Building a center-balcony carriage - part IV

It has been a while since the previous post (part III) on this project. So, time for an update.

Painting 

 

I tried several shades of green and decided that I painted the carriage with Tamiya XF-5 Flat Green.The Tamiya paint has a lot of pigment and gives a good coverage. It dries nice and clean but you should not 'play' too much with the paint, as you can do with enamel paint. Because the paint dries very fast you can damage the top layer if you go over it with the brush shortly (not directly) after applying. So just apply the paint and leave alone. The roof and chassis were painted with a layer of normal ' household'  acrylic paint from a discount store. In this case it was RAL 8022 which is a brownish black color. Though it looks good on the roof I was not totally sure of it with the chassis. I later repainted the chassis with Tamiya XF 69 NATO Black after placing the rivets (see below).

 

Trying different shades of green.

 

Roof painted with DIY acrylic paint RAL 8022 brown/black

 

The paint was applied with a flat brush for the surfaces and a little brush for spots the big brush could not reach

Rivets

For the simulation of rivets I used little plastic "diamond" half round beads stickers from a discount store. It's the kind of stuff creative mom's and girls use to make all kinds of bling-bling creations. The beads are about 2 mm in diameter and have a self-adhesive layer on the flat side. Although they are called 'diamonds' the beads are just half round balls, so, no ' diamond' surface. The beads are perfect for rivets and much more cheaper (1080 pieces for only 1,50 euro) than the ones you can buy in the model train hobby stores.

Cheap rivets; 1080 pieces for 1,50 euro!

Apply the self adhesive half round beads with a pincet

Painted with Tamiya XF 69 NATO Black

-o-

A car for the railway maintenance crew

This is an older project I did somewhere around 2012. It was described on the Continental Garden Trains forum which is unfortunately no longer active since several years now.

 

The base was a second hand but fairly unused LGB Toy-Train caboose. The car was bought cheap because two footplates were missing as you can see on the picture. The plan was to bash the caboose in to something looking more European car for the maintenance workers of the railway.

The bash would include at least two mayor steps: the roof had to be altered or replaced to give it a lesser American look and I wanted to get rid of the grips (at least, I think they meant to be grips) that were molded on the sides of the caboose.

A Dremel hand tool was used to sand the grips of. The trick was to gently and lightly, without too much pressure,  moving the sanding tool in the vertical direction, following the "wooden" siding strips. This way the 'scratches' of the sanding will be lesser noticeable and easier to remove than if you sand horizontally.

It is best to wear safety glasses and perhaps even a paper dust mask when doing this; the plastic dust and bits fly everywhere!

At the left the grip is still in place, at the right the grip is sanded of

 At the spots were the grips were molded, the grooves between the 'wooden' strips on the sidings are interrupted because of the molding.  With an old (but sharp) screwdriver, a hobby knife and a steel ruler this was fixed. Just carve the grooves over with the hobby knife followed by the screwdriver.

After all grooves were done I sanded the sidings again, now using a sanding sponge (some soft foam block with some sort of fine sanding paper on the sides, the type you can buy at the painting suplies at DIY stores). I've gone over the complete model until there was no more difference in surface between the sanded and non-sanded areas. 

Actually, I found this too smooth and neat. There were almost no 'wood grains' visible. I remembered a little tool that master garden railroader (at least in my eyes he is for sure) Ray Dunakin used to create wood grains for his buildings on his In-ko-pah Railroad. It was made from a hobby knife holder with a little saw blade in it. I used this tool and I liked the effect very much. 

When the surface was like I wanted it, I had to fill a few spots with bits of plastic (those spots where the roof supports fall in and where the caboose lanterns were mounted. I used very thin strips of polystyrene on top to cover the filled up openings.

The missing steps were replaced by a set that came from an old and incomplete LGB " Dynamite" car so that was solved quickly.

Next step was painting the body and chassis. I used Tamiya acrylic paint. If I remember correct I used Tamiya XF26 (deep green) as base with several slight grades of green and some weathering with thinned oil paint. A mixture of black and brown/rust for the chassis.

The roof was build out of polystyrene. A skeleton made from 4 supports, reinforced with strips and sheet. This skeleton fits nicely into the inside of the car.

Three thin sheets of polystyrene (almost as thin as thick paper) were used to build up the roof. Each sheet is glued on top of the other (laminate technique) using the extra thin Tamiya glue. 

The glue was applied with a bigger brush that the little brush that comes with the glue. The little brush don't work because the sheets are about 22,5 x 10,5 cm. and the first applied glue is dry when you get to the end of the sheet! 

Each sheet was slightly bigger to cover the one underneath completly. You can always sand or cut off to get the correct shape of the roofsides.

 

I used some left over pieces of grooved sheet to detail the underside the roof above the balconies.

The top layer of the roof was made out of fine waterproof sanding paper, glued with Pattex contact glue on the polystyrene. 
However, do not do this! Although this looked very sharp back than, now, after 7 years of use and storage in a garage the sanding paper has got all wrinkled and probably is also the cause of bending the roof slightly. So I will not use this anymore on newer projects! I will not advise anyone to use sanding paper for roof cover.

Thin strips of polystyrene glued on the sides for finishing (so you don't see the different layers of sheet).

The roof was than painted black, using Tamiya acrylics.

Notice the roof is still nice and straight...

Inside walls were made from polystyrene sheets and painted in a wood color. Windows were glassed using bits of transparent plastic from packaging materials. I started with some interior but this was not finished completely.  I will come back on this...

The following pictures are taken today (November 10th 2019) and you can see the roof is not as straight as it was in 2012.

Weathering of the sides

Weathering of balcony, footsteps and chassis etc.

-o-

Inspection of the ToyState Christmas steamer

Last July I bought a Toy State Christmas train set for only 10 euro's (see: Christmas in July). The engine itself did run well in my outdoor layout. It had no problem with the turnouts as long as it runs straight forward. However the engine made a howling sound. There were some suggestions on the forum that this could be a fan inside the locomotive. However as the locomotive was not able to pull all the cars from the set on the outdoor layout I suspect it could be a problem with the gears.
A test run on the track oval of the set did not show improvement; the engine could not pull all cars. Sometimes it stopped while the motor was running making. Running or standing still the engine makes the same howling sound.

So... time to open the engine!

The start; remove Santa figure and unscrew the screws at the bottom

Remove front bogie

Remove upper part

The switch can easily be removed

The motor is slides in the gearbox. It can be removed by pulling it out gently

The motor has a small gear wheel that connects to the gearbox

Backside view.
The connector cable that runs to the coal tender (with battery's).

Front view

View from top

After removing the motor (just gently pull it out of the gearbox) it looks like this:

Than remove front cylinders:

 

And remove gliders from the driving gear:

Removing the topside of the chassis shows the complete gearbox. It is fixed on the rear axle.
The gearbox itself is snapped together.

That's all...

So, we know how to dismantle the engine. Putting it together is just in the opposite order as shown above (and it works as these pictures were actually taken while putting the engine back together...).

Now... there was no fan or whatsoever present in the engine. Electric current flows from the connector cable to the switch at the side of the engine. From the switch two cables (orange and white) go to the motor. From the motor two cables (yellow and white) lead to the headlight. White cables connected to the switch make the polarity change (back and forward).
It is the gearbox that makes the howling sound. I believe the construction of the gearbox is not very solid and (worn out?) gears slide a bit over the axles (like the older Fleischmann locomotives did).
I could try to open it and see if I am right about that.  Perhaps I can replace the gearbox for a different one. Or do a total bash of the engine making something completely different from it and use the cars behind a standard LGB Stainz... Let's not forget the whole set costed 10 euro's. So we will see ;-)

Flatcar with Hanomag K55 tractor

The LGB ToyTrain range brings a bit toy-like carriages and cars that are often produced in very bright colors. Although the toy-like look of these cars they are basically well detailed and can be converted to more realistic cars easily. They are often offered on online auction sites for a friendly price and that makes them very suitable for modelling projects. I did some myself.

One of the easiest conversion I did was this ToyTrain flat car.

The donor car is a bright yellow LGB ToyTrain flat car (I think it is from the Lake George and Boulder starter set).

The chassis and flatbed where detached from each other. This can easily be done as they are connected with a few screws at the underside. Than the flatbed was sprayed in a gray color using a rattle can with grey primer paint. Actually I found this shade of gray just perfect so I left it this way, but you can of course spray (or paint) whatever color you like over the primer. My advise is to always use a sprayed primer first before applying an other color as this will give much better results.
   

The chassis was given a brownish/rusty black layer and a dry brush as I wanted a bit of a weathered look for the car.

Then both parts attached together again.

The flatbed was weathered using artist oil paint (those little tubes from a hobby shop). I thinned the oil paint with white spirits and applied it with a brush. I just led it flow over the model and the paint find its own way. This give shade effects and the grain of the plastic wooden planks shows up. The two beams molded on top where given a brownish/wood color so they stand out more and look like they are placed on top of the flatbed temporary.

The crates are made from balsa strips glued on a Styrofoam block (left over pieces from package material cut in shape). The Hanomag K55 tractor is a 1:25 Wiking model which is slightly weathered (yes it is missing the steering wheel on the pictures...).

And without the crates it looks like this.

Finally I have put on some chains and ropes that holds the tractor and crates in place but I do not know if this is very prototypical or not as it seems to me the tractor would be a heavy load that will holds itself in place fair enough. Trains stay pretty level so sliding of will not occur easily. But anyway it looks OK so I keep it this way ;-)

Here is another one, same process but not weathered:

-o-