Weekend Update 11/17/19

[BCRail_FSJ]

One of a pair of British Columbia Railway cabooses on the workbench at the moment.   These are Kaslo Shops kits that have been sitting in my kit stash for a long time.   Very enjoyable build so far and quite complex for a small scale resin kit.

[spookshow]

Hurry, everyone post before @spookshow gets here and makes us looks like a bunch of neophytes. 

Ha, as if!

Anyhoo.... I've designed my layout for night scenes (IE, lots of lights), which has led me to purchase a lot of Woodland Scenics "Just Plug" lit cars to run up and down the Main Street of my town. Unfortunately, they're all a bunch of f'n antiques, which kind of makes my "ostensibly 21st century" layout look a little weird. But aha, I have come up with a workable solution!



Now I pretty much have carte blanche to put any sort of weirdo vehicle anywhere and everywhere I want 

As pictured above, my town does have a few other anachronisms beyond the cars, but for the most part it's modeled after a real/contemporary place (Hope, MN). As such, I've been doing my best to replicate all of the prototypical buildings there (along with their prototypical details). This occasionally leads me down some strange paths - like this week where I had to come up with a backyard trampoline, an antique plow, and a boneless lawn dolphin





That's all I got. Cheers!
-Mark

[Bob]

Boy, some great photos on Weekend Update!  Those turkeys are great, Hope MN is really impressive and the car show idea is brilliant, great scratch building and 3D printing to boot.  Thanks for posting everyone!

[MichaelWinicki]

[wm3798]

Why didn't you just extend the fascia up to meet the end of the bridge (at least to the bottom of the roadway)? Looks like that would've helped hide the wiring under it too.

The fascia follows the landscape, and since it's under the bridge... there's no landscape.  Plus I want to be able to see the canal when it gets installed.  The wires will eventually be under the riverbed, which will be about 1/2" above the door surface, so eventually they'll disappear.  I still have to run the leads for the lighting and accessories, so no river yet!

Lee

[Maletrain]

More fun with the new 3D printer this week.  Starting off with the 3mm Unijoiner. 

The 3mm Joiner works in resin, but because UV resin is so brittle they were basically one time use.  Now in PLA, they have strength too!


https://i.imgur.com/bWbzaC1.jpg

The joiners were printed in 'speed' mode. Thick layers and fast movements. 

Mark, Have you considered selling some of those 3mm Kato track joiners in the "Trading Post" section, here?  I am about to put together some Kato track, and those little gems would save me a lot of Dremel time and purple words.  They will really help get rid of those hard-to-see kinks in curves that are not really at their right alignment because the straights involved elsewhere are not exactly the proper length.

And, I would buy a set of turkeys, too, if you made them available.  But, I think those Kato track joiners could be great sellers, because they fill a real need.

[robert3985]

The #4 turnout is 3mm longer than the standard 128mm section.  This custom joiner fills that gap. 
One could also use a combination of the small single track lengths, but then you don't get the consistent concrete tie spacing on that other line.

And the gap is just filled with a 3mm section of rail that I (still) haven't gotten around to cutting.  But interestingly, being on a straight, I've never had a train derail across that gap! 
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agznZBiK_Bs


https://i.imgur.com/liMDAjW.jpg

Hmmm...that's a huge gap your 3mm spacer generates.  Wouldn't two 1.5mm spacers do the same thing but leave only two 1.5mm gaps in the rails on either end of the short piece of Unitrack, lessening the gaps in the rails with a single spacer to only half of what you've got now?  I'd think that'd make things run smoother and be much less work than having to cut two 3mm pieces of rail to fit into the spaces.

Just sayin' 

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[MK]

I actually have something to show this time.  I finished building a milk Wagon for friend's diorama layout.



It is an etched brass kit from N Scale Architect.  I also used their horses and milk cans.  It was mostly soldered, with few parts attached with CA and 5-minnute epoxy.  I was not impressed with the kit - I wish the instructions were clearer (the photos in the instructions are of the H0 model), and most parts do not have positive locators.



The axles were very thin. I added small pieces of brass tubing so the wheels fit better.

There you go again with that damn over-sized dime!    Great work!

[MK]

If the gap isn't a problem for trains crossing it, electrically, why not print the gap-filling rail as part of the joiner?  No need to cut, or fiddle with, a little piece of metal.

A standard Kato metal joiner is installed into the extended joiner Mark printed. There is not way to print the piece of plastic rail to protrude through the metal joiner.  Come to think of it, Kato joiners are very deep. I don't think they can hold a 3mm piece of rail securely - it will fall into the metal joiner.

I think what nkalanaga was trying to say is to bypass using the metal rail joiner altogether.  Instead, add to the 3D print, a small 3mm "rail" to bridge the gap.  Yes, there will be no electrical conductivity but we're assuming that it wouldn't be a problem as each rail will have a feed somewhere down the line.  There'll be no bumpty-bump as the train goes by.

[Missaberoad]

I actually have something to show this time.  I finished building a milk Wagon for friend's diorama layout.



It is an etched brass kit from N Scale Architect.  I also used their horses and milk cans.  It was mostly soldered, with few parts attached with CA and 5-minnute epoxy.  I was not impressed with the kit - I wish the instructions were clearer (the photos in the instructions are of the H0 model), and most parts do not have positive locators.



The axles were very thin. I added small pieces of brass tubing so the wheels fit better.

Very nice build! Will you be adding anything to represent reins? As it stands those must be very well trained horses 😉

[peteski]

Very nice build! Will you be adding anything to represent reins? As it stands those must be very well trained horses 😉

Thanks!

No, I considered adding reins, but I'm done with it.  This wagon will be part of a small diorama with a large flat-screen monitor in its center, showing slides advertising Tour de Chooch event at the local train shows (like the Greenberg show this upcoming weekend).  The reins would have be either out of scale, or so thin and delicate (to be close to scale), that they would be pretty much invisible.

If this wagon was going to be part of home layout where  it can be scrutinized up close by fanatical asshats, I would have found something (like human hair?) to represent the reins. 

[C855B]

... I would have found something (like human hair?) to represent the reins. 

#38 magnet wire. Dollars to donuts you (of all people) have some in your micro-LED project arsenal.

[peteski]

#38 magnet wire. Dollars to donuts you (of all people) have some in your micro-LED project arsenal.

Thanks! I do have some really thin magnet wire (maybe even smaller than 38 AWG, but like I said, I'm done with this one.  I also have some 0.002" Nichrome wire, which would likely fit the bill too.  The other way to get some very thin copper wire is to take single strands from decoder-type stranded insulated wires.  Some brands (which are super-flexible), use a whole bunch of very thin individual strands of bare copper.  That could then be dipped in blackening solution to color it, without any paint build-up.

[diezmon]

Going to get some some roof paint on this thing, if I can get my yard raked first.

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[davefoxx]

Going to get some some roof paint on this thing, if I can get my yard raked first.

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Damn, @diezmon, that is one looooooooooong caboose.  What in the world was that built from or its purpose for being so big?

DFF