Thursday, November 11, 2010

Croncrete slabs and rusty masts (2)


As promised in my last post, some more pictures. I have been unable to use any pictures made with my mobile phone, so I took some afterwards. These don't show all stages of building, sorry about that.

The catenary masts. I decided to go for non-functioning overhead for now. In the future these masts can be easily replaced with live wire ones, as the masts are attached to bolts wich slot in holes in the track plates. This also makes replacing a damaged mast very easy.
The base was made from 2mm dia styrene tube, with a drilled hole in which the 1.2mm dia brass tube fits. The 0.5mm brass wire was soldered to the tube. Some insulation from electric wire finishes the mast. I sprayed the whole mast a light grey colour, and then painted the wire-hanging parts black with a little drybrushed rusty colour. After all, Lileau community isn't spending much on maintenance ;)

The track, before and after. Tomix Wide Tram Track is really easy to use but I don't like the shiny rails and plastic. These had to be re-painted. The inside of the flangeways were brushed dark brown (be careful to whipe excess paint off the rails afterwards). I didn't paint the rail joiners and last centimeter of the pieces before joining them together to ensure electric conductivity. When dry, the rails and flangeways were masked and the plates sprayed concrete colour. A light wash of black ink and voilĂ ! Washing all pieces seperately makes the tramway look very lively.

The zebra crossing is a rub-on decal from (I believe) a Busch set. To get some of the whiteness and shine away, I gave the crossing some local weathering after applying.

This picture also shows the top of the M4 bolts the masts have been attached to. They look a little big, but I've seen examples of these in real life so I'm not that bothered about them.

By the way, the platforms aren't glued down yet, this will be fixed soon.

2 comments:

  1. This is REALLY looking great! Its amazing how quickly you've been able to get to this stage! That bottom photo is really awesome. Nice work!

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  2. Thanks Jerry! I guess the speed of construction has had to do with a lot of spare time and the will to get something actually done after some failed layout attempts. Can't promise I'll keep this speed ;)

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