Third Rail Land in Southern France

Font Romeu train station

Beware of the Third Rail ! 

A short summer brake : Some photographs from the third rail land in Southern France. Metre gauge, vintage motors, controllers and resistors. It could be considered as an Interurban ...

A fine brass pilot for the Ft Wayne Interurban Combine

The Fort Wayne -Lima Interurban combines and their sister cars had some very light steel pilots. 3D printing such a fine piece in resin is impossible. For this part, I will try out 3D brass printing. In fact, not the brass is printed, but the lost wax moulding. This process is expensive, but permits wall thickness down to 0.5 millimeters.

One pilot would cost as much as the half of an entire resin printed carbody. But it is worth to be tried out.

The 3D brass printing process is presented here : http://i.materialise.com/materials/brass

Ft Wayne-Lima Combine - riveting the rounded ends

The riveting of the rounded ends is particular complicated and time consuming. I found a new procedure to accelerate this procedure in Cinema4D. One single rivet is cloned following a given radius and start/end angle. This may speed up the painful riveting work and soon I could start to design the floor plate. A first plate would be prepared for a Bowser PCC drive. With a Hollywood drive this car could be equipped with full interior seating.

The doorsteps will be part of the floor plate this time, as no radial coupler is required for this car.

The mythical Winona Windsplitter - and his not so spectacular rear end

Winona Windsplitter rear end

One of my current "long term projects" is the Winona Windsplitter as an H0 print model. It is not as advanced as the Ft Wayne - Lima Combine, but sometimes I like to change, because working on a single project could be boring.

Nothing spectacular was done, just the rear end of this car, which is nothing else than a standard rear end of a Jewett build car.

But some details were more difficult than expected: the arched doors and the buffer with its steps. But it is done.

Of course, the elliptical front end, this will be another round.