Not the base, the case. It's a shadowbox coffee table from Pier One Imports with internal drawer dimensions of 35 13/16" x 18 11/16" x 3 9/16". The Drawer rides on ball bearing rails, and pulls out smoothly so that you wont knock trains off the track. Curn
The other side of my Z hobby is my British prototype stuff which runs on 'Midsomer Mardy'. I'm getting ready to retire that layout so I can start to develop a new one based on the famous railfanning spot of Tapton Junction at Chesterfield on the Midland main Line. This is the area where the Erewash and Clay Cross lines meet up and funnel four tracks of action togehter before the freight trains head down the 'Midland Old Road' and passenger trains head for Sheffield up though Dronfield. with four tracks running parralel I'm going to need a wider variety of stuff to run and here are a few examples of current projects seen on test runs on Shasta First up is an unrebuilt Merchant Navy 4-6-2 35003 'Royal Mail' heading a charter train This is a 3D printed model designed by IVAN F and captures the slab sided look of these Bulleid deisgined machines. It should have Boxpok drivers but the overall effect is O.K when it is running. These were some of the last steam locomotives I saw running on scheduled trains in the mid 60's on the former Southern railway. Next up are two of the loco types I have in my yard at work Class 47s and 57s look to all intents and purposes the same the 57s having the original Sulzer engines replaced with EMD 12 645 E3 power units. At DRS we have quite a few examples of both types These are conventional resin castings done in a rubber mould and are a straight drop onto the Marklin BR103 or 151 chassis Also 3D printed from the IVAN F stable is the classic British railways class 86 A.C electric. seen here in Railblue. This is a straight drop onto the Marklin SBB 460 chassis and uses the pantograph off the donor loco as well. These machines are pretty are getting to be a rare sight now in some areas Kev
Bargain bag of bits Occasionally you buy something of the Internet not quite sure wht you are going to get. I bid on a certain auction website for what was described as '3 American Z gauge locos in need of work' From the pic it looked like an MTL GP35 in CP livery and a couple of GP9s Won the auction and was pleasently surprised to find I had acquired an MTL GP35 and two AZL GP7s, one of which had already had the nose chopped. Got the whole lot for £75 So three nice projects. The GP35 will probably be a donor chassis for the U.P turbine but I would welcome suggestions for the low nose GP7 colour scheme. Something North Western USA to run on Shasta maybe? Going back to the FA, Snowyriver has told me he is going to do the B unit in the future so we could soon be looking at ABBA greatest hits (sorry for the pun) cheers Kev
Nice find indeed Kevin! I like that steamer, you are lucky to remember steam in action, I only got to see excursions.
This would have been one of the last ones 34086 of the smaller Battle of Britain class '219 Squadron' seen on the London South Western mainline on a family camping holiday.
Where's the snow? Holed up in the workshop this weekend as we had 2" of rain and high winds (apologies to you folks on the West Coast of the USA who are crying out for rain including my folks in Santa Barbara) I thought I'd catch up with some painting and decalling. The new Shasta module had frame paint drying so I was giving it a wide berth First up. finished the BN snow clearing train, Looks a bit incongrous with the pines in full leaf. Line up is Shapeways (Stonysmith) Rotary plow, Converted MTL F7B as RSPU rotary snowplough power unit with winterisation hatches and blanked off windows, 2 GP35s and wide vision caboose which is also Shapeways (Stonysmith) Caboose and plow still awaiting body mount couplers as I've run out of them. Also on the workbench were four each of the two types of 20ft tanktainers Stonysmith has on shapeways full frame ones seen finished with some of Arran Aird's N scale decals. He trades in the UK as c-rail intermodal the second type is the beam type. These were printed in SWF rather than the FUD that the first type were and getting rid of the grain was hard work. It took a lot of Hycote plastic primer to fill the voids and I resorted to spinning them in the lathe in the end and rubbing them down with some quite coarse wet and dry. Got there in the end though More in a mo Kev
Had a bit of scare with the coil car as I glued the ballast weight in really well under the floor but forgot to check if it cleared the inner wheels of the trucks, it didn't! tried to shorten it or remove it and nearly destroyed the sides of the car. Pictures of the real things show they had quite extended couplers so I used the AZL medium length shank trucks If I do another one I'll try and clean the grain up on the sides a bit more. The coils are removable. I did the Duluth Missabe and iron range caboose because I like the colour scheme As you can see this is also wating for body mount couplers cheers Kev
Thanks Thanks also for the comment on the youtube video of the class 68s. I'm posting a thread in the international forum of trainboard shortly where i'll go into more details about these beasts Cheers[ Kev QUOTE=ZFRANK;992574]Nice looking caboose! /Frank[/QUOTE]
Joe, It's a pretty simple technique that I use. It only works well on laser cut wood kits. I painted the kit completely with Model Masters oxide red. Then I took 800 grit sand paper to it and made it look good and weathered. Then I painted the foundation Vallejo deck tan, the roof Vallejo German grey, and the windows Tamiya flat white. I miss the days when all my paints were Pollyscale acrylics. I wish Tamiya had as much variety as Vallejo, because Tamiya is my new favorite paint.
Yes, it's Z scale, all of 6.8" long. Will be announced soon as decals and a few minor parts come in. Going for $99 for the kit.
Oooooooooooh, now this is nice!! Great work, Pete!! I'm building a Milwaukee Road "Milwaukee" tug boat in Z as well! Where did you get the detail parts-handrailings, and all??
I either make them myself or, for brass photo-etch and 3D printed parts, have them made from my drawings. I do sell some of them on my web site, nscaleships.com. The parts section is not up to date.
