Sketchbook

For your entertainment and reading pleasure, (and because I haven’t posted in ages) here is a page from my sketch pad exploring ways to assemble “Little Wonder” This is an alternate way to work the project than the one actually assembled so far.
You can see the water tank area would be a solid block of styrene, laminated to the right size. With a differently constructed smokebox affixed to the front. I think I’m going to try this as this way would be more suited to my planned construction of The larger Geo. England Locomotives like Welsh Pony and Little Giant.
I also need to work on dropping the footplate. Even though it will only be a drop of about .5mm in this scale.

Why?

So, there are a couple of questions that probably need addressing before I go any further. They are both “Why”.
Why bother modelling such ridiculously small trains?
Why the Ffestiniog Railway?
Aswering the second question first, because that’s easiest. I have always loved the Ffestiniog, ever since my first trip on the line as a spotty impressionable teenager on our first family holiday to north Wales. We travelled on many of the Great Little Trains of Wales on that trip. Snowdon, Tal-y-Llyn, Vale of Rheidol, Welshpool and Llanfair to name but a few. But it was the Ffestiniog I fell in love with. Our first trip on the railway was behind the Alco “Mountaineer”. Then the trains only went as far as Dduallt then or “Doo-alt” as we called it, and were totally shocked when the guard called out “The-acht” or something like that. The Railway reached Blaenau Ffestiniog and I was a member of the Ffestiniog Railway Society for many years. But never got to volunteer. Then life got in the way and I probably didn’t even visit for as many as 15 years, until my wife and I decided to visit North Wales on one of our trips to the UK from America. The Railway had expanded, becoming instrumental in the development of the Welsh Highland Railway. We rode both. The Welsh Highland is stunning but the Ffestiniog still grabs my heart.
The FR has unique and beautiful locomotives, like the double Fairlies “Little Wonder” and ‘Merddin Emrys” as well as the England locos like ‘Prince” and “Princess”.  Constructing such distinctive locomotives in such a tiny scale as 1:305 would help to create a railway atmosphere. Otherwise ther would be a danger of just having coloured blobs of plastic circulating around the scenery.
As for the first point. Why model these small trains? I guess that comes down to wanting to push my model making skills and try new things. I dabbled with T gauge before and quite successfully. I even scratch built my own loco. I forget what it was now. It was a hopelessly over scale body on a Eishindo Bo-Bo chassis. It worked so I guess that was a win but the project I was working on stalled and I moved onto something else.
I feel that working in these small scales can help me develop different skill sets and problem solving processes. Take the side tanks on Little Wonder for example. If I were working in 4mm scale I’d cut styrene sheet to size and glue the pieces together. Here in 1:305 scale the side tanks are but a few millimeters in size. So it’s far easier to cut an appropriately sized section of styrene strip to the correct length and use that. Then these different ways of looking at things can lead me to finding different ways to solve problems in larger scales.
Well, that’s my theory anyway. Let’s see if it works.

Proof of concept

Having made bold claims about re-creating the Ffestiniog Railway in 1:305 scale I thought I’d better follow up my words with actions.

Here is a first view of my “proof of concept” model of the Ffestiniog railways first double Fairlie “Little Wonder”. 

Of course, you probably can’t make out too many details as that little white blob circulates the track, so try these tiny photos.

The proof is in the seeing

Here we are then. Proof positive that 1:1,000 scale scratchbuilt model railroads are a viable proposition. The locomotive, mounted on a IDL Nano trains platform, cut to fit, does work. The loco has a bit of a "tankslapper" (yawing motion) on the back straight. I think because the magnets aren't aligned properly. But other than that this is a phenomenally promising test run. If I can do this then you can.

I hope you are as knocked out by this as I am.

p.s. after I posted this I removed and re-aligned the magnet platforms and the "tankslapper" was improved. Not cured, but much improved

An SD38

Here it is the first scratchbuilt 1:1,000 scale locomotive from the Nano workshops.

An EMD SD38.

"But wait a minute" I hear you say. "You said it was going to be an SD70, or a SD60 or something.Now I'm confused"

I don't blame you. It was to be an SD 70 or 60 or somesuch. But as I progressed and studied the drawings and realised the models at 1:1,000 scale. I came to see that an SD60 or 70 was just looking the same. I needed something a bit more distinctive. So I came across some drawings of an SD38. Granted at this scale this could be anything from an SD 38 to a 40. But its shape has more... More character. Construction wise its just a selection of styrene strips cut to size and glued together. There's still a bit of filing to do in the roof fans to level them off. But once again, you're seeing this several times actual size. So in reality it doesn't look so bad. Take a look and let me know if it will pass muster as an SD38.

The next task will be to mount these to some of the magnet platforms and see if the train runs.

A boxcar

Here we are then everyone. You will remember how I wrote before I went on holiday about the ease of constructing a boxcar. Well its time for some photographic proof...

Its about 14mm long 3mm wide and 4mm high and is meant to represent an excess height boxcar. Of course you won't know its an excess height car unless you see it against a regular height car...

Still these are very easy to make, the toughest part being the filing out of the grooves of some embossed styrene to make the distinctive ends.

It looks a bit crude but its the first car I made and you're looking at it several times actual size.

But wait there's more to come.

What am I playing at?

I really think that I'll add that as a label for my posts because every time I do something in 1:1,000 scale I have to take a step back.
I started on a caboose last night.
12mm long over the couplers, 9mm long body, 5mm to the top of the cupola, 3mm wide...
What am I playing at?