DalaGStanator's Customs, Mods and Experiments

Now for my first full fledged model for the realistic track system: a British 4-4-0 with the test smokebox from earlier, that draws heavy inspiration from a GWR 3700. The only real differences are it has a round topped firebox, no outside frames, a flat running board and non tapered boiler. It only seemed fitting due to the smokebox interior being based on City of Truro's. Rather than building the chassis and wheels first like I normally would, I actually started with the tops of the loco and tender (which made things a bit easier).



The coal was made from clay pebbles mixed with hot melt glue, similar to the pile of coke on the Rocket. This time, however, I ended up ruining the texture by overusing the glue and (initially) not building a ramp inside the tender. Would've looked much better if I let them set hard and painted them layer by layer. The tender is also a bit heavier than the loco because of it. Like on TOMY and TrackMaster engines (and the fake bogies on the original stock), the middle wheels are decorative to reduce drag or derailments.



It's also my first attempt at recreating cab detail (something I always found too confusing for me to study), so it's naturally missing quite a lot. I knew some electr(on)ic components, gears and random scraps could make decent pipes, gauges, firebox doors, handles and other basic elements, but the arrangement seems a bit off (and the backhead is bigger than the firebox). The two firefighters for the driver and fireman are still just the right scale, if not slightly too short to reach the windows. My next European rolling stock should be a little smaller to look even more perfect with such figures. When I wanted to see how someone else made coupling rods that actually link wheels together, I found this YouTuber named A.B. Railfan. His only tutorial showed how to build a cardboard chassis with rods, and he used small pieces of straws glued at the ends of skewers. In addition to adopting said method (with matchsticks and plastic tubes), I decided to try building the bogie, driving and tender frames in a similar way to his chassis. While I did get the rods to work to an extent, I made the holes for the crankpins too close to the axles and the frontmost drivers don't roll very well. That resulted in relatively small revolutions and no synchronisation, combined with the corrugated surface. I don't have much faith in cardboard wheels and hope to make them from something more reliable. The bogie is also held on very poorly and falls off whenever the model is picked up. I should've perhaps linked a drawbar to it from the drivers instead of poking a hole at the front.



I brought in the coach from the original set to see how it would look with this loco. I initially thought it seemed to be too short, only to find it actually matches the height of a BR Mark 1 coach behind the same style of tender. I could use its measurements to make appropriate rolling stock for subsequent engines like this. Here it is with the Rocket and Skarloey to give a better idea of its size:



A bit sad how going back to my "normal" customs after this will feel like a huge downgrade. Apart from the cardboard wheels and the bogie, I'm very pleased with how it looks and hope any future builds could reach similar levels (if not even surpass it).