Sébastien,
I admire your tenacity and workmanship.
I feel sure that the coach will look great when finished.
I am not sure if the bogies are completely 'stiff', but you should really have one side able to rotate slightly so that it will allow for uneven track.
All the best,
David Leech, Canada

 

Seconding what David mentioned,
I recently put together a 2-axle track cleaning car with no suspension or means of wheel movement and it has severe derailment issues because of it. The car is almost entirely unable to traverse less-than-perfect track work and thus will require some re-engineering of sorts.

I agree it would be of great benefit to incorporate some sort of axle movement, but aside from that your car sides are looking excellent!

-Travis

 

David, Travis, the bogies seem to be very stiff unfortunately
I will look into adding some flexibility in the near future

Thanks for the tip!

Sebastien

 

This articulation is very easely made by screwing the sideframes to a center bolster with a little play so they can osscilate around this pivot point (the bolster) It works very well in metal I haven't tried it in woos. Good job Sébastien. Be sure to use a few coats of spray filler (bouche pores in French) and sand in between coats to erase the wood grain effects on your car side and roof surface, making it look like metal. On the many Atelier Vaporiste OCEM kits this sure seperates the men from the boys. and is well woth spending a little time.
Cheers,

 

Hi Simon, thanks for your message
As I responded to David and Travis, I will redesign the bogie later, for now I am very busy with the paint which is something I am not comfortable with
I use Gesso as a spray filler because I prefer minimizing the use of hazardous substances. I "repaired" the flaws on the side panel I photographed above using some Gesso and sand paper
From what I understood I won't have to sand the roof because it was made of a kind of oil cloth (please correct me if I'm wrong) and I'll make some tests by covering the wooden roof by cotton fabric and soaking this with gesso to simulate oilcloth.

 

In HO scale I used to reproduce tar paper roofing with tissue paper (papier c...l) and wood glue. It worked fine. Geso is a good idea, but may not stand upto rain too well. Looking forward to seing the result.

 

Gesso would be protected by primer, paint and coat and I probably won't run it in the rain
Time will tell, and if I have to rebuild the roof, I'll rebuild it

 

looks out standing keep us informed with your progress.

 

Today I learned a lesson the hard way: decals printed from home will probably not work
I drew some decals on my computer (very time consuming, I don't even remember when I began ) and printed them on a decals sheet of paper.
The result looked very promising when printed:

But once put on my test side, the colors faded. Maybe I didn't put enough coat over the decals sheet?
And the "Third" on the left was the first decal I put on in my life, so it is even worse than the others

Second lesson learned: drill holes before paint

I made the handle and the knob from brass rods, they look a lot better for real than on this photo.

About the decals, how do you guys do this? The printer does probably not put enough ink on the sheet. Do I have to use a printer and cutter like the very expensive xTools M1?

Thanks!

Sebastien

 

About the decals, how do you guys do this?

I found the same as you. My inkjet does not produce adequate output for decals.

What we do is ask the professionals and pay $$.

I've heard that you can get white laser cartridges, so if you have a laser printer it will print white decals nicely on clear decal paper.