Real Life steam engine maintenance

I'm not going to repeat what I know, since it's all on the web, and a good deal more besides. Wikipedia has lots of info. Search on "steam locomotive maintenance."

Wolf K.

You could show it being repaired after an allied attack.

He didn't specify nationality.

The kit I was considering is the 1/35 German armored BR 57 by Trumpeter. All you see with the armor in place is the flat armor plates and bottoms of the wheels. It's part of a fighting train that has cars with cannon and anti-aircraft guns in the armored rail cars along with tank carrying cars. They even have the doors to the cab closed, so it's hard to do anything posed with it. It's also impossible to find any interior detail on the cars that would allow views thru the crew doors. The last existing units were destroyed filming the movie "The Train" witth Burt Lancaster in the 60s, and no good interior photos seem to exist.

I have found some interesting photos of US trains partially disasembled either abandoned or bring worked on using the net.

Val Kraut

Val, check out HistoricRail.com .on page 20 of their current catalog, there is a WWII BR.52 loco and rolling stock for sale. You have an engine. They have rolling stock. The problem is they are 1:30th scale.

"> Val, check out HistoricRail.com .on page 20 of their current catalog, there

Thank's I'll have a look.

There's actually a lot of 1/35th scale rolling stock available in plasticin addition to the armored trains, Trumpeter, Dragon, Ironside to name three companies. All are intended as static display but with a little work could be converted to run - but on what, 1/35th rail is non-existant. One of the companies released the Leopold Gun (Anzio Annie) with 1/32nd scale carriers so it ould be in 1/35th and still travel on 1/32 track. I believe that later changed that since iy could be displayed with the diesel used to hide th gun between shots and support cars.

But this opens another possibility - 1/30 scale yard accessories would work well with 1/35th. Again there are some thing available - bumper stops, water cranes, coal cranes etc.

Val Kraut

You could use Gauge 1 (45mm), a 1/35 model would be about 10% under-sized. (1/32 is correct for standard-gauge trains on 45mm track). Not too bad, considering that Aristocraft sells 1/29th trains for that track (on the grounds that next to narrow gauge models running on the same track they wouldn't look too small.)

Do you mean 1/32 scale?

I've not really understood why there are so many not-quite-equal scales in the diorama hobby.

Wolf K.

Some of it has explainable history:

1/48 for aircraft was 1/4 inch to the foot - a reasonable scale. 1/24. 1/32, 1/72, 1/96, 1/144 seem to follow as variations like 1/96 is 1/8 to 1 foot.

Military vehicle kits in the US started with Revell doing 1/40, monogram followed with 1/32 - a more reasonable scale, Renwal looked moew like 1/30. But then the 60s brought the first Tamiya armor - 1/35. I never understood this but must be some metric to english conversion. The kits took off - a the scale became standard.

The original military miniature figures were 54mm - ground to eyeballs - so the scale wasn't influenced by the height of the headgear. But then again nordic barbarians and post Napolionic Frenchmen would be the same height. Some today say 54mm is 1/32 others say 1/35th.

But the 35 figure seems to be inherent in Japanese thinking. While France issued 1/400 ships, America and British did some 1/720 (1/72 divided by 10)

The Japanese pushed 1/700 and 1/350 - both factors of 35.

At least we're beyond the Box scales where companies like revel scalled the ship hull to fill a standard box size, so we get 1/457 scale.

Val Kraut

[snip]

Thanks for the info. Somewhat the same kind of muddle that resulted in

1/87 (and 1/96 and 1/100 in the past) for HO; 1/43, 1/45, and 1/48 for O; OO at 1/72 or 1/76; TT at 1/100 or 1/120; and so on.

;-)

Wolf K.

N at 1/150 and 1/160

Prototype at various flavors of Standard, Broad and Narrow ... Then the Industrial Gauges

Oh, and just recently saw a picture from an old (1930s?) magazine with prototype people *riding* O Scale.