Train Your Garden

The engineer of the WESL has entered into an annual challenge contest called “The Mik”. Mik was the screenname of a gentleman named Alan Bupp, who posted on a web forum called largescalecentral.com. Mik is unfortunately no longer around; and approximately since 2009 his friends on the forum have held a contest each year in January in his honor. Each year has a different theme; it is usually either something that rolls on the rails, or goes alongside the rails on a layout.

This contest is great – it stimulates the mind, spurs people out of their winter doldrums, and results in a lot of activity on the forum – everyone posts progress pics and descriptions of their builds and offers helpful constructive criticism where pertinent. There are folks of all ages and skill levels participating; this engineer is on the lower end of the skill spectrum, to be sure.

This year’s theme is A.W.N.U.T.S. AWNUTS was kind of a viral modeling theme a few years back, it stands for “Always whimsical, not usually to scale”. For the most part, RR modelers attempt to model realistically; the models should closely match their prototypes. Having a theme like AWNUTS permits more fantastical thinking and allows for a bit more creativity.

One of the rules for the Mik is that the challenger must first post a “napkin drawing” showing their plan. Here is mine: Codename Heavy Damage.

It is a “War Rig” in the style of the Mad Max movies, specifically, Mad Max: Fury Road. My title above is from another Mad Max movie- Beyond Thunderdome. Roundy-round is how some large scale modelers describe layouts that complete a circle, enabling the trains to just go around and around. The plan below shows the concept art for the War Rig in the movie.

I had a donor F7A locomotive that had some bad front-end damage, so a good candidate for reimagining.

The first thing to do was determine how much room the crane needs to swing at the back of the platform. It turns out 6 inches is the right figure.

The donor crane is from a “toy train” car made by LGB. So, the middle of the F7 train shell had to have 6 inches removed. This is a big deal to this train shop; such a big undertaking had not yet been attempted. The top and sides were carefully scribed using a square and level, and then the dremel team went to work with a cutoff wheel. The cuts were decent and only left a gap of a few millimeters to fill on one side. Most of the cut line will be obscured by detailing on the model.

The fill putty was sanded and then the shell was masked for painting. A matte black undercoat was chosen for the first layer. The front part of the train roof as well as the side vents will be chromed. The roof of the crane and the VW combis will also be chromed. The WESL design engineer decided that the drawing above needed some balance, so there will be two crows nests instead of just one, and the articulating saw may be eliminated. The photo below shows the rough placement of the major pieces for the rig.