If you aspire to a model railway, the thing you need most of is wagons. This post is a little retrospective of my wagon-building journey and a preview of new kits on the way. I have a long-standing enthusiasm for West Coast coal railways and my first scratchbuilt wagon was a Q5. Scratchbuilt in styrene,…
As a manufacturer, there is nothing quite as rewarding as seeing others turn your humble offerings into really nice models. What’s particulary neat is seeing builds or finishing that are not how you envisaged the product at all. This blog post showcases a lovely build from the Gig kit (KS016) by Rick Schreuder. Rick’s natural…
Personally, one of the great joys and challenges of model making is to make something that is not only an accurate scale model, but also looks like the real thing. This is, I suppose, the crossover between the science and art of modelling. I have to admit with struggling a little on the artistic side,…
The F class is an iconic NZR locomotive. It was one of the most numerically predominant and longest lived locomotives in the country. Examples continued in industrial service after withdrawal and a number of examples are preserved. Just about any NZR layout can justify one. The Fs were built by seven builders in the UK.…
When designing a loco a fairly early decision to be made is how to drive it. This is the stage I’ve being going through with the F. Decisions to be made include: Where to put the motor? Practical and cosmetic considerations. Which axle to drive? How to fit the drive around suspension, compensation and other…
Every product reaches the point where I feel the urge to produce my definitive build, whereupon I move on to other things. Thus it was, and here it is, for the gig. I was rather taken by a photo on the web of a bright yellow gig. This may not be very typical of a…
The last vehicular distraction was self-inflicted, but this one came by email from Mark Andrews asking if a gig kit was a possibility. The answer to which is absolutely, and here are the first images. The original gig (see here: https://nzfinescale.com/cart-before-the-horse/ ) was drawn by Mark based on a gig in the Fielding museum. That drawing was…
I’m not sure why that title sprang to mind other than this article is written about a Ruby on Tuesday – and the Rolling Stones song of that name is, apparently, Rolling Stone magazine’s 310th greatest song of all time. Just saying. In case you wondered. Maybe a little bit? In an earlier missive (read…
Motivation is an untamed horse. There’s no knowing entirely where it comes from or what it’s going to do next. The drivers behind this little project where many, but certainly not aligned with any modelling big picture of mine. After all, there are no roads at Rewanui, so a car is somewhat surplus to my…
This year’s resolution is as high as possible! Couldn’t resist that – sorry. In any case, Happy New Year to all and thanks for your support during the year just gone. One of the slightly worrying things about writing a specialist blog, is that you do wonder if you are reaching your audience, and…
As the 1:64 W kits are just about to be released, my thoughts turned back to crew figures to complete the picture. One of the joys of modelling in the digital era is that output from one source can be imported into diverse software to simplify other steps. In this case I was able to…
Today sees another leap forward with the W locomotive kit, mating our coreless motor to a new gearbox. The urge to develop a new box stemmed from my observation a few months ago that many currently available gears were slightly eccentric and that, as a result, any gearbox using them was prone to tight spots.…
