All things light and narrow

[Beaver]

I have finished Ha 2.

 

 

This was one of the cars made using 3 layers of 10 thou which turned out to be too thin and too easily distorted even by weak solvents. I have used the thickest transparent sheet available to reinforce it and try to hold things flat, but there is still visible distortion. For this reason only one side has been given transfers.

 

A lot of the design and it's flaws comes down to trying to be too clever and cut things too fine. I have one more car using these flawed techniques to finish and then will move on to new techniques and ideas informed by the experiences with the ten-thou troubled trio.

 

Namely, thicker materials, less internal complexity, and likely using CA for laminating instead of any solvent (like my first carriage, HoHa 10, which has not distorted in the slightest all these years).

[Beaver]

 

Steel balcony coach is well advanced. Roof is still loose and perched in place.

 

The last of the too-thin car body projects, this was easy enough to straighten out with some thick pieces of clear plastic for both reinforcement and glazing running the entire length. The glue residues are not normally visible but I might add some tissue paper sun blinds to conceal the worst ones. Advertisement boards are planned to go each side of the data patch to conceal the pitting in the side caused by the solvent. In future I plan to use thicker materials and laminate them with CA rather than solvent, as I did that on my first coach and have had no issues with distortion, warping or pitting at all, and it is by far the oldest so any issues should be evident by now.

 

The roof is a slice of beer can. Beer cans are an excellent source of pre-bent, easily worked, non ferrous sheet metal for models. Wash it thoroughly first. It does get wavy edges quite easily but is so pliant when loose that in can simply be flattened down when gluing into place and will then be straight and solid.

 

 

Progress on the NiFu bash from Tomytec bits. I added transfers and spray varnish before tidying up the paint (said tidying is yet to be done) as otherwise I might have had to wait a while for spraying weather. A little alteration and correction by brush, fine abrasive paper etc does not spoil the finish of a model that is supposed to look used and natural rather than the impossibly neat look of commercial models. Showa localden models look silly when painted and finished as flawlessly as modern JR East shinkansen. There should be patches, scratches, dirt and scuffs of some kind. Though as yet I have not done any actual weathering on any model, that is another thing to learn.

 

Once the paint and varnish is corrected to satisfaction the only thing left to do is glazing. I have not yet figured out how to add the bars behind the windows of the luggage/mail section.

[Beaver]

Huzzah! Pictures that are not an unfocused blur which people won't want to see!

 

 

WaFu for you.

 

 

I made this mostly out of the contents of the leftover kit pieces box and the plasticard offcuts box. Only the strip was fresh. There were not enough planked bits to do both doors so one is a smooth faced steel replacement for the worn out or broken original door. A feature I have wanted to model ever since first finding a prototype example photograph.

 

I do want to do some fully steel bodied vans but there are some strange complications to the various designs that I have not figured out. Admittedly there is one type that just copies the typical wooden design but using metal. Thought that would just look like lazy modelling, but it seems maybe not given how the steel door on this van, which was done in that style, looks.

[Beaver]

 

Now rolling on a Peco N gauge wagon chassis, shortened to fit and with underscale bits removed. Since Peco made the chassis from their Wonderful Wagons range available as separate items, hundreds of thousands of kit and scratchbuilt models in N, HO narrow, OO narrow and 09 have been built on them. The separate chassis considerably outsell the original complete Wonderful Wagons!