My Kingdom for a Z scale Re 6/6 - part 2

While a bit of work (and rework) has been going on behind the scenes on the Marklin Ae 6/6 -->  Re 6/6 project over the past few days, I don't have much in the way of pictures to show for it, as this wasn't that visually stimulating. Or stimulating at all in fact. But here is a summary report on the current sorry state of affairs from the Re 6/6 department:

1. The paper roof grilles were darkened with a wash of black so they look a bit better now. 
2. Some (fairly random) roof detailing was added ex the Ae 6/6 shell and painted.
3. I cut away a sliver of the dark grey sill along the bottom of the sides, as the real locos have this shapeliness (the Re 4/4 and Ae 6/6 are flat along the bottom). I didn't do a great job of this - taking a bit much off in places and it's not that even or straight, despite using a metal straightedge of considerable even-ness. I probably should have just used a marker to put a sliver of black along the bottom in the right place.
4. The red sides were given a light spray of dullcote varnish and this eliminated 95% of the barely-visible difference between the stock Marklin red and my painted red patches between the windows where the Ae grilles used to be.
5. The tinted-clear strips containing the 4 rectangular side windows have been glued back into place
6. The two larger 'main' front windows have been edged in silver like the prototype.

 So, with that largely sorted, I stuck everything together.

With the sides attached, it seems my homemade 6/6 roof is a smidge long (probably half a mm or less at each end) but overall it looks pretty decent alongside the 4/4, and at least they are the same width now.

Once this has all set solid, I'll add the sliver of red front and back that is missing in these pictures - it looks like it has a gap between its two front teeth at the moment. You may recall that this was removed to 'slim down' the overscale Ae 6/6 donor shell.

I'll also paint the quarter/corner windows dark grey in the next episode to match the other cab windows. The pantos are borrowed from another shell and just propped on top for looks here.

Obviously this conversion was never going to be a super-accurate, exact-scale model. For starters, the four side windows are too close to the roof. The position of the SBB/CFF/FFS on the side is too low... but that was never the intention here. It never is in my modeling. The plan was to get a believable Re 6/6 on the layout at a reasonable price and provide a bit of a modeling challenge and fun in the interim. So far we are on course...

My Kingdom for a Z scale Re 6/6 - part 1

The quintessential loco lashup on the Gotthard over the past few decades would have to be the so-called 'Re 10/10' pairing of an Re 4/4 and an Re 6/6.

So without a doubt, I need an Re 6/6 for Wassen - no model of an SBB Swiss railway in recent years would be complete without them....

While Marklin has produced Z scale Re 4/4s since 2012, the only Re 6/6s that have been produced in Z - that I'm aware of - were a very, very limited run of fairly expensive brass models from SZL (Swiss Z Line - the same folks as AZL who make the American stuff) several years back. These 6/6s seem to be an excellent model from what I have seen online, but as rare as hen's teeth and equally pricey.

A second option is a Shapeways shell, and perhaps I should have had a crack at that, but who doesn't enjoy a good modeling challenge!

So, I plumped for the third option, deciding it might be economical to convert a Marklin Ae 6/6 into an Re 6/6 if I could pick one up on the cheap.

The Ae 6/6 has a Co-Co wheel arrangement (instead of the Re's Bo-Bo-Bo) and is a little shorter in length and roof height, but it has the same general look, with a similar nose and four windows along the side. A year or more ago I purchased a red 'for spare parts' Ae 6/6 off eBay which was missing some bits, but had an intact body shell. Due to some misplacement by my parcel forwarding service (my old neighbours) it arrived a few days ago.

As I didn't have my phone with me when I started attacking this like a bull in a China Shop the day it arrived, let me present my initial findings via a borrowed picture (the model I purchased is actually red (fortunately) and missing pantographs among a few other bits):

As you can see, the overall look of the body is similar to the Re 6/6. The Re has single arm pantographs, but that's fine as my model didn't come with them anyway. And as I've mentioned - the wheel arrangement differs, but we'll tackle that later. My red one has rectangular buffers, which is actually correct for red Re 6/6s

So the immediate tasks to be tackled on the shell :

1. The roof (hmmmm, more on this below... )
2. Remove the bogie springing (molded onto the shell) - this was a one minute job. 
3. Carve off the front panel in front of the driver at each end (ditto). Well, actually I removed the edge closest to the side as this will be visible and left the inboard edge - this loco is always going to run behind a 4/4.
4. Fill in those grilles - quick and easy enough with some Squadron Putty.
5. Reshape the 'corner' windows.
6. A bit of painting to cover all this mess up.

Voila:

At this stage I was feeling pretty pleased with myself.

Until it was placed next to the Marklin Re 4/4...

I guess this Ae is quite an old model, probably with a chassis recycled from something else, and perhaps back then, being in scale wasn't so important.

Despite the 'real'  Ae being shorter than the Re, this model is Re length. That's actually fine by me!

But it is a bit taller than it should be (worryingly so, as I still have to lift the roofline) and dealbreakingly, the model Ae 6/6 is almost 4mm wider than the model Re 4/4, and all these things should be within a hair. I think that even in Z scale, and even with visitors being vigorously discouraged from looking too closely, this big puppy would look far too wide rolling around behind a skinny little Re 4/4.

So the decision on what to do with the roof was solved for me: the roof would come off, the body split into two halves, and shrunk under a new roof of the correct width. The razor saw was duly engaged.

As an aside, this is the paint I'm using, which is a Vellajo Game Colour red. And a lucky guess, as it was purchased two years ago and is almost a perfect match for the red on the Ae 6/6 (less so for Marklin's darker and less-orangy 4/4 - they must have decided to change colour over the years). The filled-in grilles need another coat or two. Note that I've left the coat of arms in place. All Ae and Re locos were 'named' and carry canton or town coat of arms. I'll do something to the 'Altdorf' that came on this one in due course.

The genesis of a new plasticard roof at the correct width:

The new roof was shaped using knife, fine sandpaper, trial and error, and then some details added:

I mixed some silver and black to darken it a little for the main roof paint. The 4/4's roof should also be a silvey shade instead of Marklin's dark gray, but that will be dealt with in the future.

The distinctive Re 6/6 roof-edge grilles were made up in Photoshop, printed out on a laser printer and glued on top of the painted roof with PVA white glue. Some leftover bits were added to the top of the roof boxes per the prototype. Once these are all set I'll fill those white bits on the edges with paint and dark-wash the grilles.

'Upper Wassen' pottering

• The houses were scenicked-in today and various weeds, bushes and small trees added around them and the surrounding hillside.

• The big bridge was weathered a little with some gray drybrushing and washing which don't show up in these pictures (indeed I may have taken them before I did this step) 

• A little barn was added to the hills of  'Upper Wassen' that was a common prop in the railfanning days (the real barn below)

Unfortunately I'll never be able to exactly replicate this shot because my model of the bridge has no rear side!

And the 'model' scene from the other side on the layout :

All in all, the snooty suburb of Upper Wassen is looking pretty decent.

It might almost be time to start popping in some catenary poles on the middle level.

'Upper Wassen' house #2

Following on from the previous edition...

Now let's get onto the brown house with the shutters to the right of the red circle in the upper half of the pic above...

The same basic methods were employed with some subtle differences in designs and assumptions (I hope nobody is looking too closely)

This time I wasn't going to have windows-with-no-substance, so drew in the frames with a pen and coloured them with a wash of grey afterwards, as you may see in the pic below. You might also note between the above and below pics that when I placed this next to the other house... for some reason I'd made it much taller, so had to take about 5 boards out from between the ground and first floors to bring it somewhat back into proportion. Ah the beauty of just winging it...

Shutters have been added in the above pic - half height on the middle floor, where window box/railings will take up the bottom half - and the railings themselves are being made per the previous installment;s methods, except this time I didn't paint on any flowers.

Also added was that odd yellow conservatory thing on the left side.

Ta da. 

This new house (on the right) is a little more interesting prototypically because of the colour, and the shutters, which the other one doesn't have. I went back and lined/greywashed the windows on the left hand residence as they looked a bit silly in comparison.

In the next exciting edition, I suppose I'll scenick these into place properly, and plant some trees around to finish off this wee scene. At some future stage I will look out for some small hatchback in 1:250 or 1:300 scale to park outside.

'Upper Wassen' house #1

There is a 'suburb' of the tiny village of Wassen that I'm going to call 'Upper Wassen' for the purposes of my own mental pigeonholing. I'll define it as the houses between the middle and upper levels of track that are accessed via a tiny road tunnel - barely wide enough for a car - under the middle level that trainspotters commonly traversed on their way up to the Command Post.

At the real Wassen, there is a cluster of two houses and some barns just beyond that small tunnel, and another on the way up to the upper level signal cabin that I made recently. I'm going to model the two and one of the barns up to the right.

I'll start with the pinky coloured house, as I have a reasonably detailed picture of that seen below.  Both this and the browner one beside it may have been built at the same time to a similar pattern, but the brown one behind has a yellow extension on the near wall:

As with all modeling, I'll be taking a few liberties and making a few assumptions, but hopefully the overall effect will be close enough.

A start was made on the front - the most visible and complex side - by cutting some window holes out of pre-planked wood sheet. This sheet is a bit coarse for Z scale, and this pinky house's siding in particular compared to the brown on), but it is what I have.

The houses are three storied on top of a basement/garage, so I've begun that foundation using some fine-scale stonework-embossed card with two garage doors cut-out, and some of the planked wood inserted behind.

The basement was built up around a thick card base to see how that looked, and some of the dark brown flower-topped 'fencing' that surrounds the various porches and balconies made from the same planking, but with the planks running vertical. This was placed on the layout temporarily and trimmed to an approximate fit:

 The three walls were completed and stuck together, with some scribed card in behind to represent windows - in hindsight this is far too light in shade.

The foundation fencing and concrete patio has also been painted.

Before this had begun to set, a pinky shade of paint was formulated and applied, the walls glued onto the foundations, and a roof added and painted. The pinky shade was intentionally made a little darker so it wouldn't stand out so much on the model, although the final model has turned out quite nicely so maybe it should have been more of a showpiece!

More of the fence railings were applied. As they are topped with flowers in the real thing, I dipped the edges in PVA white glue and dabbed them in some model ground cover:

 These were applied straight to the pink sides.... Then a chimney, sun umbrella and a few more details were added, flowers of red and yellow were dabbed on ... and... voila!

Close enough for a passing racehorse not to be completely appalled.

Upper Level Signal Cabin - Take 2

As you may recall from a previous episode, I built a model of the upper level signal cabin/track maintainer's house (I assume that's what these are).

I wasn't that happy with my construction, as it stood out like a dog's sore thumb. Too big and too bright.

The building isn't well-photographed due to its location (or more to the point is it is well-photographed, but it shows up as a tiny speck in the background of everyones pictures).

Fortunately, Swiss train photographer extraordinaire Georg Trub recently posted a picture that showed off the cabin rather well (lower-right ahead of the ETR 610) and made me see the errors of my ways - which should have been quite obvious from the proto-pictures I posted last time!

Aha. So even allowing for his angle and telephoto compression, my model is too wide. And the real one has a dark tiled roof rather than orange. Duh.

So, unhappy with my first effort, I replicated it in a slightly shrunken state using the same basic construction methods.

Hmm, that looks a lot better to my eye so it was glued into place:

It may not be clear from this angle - as it is largely obscured in the cutting leading up to the tunnel portal - but I also built the small wooden shed (which does have an orange-ish roof!) to the right of the main building which is quite visible in Georg's pic. I should add a few small trees in front of it.

While it does look good from this angle, it is extremely compressed in its depth, so doesn't look so good in any picture taken from the command post. At the real Wassen, this section of track is probably 4-5 times longer than I had room for, so the house always looks very distant. Perhaps a tree hiding some of the building's side might minimise that.