Marty's O Scale Narrow Gauge

Bondall Water-Based Turps does indeed work as an effective paint remover on plastic models. It does not attack the plastic as far as I can tell, but does loosen paint from models far more quickly and thoroughly than Simple-Green. It is also slightly cheaper at unit price at about $4.30/L, whilst simple green is about $6.12/L

 

Ordered some domes and stacks from this etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/TheCumberlandShops

Not much else to report. Put a bunch of wagons and carriages through the simple green and water-based turps to remove some more of the printing. I'm out of primer so I will have to wait until I can get to the hobby shops again before I can progress those.

 

I've been doing a few little projects. Just fitted kadees to the Fleischmann Magic Train carriage. Turns out to be a rather simple affair using some 6x2mm styrene block glued behind the headstock and an M2 screw into same block.



The second project to progress was the conversion of this Bachmann Baggage car to a representation of an 1890s WAGR brake van. The roof was part of a large batch of "Spirit of America" carriages I had purchased. It was damaged with a number of cracks and splits all fixed with glue. Sections of the clerestory were also damaged, so the glass sections filled in from behind with styrene and any damaged frames patched up with more styrene pieces.

 

I assembled the Peco OR-25 Four-Wheel Box Van kit. Scales well with the Bachmann Porter, and definitely more of the 2ft gauge prototype size than the 3ft Gauge American stuff. Only modification was fitting some kadee couplers.

 

My Bachmann Porter is about to get a sister! This one, rather surprisingly, is coming from the UK.

This one will be the basis of my 0-4-0 Baldwin "Sandfly" conversion. I discovered that I had to lengthen the rear of the 0-4-0 by about the same as the size of the 0-4-2 porter. This is just much easier.

 

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For enclosed vans like this I like to brace the inside with some 6x2mm styrene. This helps prevent the sides from sucking inwards. I put these pieces in a little more than half-way up the sides, roughly where someone would tend to pick up the vehicle.

 

I ordered this chimney and these domes (2 sets of each) it seems about 3 weeks ago. They are now in the country and I hope that I get to put at least one set onto a Mogul this coming week. I now own an airbrush and once I have some progress made on the mogul I intend to paint the body at least!

From Cumberland Shops on Etsy if anyone is interested. Waiting for the things to turn up has been a real bore!

 

A few shots of my small On30 equipment. The Trix Tipper Wagons have all had Dapol 12mm 8-spoke wheels and kadee-type couplers fitted. A few of them have Bachmann EZ-Mates left over from other wagons that had been upgraded. They all run smoothly and managed at least a half hour each of being pulled and pushed around this circuit. With the original Trix couplers they were almost allergic to the track. I am not sure if they scale well with the Peco OR25 Box Van. Against the Porter, the tippers look pretty huge, but maybe a new paint scheme will sort that problem out.

 

I was thinking that there were not many much more dinky things that ran on rails, until I recalled that the Innisfail Tramway (2ft Gauge) hold possibly the world record for dinkiest caboose/brake van/guards van. At 7ft long, 9ft tall and I think less than 6ft wide, it was basically a dunny-shed (out-house/thunder-box) on wheels. Just to put it into perspective, this model would be only about 2/3rds the length of the Peco Box Van pictured in the previous post. Should I model one? I think I would have to put a slug of scrap metal into it to give it enough weight to track properly!

I'll link here to a twitter post about it, which also has photos of a "preserved" example which was discovered int he 1990s being used as a chicken shed!

https://twitter.com/ozbob13/status/1228821772931231745

 

Did some painting today. Tamiya rattle cans, Light Grey Primer, TS33 Dull Red and TS82 Rubber Black.

 

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I have taken to this method for spray painting models. I make loops of painter's tape to attach the model to a piece of scrap corrugated cardboard. I then use more tape or blu-tac to fill in any screw holes and the coupler pockets so there is no paint interfering with screws and couplers. Then it is outside with the rattle can to spray! These two are now in grey primer (not shown) and I plan to take some time to try out my airbrush giving them a coat of Tamiya Flat Brown XF-10 tomorrow.

 

Well, I could not sleep so I went down to the workshop and did some airbrushing. I thinned down some Tamiya XF10 Brown with actual acrylic thinners and sprayed the two underframes from the last post brown. I had a few issues with paint flow, I suspect this was caused by the fact that particular paint jar is probably about 7 or 8 years old and I think I tried thinning it down in the past with water and/or isopropyl alcohol. Paint spatter not a problem though since I was painting everything the same colour and they are just underframes. You don't really see them much once the model is assembled. Will take photos tomorrow when there is actual light around. I understand that the cordless airbrushes are less powerful, so I won't complain about that, but I think that if you have rattle-cans they give you a lot more coverage a lot quicker than an airbrush. That said, jars of acrylic are much cheaper than rattle cans for the coverage you get and the smaller spray jet makes for less wasted paint.

 

These turned out well, considering the dubious quality of the old paint jar. Didn't photograph the grey primer, but you can see from the spray pattern that airbrushing is less wasteful.

 

Made another good eBay score today. I paid about the equivalent of $100 USD/GBP/Euro in local Dollarydoos. I am very happy because I have not need these for sale for quite some time.

 

She does bear more than a passing resemblance to a Queensland Railways A10 Class 4-4-0 Baldwin from the 1870s:

 

Domes and chimney arrived the other day. Had a few unexpected bonus items. Here's my Mogul bash with them installed and in some grey priner.

 

Found some fluted domes for the 4-4-0, but I should wait for it to arrive before I start spending any money on accessories for it.

https://www.shapeways.com/product/8RRM7W3Q4/on30-fluted-domes-for-bachmann-inside-framed-4-4-0