Thursday 27 July 2017

An Industrial Narrow Gauge Adventure - test #2



This is an image of a heavily converted 1/24th scale plastic figure that was bought from the Internet. I was searching to see if I could find a 60mm - 66mm miniature to use with the 1/27.7 scale or 11mm = 1 foot scale test (see earlier posts), but this search proved unsuccessful.

I therefore purchased 10 plastic figures from e-bay. Two of these miniatures can be seen below, next to a couple of 1/43.5 scale or O gauge figures (7mm = 1 foot).


I chopped the mannequin into sections, cutting at the neck, waste, knee and foot, then removing about 20mm of plastic.


These pieces were then glued together with superglue.


I used Green Stuff to re-build the body.


Then more Green Stuff to cloth the figure.


Even more Green Stuff to detail his dungarees.



Following comments on The lead Adventure, I painted the new miniature with Games Workshop Green Filler - (a water based filler that comes in the standard GW pot).


Then undercoated him with brush applied grey primer.


The flesh areas were painted first. Snakebite Leather then highlighted with Snakebite/white with some more white and a little red. Finally the model was washed with GW Flesh wash.


The shirt was painted over a Stonewall Grey acrylic colour from Vallejo, highlighted with white.


And the dungarees painted in dark blue, highlighted in Regal Blue.



This final image shows the finished workman alongside the O gauge figure.


The model stands 63mm tall or about 5' 8'' in 1:27.7 (11mm = 1foot).

Tony

6 comments:

Heisler said...

Looks really good Tony. Ultimately I suppose it depends on how many people you are going to have on the layout to figure out if that's the way you want to go. I certainly think its a successful test!

Tony said...

"Ultimately I suppose it depends on how many people you are going to have on the layout to figure out if that's the way you want to go."

You are right of course. I'm envisioning the layout having less than a dozen figures in total - a driver for each of the engines and some workmen, so scratch building is not too much of an issue.

If the layout even comes to any thing, I would not expect it to be too large.

Also the first miniature was easy to do and quite therapeutic.

I'm still looking at options, but a 1:27.2 (or 11 mm = 1 foot) on 16.5mm track equating to 18 inch gauge industrial narrow gauge is starting to look like the way forward.

Tony

PS.
It's great to have someone who understands the gauge/scale thing and can comment with authority. Thank you.

Lasgunpacker said...

Looks like a pretty great conversion to me. There should be plenty of 1/24 figures around, since that is what is used for model cars, and you should be able to find the usual variations in figures too, so not everyone looks the same.

Tony said...

"There should be plenty of 1/24 figures around, since that is what is used for model cars, and you should be able to find the usual variations in figures too, so not everyone looks the same."

Your correct, but they are difficult to find. I've searched for suitable 1/24th scale and 1/25th scale figures and apart from drivers and pit girls there are few that I have been able to source.

Do you know different?

Tony

Lasgunpacker said...

I had a rummage around on hobbylinc and hobbylink Japan, and came up with fewer figures than I expected.

Given your purposes, this may be the most useful.

Could you also go up from 1/32? If you go that way you increase your choices exponentially.

Tony said...

"Could you also go up from 1/32? If you go that way you increase your choices exponentially."

I could, although I think that 1/30 might be even better - there are a lot of both military and civilian figures in this scale and the 16.5mm track would equate to 495mm (which is close enough to 500mm to make no difference). there are some German 500mm industrial lines.

1/36 would work out to 594mm or pretty close to 600mm of 16.5mm track.

There is still much to work out.....

Although I have to admit to a sneaking suspicion that 1/27.7 (11mm = 1 foot) is looking very promising.

Tony

Thanks for all the comments and support.....