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Dutch State railways Hbis wagons

Building wagons without soldering iron.

Drawing and design

The building of this wagon is similar to the NMBS Hbikks described elsewhere. It is a tabbed construction in 0.5 mm ps. In this case the sides are a plain base with the ribs as separate layer glued on top of this. The same holds for the heads. This procedure is faster than engraving the entire sides from a single layer sheet. Some details such as the door handles were glued on.
The buffers, brakes, spring and axlebox are 3D printed. Also for the roof vent this looks the best procedure. See also the Hbikks Wagon

sketch
Sketch of wagon

Sheet with kit of interior and wagon frame
The kit designed to build frame and interior from 0.5 mm PS. The detailed sides and heads are hung onto this.

Sheet with kit of interior and wagon frame
The cosmetic parts that make up the sides and heads. This is the oldest variety with ribs as per sketch above.

prototype
The first pilot, this is the more common variety having slightly different door ribs compared to the sketch.

a small series of complete wagons
Photo showing a small series of 4 near complete wagons in white polystyrene.

prototype
Here we see 2 of these new wagons together with an Hbikks all done in the same paint job with their brown base coat. The Hbis's received their 4 vents on the roof before painting. The Hbikks now awaits further painting of its doors in a colour of very filthy aluminium.

a scene wagon with open door
A close-up of a loading cameo. This is a special version modelled with open doors to create a scene of visual interest using the earlier made pallets and pallets with sacks. See here for the page on those pallets and sacks

Follow-up designs

There were at least 5 major series Hbis, all having 4 doors, but with different door patterns. The main series with 3 and 8 vertical door ribs will follow, but these later ones will probably be done by 3D printing, this because of the 'floating' door ribs for the 8 ribs version and the cross section profile of the roof just above the doors. It is feasible to mill these side walls, but because of their higher complexity these will take about an hour per side, which is about 3 times longer than the first version. Printing these wagons therefore looks to be less work, also because it is possible to print at least 2 wagons in a single print session on the Anycubic. But it will entirely depend on the smoothness of the surface, if any further preparation by hand before painting will be necessary than CNC milling may still be the faster method.

prototype
The variation with 3 ribs


prototype
The variation with 8 ribs

resin printed body and frames
Both variations, these fit on identical 3D printed frame.

The above photo shows the current state of the art. There is a 3D printed frame to go with the wagons. Thus that leaves only 2 parts that after some cleaning up make a single wagon. You can hardly call it a kit, what is left to do is to fit 4 buffers, 2 axles and finish the ends of the wagons with coupling, brakeconnection, handrails and steps and apply a coat (not necessarily in this order!). The axles can be 13.8 mm fiNe-scaled N wagon wheels, this allows the option to use it as coarse scale N wagon.


copyright: Henk Oversloot
date: 16 June 2020