How did you improve your rolling stock?

[Tony Galiani]

Tomytec JR Shikoku 1500 - This turned out to be much more of a challenge and a struggle than I expected but I finally completed (or almost completed it) this weekend.  Story of how I ended up with some JR Shikoku rolling stock deleted!

 

I purchased a Tomytec power unit for it and expected a relatively easy conversion - which it wasn't though part of that is due to my doing some extra detailing.  Some was due to a tough fit for some of the parts.

 

Using a web site that purports to have a picture of every JR DMU I went through the pictures and noted the weathering and relevant details.  I like the modern with retro elements color scheme but it turns out that the air dams and light green color don't weather all that well so I scaled back my weathering plans to make it look like a relatively new unit.  In looking at the second batch of 1500 series, the lower air dams were painted dark green which works much better.

 

So ... I drilled out the holes to place the two roof pods and installed them, painted the couplers and underfloor equipment to get rid of the plastic look, added curtains to hide the mechanism (and should have added more), painted the shiny metal weights of the Tomytec power unit grimy black so that they stand out less, used Tamiya panel accent of the fan housing, painted the bogie dampers grimy black, added just a tough of black paint and chalk by the exhaust and added some brown weathering chalk to the bogies and underfloor gear.  Photos show that axle boxes and springs get pretty dirty while the central portion of the bogie does not seem to pick up as much dirt.

 

The rooftop housing should not be as shiny as it is but my first trip with clear flat did not work well.  Have some ideas to improve that but want to take a break from the model for a bit before I try them.  Also, there is a diaphragm piece at one end - I have trimmed it per the instructions and painted it but it is not installed yet.  The front air dams fit will on the static model but not so much on the powered chassis so after installing them - multiple times as they no longer fit well - I decided to call the model done for now.  From other posts on the forum I see that going back to add more touches to a model is common so maybe a touch more work in the future.  But for now, I have plenty of projects in the queue.

 

Ciao,

Tony

 

Edited March 17 by Tony Galiani
removed duplicate picture