If I had an actual professional white metal casting machine I could make more of the 125ton flats all day. My homegrown spin caster is ok, but tooooo many reject castings due to the hard RTV rubber disk mold still not being hard enough! I would love to make more.
I have been working on decals lately, and today I applied some. The 3 large pieces are Clyde's, but I wanted to see see what the decals looked like, and I only own the open ramp trailers, so I applied decals to everything that I was test fitting:
The decals make a huge difference. It is one of those love hate things with me. When I get it right I love it. When I mess them up…which is mostly the case I hate them haha.
You did a great job on the decals. The trucks look like the real things. The Taylor reachlift looks very good as well. I really like your variations of your trailers. The solid orange trailers are from the 60’s, while the silver trailers are what you see today. A big thanks Robert, for coming up with some great looking decals!
I made a small update of the observatory dome. It's been bugging me for a while, so I made it closer to the prototype. You can see the difference below: V1 The shutter was flush with the other side and too wide. Also, black paint didn't look like empty space as much as I hoped. V2 is raised about the dome, so it can (theoretically) roll over the other side of the opening to close. I'm having some issues with the supports on the very top (painted black) that will take some troubleshooting to fix. But it looks much more like the real thing than V1 did.
I’ve been working on contractor and landscape trailers. Also have completed the U Haul trucks and trailers. Walt designed the trailers, while Robert made the decals. A big thanks to both for making my U Haul fleet come true!
New project arrived today! getting ready to mow all those lawns on my layout! got twelve zero turn mowers!Even have one Z scale figure fit right in the seat!
Robert now for a good test! I wonder if you can get decals on these zero turn mowers!!!!! I know you can! 48inch cut! even has the rear motor showing don't remember what brand you sent me the photo!
Last night we got down to -8 outside. Inside the workshop it wasn't much warmer (The water jug I was my brushes out in has frozen) so it is all indoors work Wanted to crack on with wiring all of Hakuho's switch motors up but it is wat too cold so decided to knuckle down and paint all the Z scale figures going on the layout in the office. God!, is there anything more tedious and boring than painting an entire box of Preiser figures? thank the Lord I've got some cans of Brewdog Hazy Jane ( a cheeky New England IPA) to keep me sane BTW, Does anybody do Z scale model of bears? I need one for the forest on Hakuho Kev
Well, I made the big plunge and spent the money on a cabinet, track/etc. and foam. Here's the layout in it's current glory. You can see the proof of concept prototype for the viaduct I just printed in the back-right corner, near the foam. I decided to print out my viaducts. These are the bridge mounts for the first of one. It was an interesting project, but the mounts took a bit of doing to get it to meet the 110mm rokuhan bridge just right. Since the track plugs into it, which holds everything together anyway, I had a lot of room for error, but it took a bunch of prototypes to get it right. Here's the (hopefully) final version. You can see the wire conduit and mounting space for a Custom Train Signal signal on the left. I'm going to use that conduit to also run the wires for the LEDs I'm going to mount on the bridge. Because it's not a bridge without the flashing red lights. Testing out the new bridge, you can see my new AZL SW1500, in all it's Conrail blue glory. The signals for the other bridge will be easier to wire as it'll have pylons at both ends to run them down. This one is a bit trickier due to it's extended span. 13 hours of printing later... I'm surprised I got it all in one print. Although, one half of the viaduct took some modification to get on the build-plate. I'm going to doing a lot of sanding and gluing this weekend. You can see the wire conduits on the tops of the viaducts to carry wires for power and signals down to the pylons. Here it is, fully assembled (more or less). Next step will be to install the lower track, which doesn't need viaducts, so it will be a bit simpler. It would be even simpler if Rokuhan had power feeders for its curved track sections, but I've got some 24ga solid core wire, a soldering iron, and some old track to practice on. Forgot to add: It'll be installed on the left side of the layout between the two 2" front and back foam pieces.
