Spitfire's G3 Workbench

Spitfire2865

Western Thunderer
A little work on American subjects the past few days.
First Ive finally finished some of the more spindly bits of the locomitive, cab steps and feedwater brackets.
20200104_204119.jpg
The steps were originally printed in resin, however after trying to fit one on a brass rod and snapping it in two I put in an order on shapeways for the same parts in brass.
I now have to work out the feedwater piping coming off the tender and how that will attach to the locomotive. Im hoping I can make magnets work.

Some other work saw the flatcar bed get a coat of shellac (needs another coat) and new trucks.
20200104_194649.jpg
Old on the left, new on the right. The old ones were G1 trucks and the new ones were G3 trucks with bad whitemetal bolsters. Both have G3 wooden bolsters now. Because they were to be swapped on an already built car, they had to be the same height. Luckily after so much scratchbuilding I have quite the library of custom maple sections so sorting out the right combination was fairly simple.
Also the larger truck wheelbase suits the flatcar more and I want to use the old trucks for a short ore hopper Ive got an old kit for. Yeah its intended to be a narrow gauge hopper but its only a scale foot or so smaller widthwise.

And lastly I made up some more coupler pins today and have chained them to the car ends so I dont keep losing them.
20200104_200249.jpg
 

Spitfire2865

Western Thunderer
Today saw me get back onto CAD for a bit to finally finish up a car design I started several months ago.
car drawing whole.png
My absolute mess of a drawing. But there is some method to the madness, even if I forget it after so many months.

Frame and truck components
5mm parts.png
Car body and roof ribs3mm parts.png

And more frame parts
2mm parts.png

Parts have now been ordered for one car to see if Ive done something wrong. If all goes well, Ive now got one car design that should be fairly quick to knock out in future.
 

Spitfire2865

Western Thunderer
A bit of work this past week.
Most of this week was spent painting the trucks on the flatcar.
Disassembling, priming, spraying black, and reassembly took a good few days.
And today I decided to turn the flatcar into a gondola.
20200111_203619.jpg
And its all removable if I decide I prefer a flatcar. 20200111_203638.jpg
I should probably coat the gondola sides in shellac. I didnt have any maple the right size so the planks are dense balsa.
 

Spitfire2865

Western Thunderer
Well the lasercut parts are taking their sweet time to be made, so Ive been thinking about other projects.
One that Ive come up with is a Gnine microlayout depicting a private 7 1/4" line for garden maintenance and general home workshop support. Fairly simple but with the possibility of two loco operation with plenty of isolating sections.
20200125_231214.jpg
Its rather strange thinking about working in a smaller gauge again (Cant say scale as its still 1/22.6).
 

Spitfire2865

Western Thunderer
Well, the wood finally came in after several setbacks and over a month of waiting. Cut from 2mm & 3mm MDF and 5mm (nominal) plywood.
20200211_200746.jpg
The body went together pretty fine. No real issue with any of the MDF. However the plywood, which unknown to me was only nominally 5mm, has near destroyed all my motivation.
This has caused significant issue with partfit, especially on the trucks.
20200211_200733.jpg
Lots of plasticcard to shim out all the areas that werent right. This either needs to be all redesigned as a lamination of 2&3mm MDF or sourcing 5mm MDF. A quick search online has yielded no sources of even raw stock.
Anyone know of a source?

In separate news, Ive built my first Gnine locomotive. 20200211_200910.jpg
A little 3 axle petrol electric.
 

Spitfire2865

Western Thunderer
Well Ive been a very lazy modeller.
Past couple weeks have been spent painting up some wargaming miniatures so no progress on the boxcar.
But Im now on a bit of a side project.
Anyone on the G3 Railways facebook group may have seen Ive offered my services to a modeller looking to build an American G3 locomotive. Its out of my era but I must support the scale in my country if I can.
Trucks for a GE 65t steeplecab.
20200328_171208.jpg
Working from next to nothing but a crude side view and some photos online.
Theres a surviving example of these trucks in a museum but that museum is on the other side of the country, and currently closed due to that whole plague thing.
Oh well...
 

Yorkshire Dave

Western Thunderer
Past couple weeks have been spent painting up some wargaming miniatures

Military? what scale 20mm, 28mm? any chance of some photos. I've a handful of 28mm British Infantry c1944/45 to paint. :)

Anyone on the G3 Railways facebook group may have seen Ive offered my services to a modeller looking to build an American G3 locomotive. Its out of my era but I must support the scale in my country if I can.
Trucks for a GE 65t steeplecab.

Interesting, I'd like to see this when finished. Are they not the same trucks as a GE 44 or 70T?
 

Spitfire2865

Western Thunderer
Military? what scale 20mm, 28mm? any chance of some photos. I've a handful of 28mm British Infantry c1944/45 to paint. :)
Interesting, I'd like to see this when finished. Are they not the same trucks as a GE 44 or 70T?
The minis Ive been painting are Star Wars Legion.

The trucks are very different. More like an archbar without the diagonals. I suppose its due to the interurban design origins.
Waiting on criticism from the builder to see what he thinks of the design so far.
 

Spitfire2865

Western Thunderer
Well its been quite the summer.
Done very little with my time for G3.
But I have been doing some work on a Gnine micro layout. Its the same scale so it should still count.
20200816_150853.jpg
The tree still needs plenty of branches added before I can think of starting to cover it with clay.
But its good to get some large scale tree making practice in. Even if this one is on the small side at only 30' tall. If I ever get to building a G3 layout Ill need plenty of trees, and full sized ones at that. It is rather satisfying having it grow from a spool of wire.
 
Top