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ewsjo
Guest
So here we go, to bring this up to speed I'll pop some pics up of where I'm up to so far with this project. I've had to spread it across several posts due to the number of pics, but it should illustrate progress so far.
This is my first power car, so it's a bit of a developmental test bed. Progress has been slow as bits are added, then removed as they don't work how I intended, but the production batch (another two planned so far) should be much speedier. I have taken a Farish dummy HST, as they are cheap and readily available, and despite lacking some detail, they are fundamentally the right shape. Some of the mods are FGW specific, but most would apply to any livery of Farish HST as a detailing project.
Here is the power car a while ago, it has had the major work carried out of blanking the guard's windows, replacing the cooler group with mesh and fitting the bar coupler to the nose. The pics with the 08 show how it couples just like the real ones do.
This power car has had the cab and luggage doors cut out, but the others will retain all the doors in the closed position. This also shows off the lowered chassis nicely too, but I'll cover that in a bit.
The roof has had the as built cooler group replaced with Shawplan etched mesh. A fan will be fitted underneath as it's rather visible
The next picture shows the modifications inside the shell, most of which is holes added or filled, but the horizontal struts are to mount the body on the chassis, and I've filed a lot of material away to lose the boxy look of the underframe. The bogie mounts have been filed down by a couple of mm until it looks right. The height matches the Dapol mk3s
These next few shots show the scratchbuilt interior. The high back seat was fitted as part of the MTU refurbishment, the layout is based on plans in the HST silver Jubilee book. It is all just plasticard and platic strip
Moving onto the mk3s, these are based on the Dapol model. All picked up dirt cheap from Hattons.
FGW Mk3 stock has, in the main, had the corridor doors removed. This means all my TS based stock (TS, TSD and TSB) needs these doors drilling out - there's a heck of a lot of plastic to hack out of these carriages and it's a slow job
Microtrains couplers have been added to these and the inner end of power cars, I'll also be adding air pipes, ETH etc. The height difference is due to my rushed photos, they couple fine on the flat
The toilet windows have been glued in to get them as flush as possible because FGW have the bottom half painted blue
Finally here's a quick test shot of the artwork for the Dynamic Lines artwork, produced from photo I've taken, and unusually for me, a perfect fit first time!
I've still got to draw up the artwork for all the small stickers by the doors, but it's all getting there slowly! There are some interesting mods to some of the FGW coaches, so I'll do some of these in the future. All told Ill have 5 or 6 mk3s in use
Next update should be a sit-rep on my Sprinter based project
If anyone's still awake after all that, until then 8)
jo
This is my first power car, so it's a bit of a developmental test bed. Progress has been slow as bits are added, then removed as they don't work how I intended, but the production batch (another two planned so far) should be much speedier. I have taken a Farish dummy HST, as they are cheap and readily available, and despite lacking some detail, they are fundamentally the right shape. Some of the mods are FGW specific, but most would apply to any livery of Farish HST as a detailing project.
Here is the power car a while ago, it has had the major work carried out of blanking the guard's windows, replacing the cooler group with mesh and fitting the bar coupler to the nose. The pics with the 08 show how it couples just like the real ones do.
This power car has had the cab and luggage doors cut out, but the others will retain all the doors in the closed position. This also shows off the lowered chassis nicely too, but I'll cover that in a bit.
The roof has had the as built cooler group replaced with Shawplan etched mesh. A fan will be fitted underneath as it's rather visible
The next picture shows the modifications inside the shell, most of which is holes added or filled, but the horizontal struts are to mount the body on the chassis, and I've filed a lot of material away to lose the boxy look of the underframe. The bogie mounts have been filed down by a couple of mm until it looks right. The height matches the Dapol mk3s
These next few shots show the scratchbuilt interior. The high back seat was fitted as part of the MTU refurbishment, the layout is based on plans in the HST silver Jubilee book. It is all just plasticard and platic strip
Moving onto the mk3s, these are based on the Dapol model. All picked up dirt cheap from Hattons.
FGW Mk3 stock has, in the main, had the corridor doors removed. This means all my TS based stock (TS, TSD and TSB) needs these doors drilling out - there's a heck of a lot of plastic to hack out of these carriages and it's a slow job
Microtrains couplers have been added to these and the inner end of power cars, I'll also be adding air pipes, ETH etc. The height difference is due to my rushed photos, they couple fine on the flat
The toilet windows have been glued in to get them as flush as possible because FGW have the bottom half painted blue
Finally here's a quick test shot of the artwork for the Dynamic Lines artwork, produced from photo I've taken, and unusually for me, a perfect fit first time!
I've still got to draw up the artwork for all the small stickers by the doors, but it's all getting there slowly! There are some interesting mods to some of the FGW coaches, so I'll do some of these in the future. All told Ill have 5 or 6 mk3s in use
Next update should be a sit-rep on my Sprinter based project
If anyone's still awake after all that, until then 8)
jo