail shot of one cab

Cab Detail

The C Class was designed by Rob Popovski and produced the same way but uses a Kato SD40 mechanism.

A C class as well!

C Class nose detail