Good job! Mine is sitting somewhere in the queue behind the military flats. They did an incredible job weathering these cars. Truly a work of art.
Boy, these have come a long way. Your kit turned out great. Many years ago someone offered a cast metal kit that I built. The knuckle boom loader slides on the rails and the cab turns, but the boom is fixed.
I agree, nice work WFOJeff. I think I still like the Railway Express version a little more than MT. Being able to see into the cab makes a big difference.
Just cleaning up the sprue excess and such, painting was a little tricky. I was going to do something different with the windows but went with the decal application (very tiny sticker). The most trouble I had was glueing the claws - because of the flex metal it kept springing on me (you have to be exact to point glue that area-2pcs). I think my 4th attempt I succeeded with the claw. I had not yet glued the crane to the pedestal thinking I might want a non travel position. I used a caution yellow opposed to a UP yellow. I still plan to detail the weathering a bit more. (on the tie loader rails)
Yes, I had thought about a hollowing but it is far too tiny of a cab hence sticking with the sticker windows.
I completed the Micro-Trains kit and think it looks pretty good. I did, however, make the mistake of gluing the boom to the base at the factory supplied angle. The result is that the boom is really high. It didn't seem so bad when I was building it, but once completed and placed on the gondola it's taller than an autorack. When I ran it on an N-track layout earlier this month I had to put it on a "modified" gondola due to tight height clearances. I'll probably fix it later but the parts are pretty fragile and I don't want to risk breaking so soon after building it. This is a screen shot from a crappy cell phone video showing the modified gondola. It's completely impractical and unprototypical, but I wanted to run it and didn't want to risk any clearance issues Mike
I think the position Micro-Trains decided on was in an operational mode, these would typically be lowered/tucked during travel. As I noted in a reply post I just about did that same finish work but was also concerned about the height. Looking back I think the base of the boom at the frame of the operator booth could have been sanded a bit with a slight angle that could have had a translated slope to the end of the boom arm. I still need to decide if mine will travel in an MOW consist or stage at a piece of track that will be a diorama as a working loader. I may try to sand the front edge of the cab down some for a slight boom pitch before I glue...will update this thread later on. Does your assembly have no chance of coming apart after glue? I tried to use minimal amount of glue spots.
Yes, it definitely needs to be sanded to change the boom angle. I used CA to glue mine so it could get tricky trying to un-attach it. Mike