Finally, the Big Red One is well… red. And it doesn’t look all that bad. We had a near disaster when we painted it first time because we didn’t prime the model properly and it came out seriously blotchy all over the place. Daddy had to do some quick late-night painting to save the situation, but after two coats of light grey and several of red it looked presentable by the next morning and Eldest Son had the biggest grin I’ve ever seen across his face when he saw the result, so it was worth it. The locomotives look pretty good together so I’ve trawled Ebay for an extra motorised chassis to fit under one of them, so both can now run on the as yet theoretical railway.
The railways first employee, Helmut, giving a sense of scale as he wanders past with some parts for a future wood wagon. As I half expected, all those layers of paint have gummed up the engine door thoroughly so it’s staying closed for now. Helmut is complaining that he needs new overalls because he’ll be invisible if all the locomotives are red.
I’ve tracked down a couple of videos of the original locomotives that these models are vaguely based on, defining ‘based on’ as “Has a passing resemblance to, from a distance, on a dark night”. The Mk48 B-B locomotive that is staple motive power for several Hungarian lines. Here’s a quick one to whet the appetite, I’ll try to put another one up this week sometime.
Using recycled cereal packets is proving succesful – they are solid when laminated, looks fine painted (these aren’t fine scale models, remember) and as long as we can get hold of the stuff as ‘waste’ we can build anything our imagination allows. The only snag is that these are pretty big models and even with three growing boys there’s a limit to how much cereal they consume so this week production slowed because we were running out of raw materials. Then at Aldi, we saw the recycling bins (required by law in every supermarket) and after some rummaging about we found enough card to last us at least a fortnight. So we went to Lidl and did the same. I also found these old document boxes being thrown out from the council offices, which are just the right size for our models. The boxes, not the offices. The very nice -if bemused- receptionist said I could take away as much as I could carry.
Having a cargo bike is useful.
Stephan, that’s brilliant…. much better than I ever managed when I used to build locos. Keep going and I look forward to seeing your layout when we come at the end of the year.
Lots of love,
Grandpa