The Re 460 pt 2

Finishing up the Re 460, I added some air hoses on my new lower chin, put a dab of red and white paint at the top of each hose to represent the operating cocks.

I also added a 'p' shaped fold of fine wire as a coupler and folded up some pantographs (remembering at the last second to put the 'up' one at the back). Yes, while the 460 originally had this style of panto, they have over the last decade or so been fitted with single arm top halves rather than the split arm  triangular style on most of the other stock that I had etched up.

Not too shabby. The white window blind is quite visible on the front-on pic. I suppose it should have been a slightly creamier colour.

While looking at these pictures taken with my 'proper' camera - as opposed to the pics from my 8 year old iPhone that usually populate these dispatches, some impressive details on Marklin's model revealed themselves. Not only is the correct name 'Säntis' clearly visible in the full sized pic under the driver's side window, but the Pininfarina logo is also in place on the other side.

Neither of these I've seen with my naked eye before, so I must say, well done Marklin, this is a far better model than I expected it to be.

At some stage I might fit some lead weight into the top of the body in the hope of going it a bit more grunt on the hills.

The Re 460

While I'm not mad about the prototype Re 460 - the skirted Pinnanfarina-designed body is a bit Mr-Blobby for my liking - you might recall me being pleasantly surprised with my purchase of an old second-hand one from the UK.

Upon getting it home, I promptly painted over the '2000' numbering on the nose to reflect the current livery as reflected above. The '2000' was added to the prototype for the same reasons it was to the Knight Industries Two Thousand: because it sounded all futuristic back in the days before the actual year 2000 rolled over.

The obvious things remaining to be tackled are:

• the round hole in the roof used for switching between track and panto power
• the massive pantographs
• the massive cutouts in the roof for the pantographs
• eliminating one coupler and adding a front headstock/plow

And after an hour or so, some progress was made. Alas I descended to bowels of the train room without my phone, so no in-progress pics... and a few of the 'before' state had to be stolen from the internet:

Some thin plastic was added to the roof to cover the hole and build up the areas around the panto a little.

A white sunshade was added inside (below), and a start made on building the lower front apron.

The next job will be to finish that lower chin off with some detail and stick some etched pantographs on top.

Yes the roof is a bit dark on these models but I'm not sure i would do a great job repainting it without making a mess of it...

As a reminder, this is what it looked like previously with the coupler in place:

More on the old InterRegio cars...

Following on from the last exciting episode....

The Re 460 was tested, and somewhat unexpectedly, it runs smooth as. I'm impressed, and pleasantly surprised... Obviously it can't haul the whole expanded consist up the grades but I'm very pleased at how well it runs.

I painted over the '2000' logo on the front ends with my 'go-to' SBB red, which was picked up fairly randomly from a model shop in another city a year or so ago. Despite this, it's a perfect match for the Re 460 red straight out of the bottle.

It also seems that the 'chrome SBB directional arrows on the nose' are only appearing on refurbished Re 460s. This program is ongoing as I type this and very few locos had been completed when the Gotthard base tunnel opened, so that's a task I don't have to attempt for this one.

As for the 'old school' green-stripe passenger cars, after reviewing some pics, it was decided that the cream coloured sides on the Marklin models should be painted white. The green is also a little dark for my liking, but as often happens with photograph, in different light the real things seem close to the very dark green (almost black) on the models, so I can live with that. 

So I attempted to carefully paint white over the cream, starting with the roof stripe above the windows.

I wasn't crazy about how neatly this turned out, so for my second attempt, used strips cut from white decal paper over all bits except for the red-logo/SBB/CFF/FFS markings on the side.

Despite being very fiddly with tiny thin strips, with much cursing and rework it turned out ok - certainly good enough when viewed from the mandated distances in Z scale. In the blurry pic taken below you can see the comparison between the cream colour in the upper car (I've painted the end bits white and painted and decaled the roof stripe) and a fully decaled car below (taken before the large decal patches had set smooth). Close enough I reckon.

A final touch was the addition of the very thin black stripe along the white sides (something I had never noticed on the prototype until looking at these pics up close!), which was added with a .05 black pigment marker. This should have a gap with some lettering in it, but I just did the stripe and reckon that looks ok.

Something to see here - updating the passenger train

It feels good to be home again after a month away...

While on Europe's fair shores, I picked up six second-hand Z scale items; a few of which are hidden in this picture:

Firstly, I tracked down a red Re 460 to lead the passenger train at a reasonable price. These locos are all over the passenger trains in Switzerland, and while 99-point-something percent of them are red like this, Marklin has, for twenty years, focused on churning out the various 'advertising' paint schemes for collectors... but no updated 460.

The red ones are hard to find in Z, and Lokmuseum says this model (88441) was produced between 1996-98, so it is well over 20 years old, with the prehistoric (two versions ago) three-pole motor.

The model looks sharp though, and in very good external condition, but I don't even know if it runs. We will get to that in a future installment. It will also need to be updated slightly, as it has the '2000' marking and no SBB directional arrows on the nose.

Behind the 460 above, you might see SBB passenger cars with the old green stripes along the windows. Three were acquired - one will be repainted in the white scheme to match the rest of the cars prepared a while back.   Two will remain in this scheme (albeit slightly updated) as 'overflow' cars that were commonly tacked onto the InterRegio trains to increase the number of seats available during the high season. For example:

 
Interestingly, these older cars seem to roll better than some of my newer passenger cars. All were bought second-hand, and perhaps some have led more difficult lives than others!