Trainline45 V3 Diesel - chipping and painting!

Zerogee

Zerogee

Clencher's Bogleman
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Several times on here I've mentioned that last year I bought one of the special ultra-basic versions of the TL45 V3 diesel from Germany; Modell-Land have this version as a special model made just for them, it comes with all the detail parts of the "full" versions but the body is unpainted, moulded in a dark green plastic (reputedly the same BASF Luran S that LGB use), the cab roof being unpainted grey and everything else moulded in black. In addition, the stripped-down version has no lights (except for one single little marker light in the hood, above the radiator grille) though it comes with all the lamp parts except the bulbholders.

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Whether it is worth the price in this really basic form is a point for discussion - ML sell this version for around £150 or so, which is still not cheap but a lot less than the fully painted and lighted version. For your money you get a nice little diesel that appears pretty sturdy, sufficiently different in appearance from anything in the LGB stable, and using a Buhler motor - something that I confirmed by opening the top plate of the gearbox:

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As mentioned, the body comes in a dark olive-green unpainted plastic (sorry, forgot to take a "before" photo!), and really needed painting. It took me a while to decide on the colour, and I actually sprayed the hood in yellow before deciding that it just didn't look quite right for me, so I re-primered it and finally sprayed a coat of a rather nice medium blue (actually "Crystal Blue" from the very useful Army Painter range of aerosol cans). The end result is good, I think, and it might get either a white or yellow stripe at waist level - probably trimline tape rather than painted!

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The cab roof is still grey, but sprayed in grey primer rather than the rather shiny looking unpainted grey plastic. I'm unsure at the moment as to whether to paint it further (or what colour), but that is something that can be left till last.
More pics soon as the installation and reassembly progresses!

Jon.
 
Next stage: Massoth 40mm speaker mounted just behind grille; a piece of thick black plasticard cut to be a tight slide fit into the hood, then a hole made in it for fixing the speaker, which is held in place with silicone craft glue (takes ages to dry - left it overnight - but makes a very good and resilient fixing that can be cleanly removed later if necessary).

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Then found the perfect place for the LS decoder (with its powercap micro buffer very kindly wired up for me by Mark (Muns)) - it exactly fits the width of the space under the rudimentary "control panel" in the cab interior piece. The three parts of the buffer will simply slide into the hood on top of the metal ballast weight.

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More soon! :bigsmile:

Jon.
 
nice, neat and well thought out, likes it i do:thumbup:
 
nice, neat and well thought out, likes it i do:thumbup:
 
Thanks Mike! Just got to wire the lights to the Massoth 4-way CT plug, then start putting it all back together.

Jon.
 
Lights all wired up, and connected to the micro-CT 4-way plug to go into the LS socket. The two white bulbholders visible are the ones for the cab rear lights, they push into the cab from the inside so will be slid into place as the cab is put on during final assembly. The front lights with bulbholders fitted have their wiring threaded through a couple of tiny holes in the main frame, absolute b*gger of a job, in the end I enlisted the help of the Memsahib who is a dab hand with a pair of forceps....
Anyway, all done, soldered up and insulated with heatshrink. Don't know how well the piccies will show up since all the wiring is black on a black chassis!
I haven't bothered with a cab interior light, the model has no provision for one and in reality they are pretty pointless anyway - you don't want to illuminate the cab interior at night anymore than you'd leave your interior light on while driving your car - it just makes it much harder to see what's outside, which is kind of counter-productive.... a nice glow from the panel instruments would look good, but that will have to wait for a much more detailed project than this one!

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Jon.
 
The ballast weight, a single big lump of black-painted metal which takes up most of the room under the hood, is screwed back into place (having been removed for easier handling of the frame while the lights were being wired up), and just to be on the safe side I covered the top and sides in insulating tape:

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Then the 3 parts of the power buffer are taped to the weight - conveniently there is just enough clearance between the top of the weight and the underside of the hood to allow this!

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Now it's just about ready to start putting the whole thing back together.....

Jon.
 
Ta-DAH!! Proof (and great relief) that everything DOES in fact fit once the hood is placed back on! :thumbup:

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Jon.
 
Last pic for today - all main components reassembled, track-tested and all seems to be working! :thumbup:
Some detail parts have been refitted in this pic, but it still has to have all the handrails, steps, toolboxes and several other supplied detail bits reattached. Needs a driver too, will have to raid the figures box and find a suitable one.

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Jon.
 
Excellent thread Jon. :thumbup:
I like that yellow lining on the blue base very much.
 
Thanks Peter - I think the yellow stripe gives it a rather "East European" feel to the colour scheme, I've seen many pics of Polish, Rumanian and Hungarian diesels in similar schemes. It should be right at home if it ever gets to visit Ruritania... ;)

Jon.
 
Looks very neat Jon :thumbup:
 
A very neat install indeed, Jon, many thanks for sharing.

Two tips to get the V3 running better I picked up from one of the German fora (I do not have a V3 myself, so I have not tried these out):

- make sure the top of the gearbox is tightly screwed in. As you mentioned, the gearbox seems to be made out of a softer plastic than LGB.

- you might want to replace the silicone spray that Train Line uses for lubricating the gears and the worm drive with LGB gear grease. Obviously, you will have to clean everything thoroughly before applying the LGB gear grease.

I hope this helps.
 
Thanks Bunny, will have to give the re-greasing idea a try (oo-er....) - could you point me to the forum where you found the info, please? It's quite odd (and a bit worrying for TL45's future products) how few people seem to have bought one of these in any form, or at least if they have, they're either not here on GSC or won't own up to it! ;)

Jon.
 
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