Hi Guy's
I travelled down to Sydney last weekend and attended the Annual Model Railway Show that the Epping Model Railway Club puts on. This year at Rose Hill Gardens Race Course in Sydney. It was a great show and I believe it will be or is the premier exhibition going ATM. It was a great day and I really did enjoyed catching up with many friends throughout the hobby. It was good to get out as home has been a challenge with a big Cancer scare involving my Wife Amanda really upsetting the apple cart. Thankfully it appears they got it all and we can get back to some normality.
One thing that I did notice in the Auscision Cabinet was two test shots of HO scale BDX/NOBX open wagons. They are a good choice to produce Ready to Run as they were plentiful on the NSWR system dating back to the Steam Days and there is still some heavily modified versions running today as container wagons and infrastructure wagons such for concrete sleeper traffic. It is a bit hard to tell but the underframes are much the same as built.
This raised a question in my mind? I have about 11 AR Kits NOBX wagons in various stages of Kit Build. What to do? What strikes me with the Kit is that it has allot of potential to be a great looking model. For when they were first produced by AR Kits in the 80's, the detail in the sides was really good. The rib detail inside the body was a real stand out. Today this detail is finally becoming standard among the producers and is expected when a new model comes out and I am sure the Auscision BDX/NOBX project will have this as have the AOOX/NODY projects of past.
This brings me to mine. I have pretty much completed 4 AR Kits NOBX's. My goal with these was to bring them up to a detail standard that could have them running around with my abundance of RTR Rollingstock. The detail on RTR from most manufacturers is pretty hard to match by most modellers and I struggled with these. I started these about 3 years ago. Doing a bit here and there. I did some of the work at work so to speak. I did allot of sleep over shifts at work and when I couldn't sleep I would have a little modelling tool box and set up and do some modelling. Just the building as I couldn't use paints on site.
One big aim was to build up the Bolster area as this is one area that is real deficient. This was all styrene work and while I was at it the angles of the fish belly was corrected. There was allot more brake detail added using AR Kits and SEM's parts. Shunters steps and grab irons were added using brass etch ladder and wire. Also I added the 4x2 floor board detail inside the wagon by scribing 15 thou styrene sheet and the end boards using 6x2 styrene. Later I worked out that I should of used 8x4 for the ends as there is only 6 boards on each end and not 8. Anyway photos explain things better than I can so here we go-
The Weathering on this NOBX was based around the wagon below. I also added extra door detail such as the door that had been replaced with that from a type 2 NOBX. It has extra tie rails on it. So far I have only done the type 1 as AK kits produced and haven't attempted the type 2. The different tie rails are probably the most notable difference but when you get down to it the underfloor has many differences which I am not going to go into till I work on one. It will be interesting to see if Auscision do both types and the CCX version too?
The difference with adding the bolster detail and correcting the fish belly can be seen in the next photo. Adding the bolster detail gets rib of the air that you can see above the bogie. This is a detail that is catered for in most RTR models coming out.
It makes a difference
A shot showing the straight forward kit against it
Here is a few showing the extent of the styrene work and detailing
This I added the detail to one that was built and painted previously
Now for some photos of the finished products
All four
It was an enjoyable project. Anyone looking for a modelling project to test their skills in this environment of RTR it comes out looking the goods. I will most likely finish the other several that I have and I don't think I will be replacing them with Auscision ones. Maybe I will change my mind when I see the RTR first hand. Anyway at $32 or there about for the kit, It is a cheaper option as long as I don't add labour cost to it.
Cheers Justin Moy
Excellent modeling Justin.
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