Built your own fiNe-scale UIC Wagons


 

FiNe-scaling wagons now enters a new era! Here are the first results of the new axle guard for UIC wagons developed by Edward von Flottwell. I had the privilege to built one of the test etches in order to find any bugs.

I won't explore the ins and outs here, we will do that as soon as we are certain that this will be the final version and if it comes available.

The etch itself is a smart foldup in NS. This can be glued with cyanoacrylate or soldered, I used solder. The actual axle guards can be fitted to a base plate and one can choose between making a fixed axle guard or a compensated one (3 point suspension). This is done by folding some tabs over or not. The 2 base plates can be mounted on a frame base plate. This has tabs for different axle distances. The base plate can be glued to your wagon or used in combination with a bottom for entire home built wagons. The axle guard is developed for the 12.25 mm axles of the 2 mm Scale Association. Tophat bearings represent the axle bearing itself. You can even do better by not filing the centre pip off as I did here.

I first built the axle guards and then looked for a wagon to fit them on. And that was of course my fault, because I immediately selected one with an wheel base not foreseen. A nice model of a Belgian open wagon made by Arnold but with a completely false wagon frame. On the background the right drawing for this wagon shimmers through.

Here we have a nice view of an original wagon and the fiNe-scaled wagon with the new axle guard. You can see the difference immediately. The wagon now has the right height and the axle sits in the right place much further to the end of the wagon and much deeper below the wagon. Everything is still unpainted to make the new parts clear to see.

 

This is the bottom view showing the whole lot. The front axle is fixed, the back one is compensated.The axles on this wagon are much closer to the ends than usual. Due to this large wheel base I had to fit them differently. I produced a new base plate from 0.8 mm black plasticard. For arriving at the right wheelbase I had to cut off about 3 mm at the outside ends of the baseplate, loosing the part intended for fixing. Instead I drilled out the centre hole as new fitting hole and fitted 3 pins by soldering. These pins fit in holes drilled in the plastic wagon base drilled after carefully lining out the axles. Thus the wheel bases could not move anywhere during glueing. The bases are glued with 2 component epoxy to the plastic.

After that it was a straightforward upgrading of the wagon. First step was producing a new frame from strip, cut from plastic sheet in different thickness. Then I added new bufferbeams. There is now more depth thus the structural members need to be filled up. After the plastic frame the metal parts such as brakes were added. Then details for the buffer beam can be added such as the brake hose. This and more, all comes from some etches made by Kuswa modellbau. However I had run out of stock for buffers and of the full buffer etch thus I had to produce some items myself. Buffers are turned, hand grips below them from wire, new step is soldered up from strip and wire.

This gives a full close-up from old and new. Showing the MFK coupling and also the baseplate under the buffer. (Kuswa). Also the wagon shows some reinforcements and new handgrips.

I think these views speak for themselves.


 

 

Copyright : Henk Oversloot , 29 march 2002.