Tintin Project - the Vehicles

[loupgarou]

Have a look at the Walthers catalogue:
https://www.walthers.com/products/accessories/couplers-and-trucks/#

It's one of the biggest sellers of model railroads in the USA.
The passenger car looks like an old american one, used to be sold by Athearn or MDC Roundhouse (in 1/87, of course)

[strobez]

Wow... so shiny! Those ones look like they're for people who know what they're doing.  My plan, such as it is, is just to stalk eBay until some cheapo second hand bogies pop up.  There seem to be lots of numbers, scales and ratios involved, so I might just have to buy by picture and hope for the best. Luckily I'm not that picky!

[strobez]

Alright. Put this one in the books! It was a fun, little build... so much so that I've now added the "Mogul" Class 76000 Locomotive from Tintin in America to my project list and am tracking down one of the Dapol baggings of the Kitmaster 1/76 kit.

Anyway, I finally got the metal trim painted and the decal applied. I kinda screwed up the yellow paint job, but it's not terribly noticeable once all the other bits are on.



There we go... all done. Oh, wait is this the front? It's rather hard to tell...



And a few glamour shots for the magazine spread...

[loupgarou]

Very nice. Even if the base could have been a bit more generous. I hope you have glued well the wagon to the rails.

[strobez]

Heh... I did struggle a bit with the base.  Even though I want to keep all the Tintin builds standard, some will require different bases.  I already experienced that with my Tintin rocket build, and I'm pretty sure I won't be able to squeeze a 1/72 L-749 Constellation onto one, but this tanker was right at the limit.  I turned it sideways in an attempt to squeeze a tiny bit more space out.  I'm debating about the 1/72 Arabian Dhow project I just started... on stilts on a small base? Or on the water on a bigger base? Probably the latter. 

[zenrat]

 

[NARSES2]

That's very neat my friend 

[Vorcha]

the railcar and base are beautiful 
...however I think I'd struggle enjoying my whisky, if I knew it was transported like this... 

[strobez]

Thanks Vorcha... although they probably wouldn't transport it like this to your house, unless you're REALLY thirsty.

Also, this past week (January 10, 2019) was officially Tintin's 90th birthday, having first appeared in le petit vingtieme on January 10, 1929.  To celebrate, I decided to unpack a little project I've been planning for a while.  In the first adventure, Tintin gathers up a bunch of scrap from the side of the road and builds himself a rail car.  I thought it fitting to just grab my spares/scrap box and have a go.  It wasn't quite random as I had been thinking about it for a while, but besides a bit of rail track, nothing was planned per se.

The whole story can be read on my blog - http://strobez.ca/wp/index.php/2019/01/11/scrap-rail-car-tintin-in-the-land-of-the-soviets/ - including some pics of the rail car in question.

Ok. So everything we need should be in here...



And here's what we've found... some tank wheels, some boxes... bits of styrene...



Wheels glued together and axel holes drilled out.



Some more bits and pieces... starting to come together now...



A bit of paint and we're ready for assembly.



Screwed it up a bit while glueing everything in place, but I won't tell if you don't.



Hmmm... needs a bit of paint touch up in a couple of spots.



After everything is dry, I'll add a clear coat and maybe a bit of a wash.



Paint touch ups done... now for a bit of a base.



And there we are. All done!



And, of course, some glamour shots...

[Rick Lowe]

Oh, well done! A nice, simple project to clear the cobwebs and complications of previous projects is always handy.

[zenrat]

 

[PR19_Kit]

That's a VERY good modelling job there Greg. 

But whoever designed it in the first place knew nothing about rail/wheel interfaces, it would have been VERY unstable in the real world. 

That Kitmaster Mogul was also moulded by Airfix for a time, and those kits may be a lot easier to find.

[Old Wombat]

 

[strobez]

Well, admittedly, I thought the tank wheels would've been wide enough to sit over the rails properly, and by the time I checked them it was too late to worry about it.

Much like the Loch Lomond Whisky tanker I just built, I think the Dapol baggings of the old Airfix/Kitmaster moulds are easier to find (or at least more recent).  One thing thing that bothered me with the tanker was that the undercarriage frame was a bit warped causing the car to bow a bit. I'm not sure if that is something that comes with the moulds (or age) so it's unclear if that was a general or specific to Dapol issue.  Makes me a bit hesitant to get another one if I can snag an Airfix box at a reasonable price.

I'm also hesitant until I decide that the Mogul is the way to go.  According to my favourite transport blog, The Transport Journal (https://thetransportjournal.com/2018/02/25/trains-of-tintin-4-6-2-pacific/) the train in question is a 4-6-2 Pacific... which means little to me as I'm just looking at pictures.  Out of all the kit box images I've seen, the Mogul looks the closest.

Of course, this is coming from a guy who had to have side by side pictures of a Fiat 500 and 600 before he could tell the difference... so... 

[loupgarou]

To help choose an appropriate loco, 4-6-2 is the number of wheels in a steam loco:
in this case 4= 2 axles ( 1 bogie) undriven
6= 3 driven axles
2= one rear undriven axle

In Europe usually axles are counted, instead of wheels, so this would be 2-3-1
Pacific is the standard name for this wheels setup.

From wikipedia:

Categorisation

Steam locomotives are categorised by their wheel arrangement. The two dominant systems for this are the Whyte notation and UIC classification.

The Whyte notation, used in most English-speaking and Commonwealth countries, represents each set of wheels with a number. These numbers typically represented the number of un-powered leading wheels, followed by the number of driving wheels (sometimes in several groups), followed by the number of un-powered trailing wheels. For example, a yard engine with only 4 drive wheels would be categorised as a "0-4-0" wheel arrangement. A locomotive with a 4-wheel leading truck, followed by 6 drive wheels, and a 2-wheel trailing truck, would be classed as a "4-6-2". Different arrangements were given names which usually reflect the first usage of the arrangement; for instance the "Santa Fe" type (2-10-2) is so called because the first examples were built for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. These names were informally given and varied according to region and even politics.

The UIC classification is used mostly in European countries apart from the United Kingdom. It designates consecutive pairs of wheels (informally "axles") with a number for non-driving wheels and a capital letter for driving wheels (A=1, B=2, etc.) So a Whyte 4-6-2 designation would be an equivalent to a 2-C-1 UIC designation.

On many railroads, locomotives were organised into classes. These broadly represented locomotives which could be substituted for each other in service, but most commonly a class represented a single design. As a rule classes were assigned some sort of code, generally based on the wheel arrangement. Classes also commonly acquired nicknames, such as "Pugs", representing notable (and sometimes uncomplimentary) features of the locomotives.[57][58]