Railway Ballast Cleaning Train - Part 3

Why did I pause the ballast cleaning wagon design and build to start its associated power generator wagon? Well, the design of the former is intense and potentially exhausting. At the end of it would I then be motivated to start all over again with the power generator wagon? By turning attention now to the latter is refreshing and seeing both develop together reminds me that the two wagons are inseparable in practice.

The power generator wagon has fixed wheel sets located in axle boxes hung from the chassis together with leaf springs. These include quite detailed parts; very small in 4mm scale that FDM (fused deposition modelling) printing cannot reproduce well. Fortunately, I had available a scrapped kit built wagon with detailed injection molded parts precisely matching the prototype. These, including a portion of sole bar they were fixed to, were cut from the donated wagon and inserted in the sole bar of the power generator wagon. BTW, brake blocks were also reclaimed.

Inserted axle box - final

Now, the sole bar of the donated wagon is not as tall as the new wagons so, the axle box etc. had to be offset in the new sole bar to be flush with its base. When I placed the new wagon on the track the buffer line was at least 1 mm higher than other wagons! This is not much, but glaringly wrong. Here we go again, 2 steps forward and one back. The parts had to be cut from the new sole bar and its height reduced to match before replacing them. Razor saw cuts were filled with superglue and bicarbonate of soda sprinkles to give a solid infill then filed smooth.

Weathering was applied with brown pastel scrapes (appears grey in photo)

I am impressed with the levers and hangers that printed better than expected. Vacuum pipes were made from solid copper wire with thinner wire wound around.

I'll return to the other wagon design and build next.

To Part 4

To Part 1