A newby's attempt at building a Micromodels Card kit.

[Mike Trice]

First attempt at creating a chimney and dome involved wrapping card around a cocktail stick then turning in a mini drill. Not a success:


I managed to find some 3mm dowel which was turned in the mini drill and shaped with needle files:


Trimmed to length and hollowed at the base then glue to the model:


It would have been so easy to cheat and use a 3D print for these but I felt I needed to continue following the Micromodels ethos of card and wood:


After painting. Not brilliant but I suspect I can live with it. The photographs are very cruel enlargements:

 

[Mike Trice]

On the home run now.

After scratching my head as to where I could find some nice wooden dowel for the dome I decided to use one of my Grandson's paint brushes, only to discover @Terry did the same on one of his models. The dowel was cut, drilled, and a cocktail stick glued in so it would go in my mini drill. It looked ok but looks pants in the photos:


For the buffers I used some card stamped circles (from a set of hollow punches) and cut short lengths of cocktsil sticks where they tapered:


The bases were then stuck to the discs giving crude buffers:


The buffers were glued in place using some Hi-Tack All Purpose Glue. THe body had to be supported vertically while the glue set:


With the buffers and dome painted here is the final model (or as far as I am likely to go with it):











I have some ideas of how I could make the model better so might well try another at a later date. A major benefit of using scans of the original cards.

 

[Mike Trice]

I had bought a set of hollow punches for leather work with a view to experimenting with some ideas using them.

The wheels supplied with the Micromodels kits are pretty unconvincing and I wanted to try and make something more prototypical.

Some 5mm wheel inserts were printed and punched together with some 5mm thickeners then some 5.5mm flanges:


After laminating together:

 

[Mike Trice]

A quick diversion regarding scale. I was always led to believe that the Micromodels railway subjects were to 1/200 scale. I printed some track to place the J50 on and it looked extremely odd so what was going on? Measuring the J50 it scaled out at around 1/186 however the track gauge of the model was near 9mm due to the flat representation of the chassis in the kits. The printed track was designed with a 9mm track gauge and as a result did not match the scale of the model other than wheel spacing.

The J50 comes as part of kit MIII which includes two other locos and some goods wagons. I thought it might be nice to build a wagon to go with the loco and started to build the Open Goods Wagon:


Clearly the wagon supplied in the set is to a different scale than the loco which surprised me as I assumed they would all match. Instead I had to rescale a scan of the relevant card thus:


My previous post mentioned attempting some nicer wheels and I used them on this model insetting them from the chassis. This gave me a track gauge of 7.5mm, pretty close to what is should be at 1/186:



The kit features fold up axles but I substituted simple 1.6mm mounting card. The solebars are backed with another layer of card to give a bit more depth when glued to the w-irons:


Buffers were fashioned as before from cocktail sticks and card punchings. Small rectangles of card were added as axleboxes. Note how the grey is reproduced to suit the printing process used. This is hardly apparent on the physical models:



The resulting wagon is now much better suited to the loco size wise:








Finally in an image that will be my entry for this year's untidy workbench award this is the glue I have now adopted, applied with a cocktail stick. I can get a far neater finish with it:

 

[timbowales]

I have used the same glue in a much larger scale, SM32 SAR 2’ gauge wagons!
Tim T

 

[Mike Trice]

I guess this is taking things to their logical conclusion. I thought "wouldn't it be nice to have a LNER Brake Van to go with the loco and wagon?".

Not being aware of one I thought I would have a go at producing my own, I mean how hard can it be?

Some drawing in Inkscape produced this:



I intended to include some tabs but got carried away. The roof needs sizing correctly but otherwise:

 

[sagaguy]

Came across these some time ago on the web,shows what can be done.

Ray.

 

[sagaguy]

I have all the buildings and track for you to download.

Ray.

 

[Mike Trice]

Thank you.

 

[sagaguy]

I have all the buildings and track for you to download.

Ray.

Just let me know what you need.

Ray

 

[Mike Trice]

Thanks. You have already put up some of the scans for LSII but have not included cards 1 & 2 so they would be welcome.

 

[sagaguy]

I`ll look into it tomorrow,off to bed now.

Ray.

 

[sagaguy]

I`ve put the shed etc on A4 sheets to make them easier to print out.Think i`ve managed not to leave any out.Gets quite confusing!.

Ray

Ray

 

[Mike Trice]

Thank you. Unfortunately Western Thunder resizes images on upload so large ones get made smaller. These are probably too small to print reasonably.

 

[Mike Trice]

Coal added which is a great improvement:


Improved loco driving wheels:


So far I have gone for silver rims but might try some black ones.

 

[sagaguy]

Thank you. Unfortunately Western Thunder resizes images on upload so large ones get made smaller. These are probably too small to print reasonably.

I see,Western Thunder load them at 92 0r 96 dpi.Load them into a photo editor and change the dpi to 300,this should resize for A4,Resolution is everything!.I save at 300 dpi.

Ray

 

[daifly]

A .jpg is an unsatisfactory format for this purpose anyway. Scan it to a .pdf which allows rescaling without significant loss of quality.
Dave

 

[Mike Trice]

I think I prefer black tyres rather than silver. I have revamped the spoked wagon wheels to be more sculptured and done a matching 3 hole disc wheel:



Close up of artwork in Inkscape:



Revised loco wheel compared to printed original in kit:



Just noticed on the loco wheel that I have the highlight and shadow the wrong way round on the outer rim!

 

[sagaguy]

Try this converted to pdf.If it works,i`ll convert the others.

Ray

 

[Mike Trice]

If you created the pdf by downloading the Western Thunder image, changing resolution than converting to pdf as suggested previously the quality of the image has definately been downgraded.

Image on left is as you uploaded a few days ago, image on right is pdf version: