Model Modeling

While I had the big camera out,  a few pictures were staged on Wassen....

Re 4/4s with etched pantos, the lead one superdetailed, the others have been partially done.

Three Levels at Wassen

Peter Bertschi gets his shot at the Command Post (he was a rail photographer I met up here at this very spot in 2016)

Included for scale...

Scenicking through the Lockdown

With most of the world (including here) on Coronavirus lockdown, one might as well visit the train room to fill in an hour or two here and there.

Over the past few days I've made up some brass catenary masts for the middle level (finally!).

There are a few missing out of shot to the right but things are coming together and the layout is beginning to look more complete now. I placed my 1:300th PostBus on the road bridge for these pictures - it looked good in a forced-perspective-kinda-way until the upper level train was placed behind it!  

Interestingly, on the real Middle Meinreuss bridge, there have been two layouts of the masts in recent times. The bridge used to have two sets of masts spaced out on the main span, but since the bridge has had concrete walkways added, it has had one set in the centre. I didn't include the concrete walkways as they don't look quite as nice as the old style to my eye. 

Here is one of my prototype pics from August 2016 with the sticky-out concrete walkways (as not modeled!) and the posts in the centre of the span (as modeled!)

A tunnel portal has been installed at the left side of the middle level - my cliff face is necessarily steeper than the hill that the similarly shaped portal burrows into on the real planet Earth because it conceals the top level balloon loop.

And some trees have grown around and above it on the 'South Hill' tidying up this end of the layout a lot.

My tree supplies are running low though, so I need to pace myself...

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:

Nothing to see here

I'm away in distant lands doing 'field research' again.

Alas, I was a long way from the real (and my model) Wassen, but here is a recent pic of a semi-topical Re 6/6 at St Saphorin just to prove that I'm still alive.

More on my Flickr (warning: it is mainly mainly RhB of late, a probable next project after Wassen)

My normal intermittent service here may resume in about three weeks.

My Kingdom for a Z scale Re 6/6 - part 5

All 'looking' good, but now, how to actually get a speeding Rokuhan loco to run with a slower Marklin one...

I read on the magic interweb that you can take about .7 volts out of a wire using a diode, so 4 were soldered up in pairs and this did indeed slow the loco down a tad - enough that they run fairly comfortably together.

Experimenting:

As installed:

Then after some track cleaning, run-testing commenced. The first issue was the clearances between raised pantographs vs tunnel portals - this was quickly resolved.

As feared, the next problem was some uncoupling from the Re 6/6 on tight curves due to the long overhang of its body-mounted couplers. This was mitigated somewhat by clipping the wee 'uncoupling' nub from the underside of the coupler - on the sharpest curves this was hitting the outer rail and upsetting things.

But uncoupling remains somewhat of a problem, primarily vs the Marklin Re 4/4, as that loco is running slower and gets pushed in places, with its bogie-mounted coupler following the track line and the 6/6's sticking way out beyond the curve.

As an experiment, I put the 6/6 in front and because the 6/6 is a tad faster, the pair runs very well together with no uncoupling issues detected. Arguably the loco combination looks better too (from a distance!), as the 6/6 is a little taller than it should be. But of course this isn't what had been planned... is the 6/6 a good enough model to lead? I suppose it could be made to look a little better with more filling, painting and detailing of the nose, plus the installation of a pilot to replace the front coupler.

The other issue that has to be dealt with somehow is that my 'raised' pantos need to be lowered further to clear the fairly tight spiral in the south hill above the Wassen church just beyond where the above video stops...!

My Kingdom for a Z scale Re 6/6 - part 4

In February, when we last left the Frankenstein Re 6/6 - which you may recall was bashed out of a Marklin Ae 6/6 shell on top of a Rokuhan chassis -  it had a couple of issues to be resolved.

• The chassis runs too fast to mate up with a Marklin Re 4/4
• The Japanese prototype chassis has shorter wheelbase bogies so the thing looks a little airy underneath
• It has no pantographs (spare Marklin ones were balanced on top for pictures last time)
• The chassis has Rapido-style couplers, and I need to mate this to a Marklin Re 4/4 somehow
• The roof is a tiny bit too long, overhanging the front face slightly (mainly at one end)

Tackling these in reverse order.... The overhanging roof was something that was always going to bug me, so both roof ends were attacked with a Dremel and files to shave a tiny bit of material off, and repainted/weathered.

You can also see panto stands made from plastruct ladder on the roof

The coupling situation was resolved (hopefully!) with the arrival of Rokuhan snap-in Markin-style couplers. None of this Z scale stuff is close coupling, but as the 6/6 couplers are body mounted, it probably helps that the shafts are a little long. Hopefully...!

The original Rapido-style coupler circled in the above pic.

Pantographs were folded up and glued on top, and some boxes added between the bogies to fill the spaces somewhat. The real Re 6/6 has these boxes on one side and air reservoirs on the other, but I put boxes on both sides. As they are 'thin' in depth there is less risk of them getting in the way of the bogies moving about than thick round air tanks.

So that leaves one remaining issue :

• The chassis runs too fast to mate up with a Marklin Re 4/4

But we will leave that for another day.