Easter and Fowler

Since lights were succesfully tested in operation on Nystrup Gravel's Fowler F 30 work has progressed at minimum speed. Brackets for lamps have been fitted and holes for wires drilled in cab front and rear. A new air brush has arrived, which will come in handy as the old one was beginning to cause trouble. 

Cab rear wall with lamp bracket and hole for wires drilled.

Plasticard glazing for the cab front. I'm always labelling parts like these as they look very similar, but are actually made to fit their particular window openening.

Glazing for the front windows are ready but awaits repainting of the upper body before being glued in place. As usual the glazing is simply transparent plasticard cut a little over size.

Shortly after coming home from Budapest the Easter holidays saw me spending time in the family cottage. Bringing the Fowler wasn't an option and to have a little something to build during evenings I brought the 1/10 scale braked skip. Assembly progressed swiftly and I'm about to fit wheels and axle boxes.

The weather in Denmark during Easter wasn't good for outdoor modelling. Here frame and skip body rests are assembled.

Hopefully my testing of the new airbrush will have given me enough confidence to take on the challenge of laying down a new matt green topcoat on the Fowler upper body. Then I can finally install the LEDs in the lamps and fix them to the cab to allow for fitting of the final details and weathering.

Narrow Gauge In Budapest

When I visit cities abroad I usually try to get a railway attraction on the programme. Recently I was in Hungary's capital Budapest that has a very varied selection of railway features: plain normal standard gauge, trams, Europe's oldest metro, funicular, rack and pinnion line, railway museum and a narrow gauge 'childrens' railway'.

Mk-45-2002 arriving with train at Széchenyihegy station on the Budapets childrens' railway. The loco was built in Romania by the 23. August Works as 1569/1972.

I was fortunate to get a taste of several of the dishes at the Budapest railway buffet, but the 760 mm gauge childrens' railway took first place as it is a lovely scenic train journey through the hills of eastern Budapest that also has great value for non-railway enthusiasts (at least my travel partner said so). I visited the railway back in 2009 and not much had changed since my first visit. The railway was built in 1947 as a pioneer railway, an institution many countries under communist rule was blessed with. Here the young pioneers (besides getting a (un)healthy dose of political teachings) could learn working together running a railway with adults only taking care of the most demanding tasks. That's basically also what is happining on the railway today just without the communist indoctrination.  

The large mosaic above the ticket counter at Széchenyihegy station reminds of the time when the Hungarian flag had to be accompanied by the red banner on a depiction of the young pioneers. The uniforms have changed slightly, but the children are still saluting every passing train with (what to me looks very much) the communist pioneers' salute.

 

Despite visiting in early April two trains were operating on the almost 12 km long railway. Here trains meet on Szépjuhászné station. The train from Hűvösvölgy is pulled by Hungarian built Mk 48.2024.

The railway is a (for a Dane) steep climb from Hűvösvölgy to Széchenyihegy covering 235 meters in height including a horse shoe curve with a tunnel. Absolutely worth a visit.

If you visit the railway museum in the northern part of Budapest to see narrow gauge items you'll be disappointed: I saw only one small 760 mm draisine representing Hungarian narrow gauge railways at the museum. There is a lot of interesting standard gauge things to see (of particularly interest to me was the track maintenance machines and rail cranes). 

The single narrow gauge item exhibited at the Hungarian railway museum in Budapest. Draisine GV 179. 

Budapest is a nice city to visit, rail transport is extremely cheap, has good regularity and while very few foreigners understand Hungarian, Hungarians understands English just fine.

Huge Skip Progressing

During some busy weeks I have none the less managed to work on the unbreaked 1/10 scale steel skip from Feldbahnfactory. Basic assembly was accomplished during a weekend in the cottage and priming, painting and weathering is almost done by now. I plan to add final touches once I have assembled the braked skip. That will make it easier to get both skips finished with the same look and faster, too. 

Almost finished DIN standard steel skip in 1/10 scale photographed in the spring sunshine in the garden.

I have never built a kit in such a large scale in laser cut wood. I didn't experience any problems during assembly and the instructions are top quality and easy to follow. I didn't make any alterations in the assembly sequence which I usually do. Probably not too many ways to assemble a skip, I suppose?

I assembled the kit while in the cottage with just basic modelling tools and standard white PVA glue. I was a little sceptical with the kit's prolific use of layering parts to achieve mass in e.g. frame, wheels and the skip rests. In reality, once finished, the layering is only noticable in a few places. I'm sure that with basic filler and sanding the problem could be avoided, but I wanted to build the kit in the most simple fashion. 

Frames and wheel sets united. A nice detail is that the bracket for a round wooden beam for braking is included in the kit. A detail not present in many model skips.

Almost assenbled skip put together as a test with the cottage surroundings in the background. If assembled very carefully the kit will not look bad unpainted.

I had no trouble removing most of the parts from the frets. Only on one fret (the one with the skip body parts) it seemed like the cutting could have been done better. Nothing that hampered the build, but slightly annoying in an otherwise perfectly produced kit. The few and quite small attachment points on the parts are easily sanded away. On some parts I sanded the edges a little to avoid a square look. I did that e.g. to the edges of the skip's frame and the coupling chains. This is an area where a full laser cut kit will always come out a bit inferior to a kit that mix materials to achieve more prototype shapes. 

The rivets on the skip are represented with very shallow cuts marking out the rivet. In this large scale a real raised rivet would be much better, but it's one of the features laser cutting can't produce. Adding rivets can't be too difficult in 1/10 scale and if I aimed for a more detailed look of my two 1/10 skips I would probably take that approach. On the other hand the Feldbahnfactory kit is super simple to put together. In my view it has a good level of detail for its simplicity of assembly.

End view of the painted skip on the short track panel included with the kit. I have numbered the skip with roman numerals, on this end with a white pencil, a method I have also used in 1/19 scale.

Here is one of the places where the layering of kit parts are visible. Not too obvious and I will disguise it with some lost gravel and dust from the loading proces. This end of the skip has a fancy logo from a Ukrainian 750 mm narrow gauge railway in the western part of the country around Borzhava, Боршавська вузькоколійна залізниця.

The wood grain isn't particularly noticably on most parts. In this close-up you can see traces of layering on the skip body rests and some wood grain marks on the safety handle.

How the wooden parts would look once painted had me worried intially. Sometimes wood behave crazy when painted and no amount of sanding will make it look like anything but crazy wood. The wood used in this kit works well with standard rattle can spray can paint. I used a mix of my usual black primer from Games Workshop and the Beltoni texture rust paint, that I have used previously on my 1/19 scale bogie timber bolsters. The texture in the rust paint help create as slightly uneven surface on the skip, an effect I further enhanced with sprinkled on genuine rust dust from a prototype skip. Using ground up real rust is part of my 'Famous for nothing weathering method'. Further spot painting was done with an air brush and different dark greys. Initial weathering consists of an overall wash with heavily diluted rust coloured oil paint. I will be adding more weathering when I finish the braked skip. Weathering them together will help make them look like coming from the same industry.

Coupling chains during painting. Heavy work with files produced quite nice rounded chain links.

As a conclusion I feel that most of my reservations with the kit was put to shame. Where I suspected the kit to let me down (wood texture, round parts, layering etc.) it was either insignificant or easily avoidable with a little work. If you are looking for some impressively large skip models to display the Feldbahnfactory models are easily assempled and will look good on your shelf, mantlepiece or as a nerdy office display. My braked skip kit is on the Easter holiday modelling programme as it is a large kit that lends itself to outdoor modelling in the cottage. 

The Feldbahnfactory skip is great little (large) kit of the widespread steel DIN skip. It provides a resonably cheap and easy way of getting that impressive skip train on a shelf or in a museum's display case.