Friday, January 11, 2019

Alan Keef K12 Diesel: Part 2

Whilst I soon realised on Wednesday that I'd messed up the etches for the K12 I pushed on to assemble as much as I could in order to check the rest of the parts. Rather than building up another OO9 version, this time I've built one for OO6.5 around the a Busch chassis.


Apart from the known issues everything seems to have gone together well. I did have a few issues assembling the parts due to not spotting a slight issue with the chassis which caused the cab to fall apart, but that wasn't down to a problem with the parts. The only downside to this version is that the chassis is much taller than the OO9 version meaning it fills most of the cab. Hopefully when painted and with a driver stood in the door way this shouldn't be too obvious.


I don't really have anywhere to test 6.5mm gauge models (yet) so a battery and a short straight piece of track had to suffice, but I think it looks quite good with the peat wagon.

Thursday, January 10, 2019

One Right, One Wrong

So yesterday I grabbed a few minutes here and there to have a look at the new prototypes. First up was the revised peat wagon etches


On the left we have the previous OO6.5 gauge prototype that was very awkward to assemble. On the right the new prototype etched cage this time assembled onto a Dundas Models rugga chassis for OO9. The good news is that the new parts are much much easier to assemble, and once assembled are indistinguishable from the previous version, so I'm calling that a success. That means these should hopefully appear as kits in both gauges before too long.

Flushed with success I moved on to having a look at the new etches for the K12 loco. Unfortunately on the very first piece I removed from the fret I've found a mistake; a half etched rebate is on the wrong side of the sheet. Checking the artwork and the mistake is definitely of my own making, which is rather frustrating. In my defence it's on a rather complex part that involves two normal fold lines and an underfold and I simply got confused as to which side ended up where on the folded part. Fortunately with the artwork being digital it's easy to correct; I can't imagine how people stayed sane correcting hand-drawn etch artwork! I'm going to assemble as much of the model as I can to check the rest of the parts, but it's going to need another round of prototyping before it's finished.

Wednesday, January 9, 2019

New Year, New Prototypes

It's been quite a while since I had any modelling to show while I updated the designs for the K12 loco and peat wagons I was working on back in November. Well hopefully that will all soon change and I'll have something new to tell you.


The 3D printed parts turned up just before Christmas, while the revised etched parts dropped through the letterbox this morning. First glance and everything looks good, so fingers crossed...