MORE PICS 1/35 Dora project.

Now there's a bright spot in my evening.

Wonderful work!

more pics soon

That's really fantastic! Thank you for your service!

(chuckle) Mostly the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean tracking Soviet subs and playing chicken with Russian destroyers. I was a Snipe and in the same 35,000 hp steam turbine engine room for my whole service. I remember during one drill, the temperature where I stood reached 135 F.

But mostly it was loud.

Wow, Wally! Where did you serve?  

What!?

(I apologize. 60db tinnitus from 6 years in a steam destroyer plant and the gun fire have me sympathetic to that particular plight. But, you know...it's not all bad.)

from what I understand some may still be in use today. Feel sorry for the operators as the engine sits just about 1 meter from the operator. With the operator almost sitting on top of the engine and surrounded on 4 sides with walls and grinding gears it must have been a horribly loud racket. They must have been deaf after a few months.

Simply astonishing.  Excellent work and the overall look and feel of what you have done so far is exceptional.  Interestingly enough, I discovered the "Dora" just this evening while doing some research for an upcoming dio I have planned involving a little ol flatbed rail car LOL.  At $700-800 for Dora, I wont be getting this one soon though.  My wife doesnt usually care what I spend on my little hobby, but I think I would be sleeping in the garage after a purchase like this.  Anyway, you have done an exceptional job and keep posting the progress pics, paint and build information and all the stuff you are adding to this wonderful scene.

Steve

Awsome, one of the best dio,s i have seen. the sheer amount of work is mind boggling.

Really nice workmanship aswell. That wooden barn is wicked. Thanks for sharing your work. You should get that published when your done.

That is one cool excavator!

'Back in '97 I visited the Yukon (Northern Canada adjoining Alaska) Part of the fun was driving up Burrwash creek to do some gold panning. Along the way were abandoned equipment used to gold mine at the turn of the century, some pieces were excavators like the one you are building! Too bad I never took more pictures of said machines, they would make excellent vignettes in their peaceful state.

Just magnificent!

Thank you.

A work in progress on the Accurate Armour Ruston Bucyrus 17/19 excavator soon to be added to the diorama. The Ruston Bucyrus was primarily used by the allies but also sold throughout Europe in the 1930's.  Quite challenging kit

more soon

There was a question about the shed. It was scratch built from balsa wood. I used a figure as a scale reference and built the shed around the figure essentially. it was stained with silver stain, a model railroad product. The metal corrugated roof is real metal corrugated sheets, also from model railroad supplier.The rust on the metal sheets is real rust-not painted. The metal sheets were individually emersed in Ferric chloride acid which etches and burns the metal and prematurely rusts them. You need to be careful with it as it is pretty nasty stuff and will happily dissolve you as quickly as the metal. Also, if you leave the sheets in for too long the metal dissolves in a minute or 2. There is a corrugated metal sheet on the side of the building which was left in for a few seconds too long and was almost totally destroyed but I thought it looked kinda neat so I put it on covering a hole in the building. Ferric acid is getting more and more difficult to get as the post doesn't like to ship corrosive acids. The real rust it creates just can't be beat. I've tried lots of other painting techniques but nothing beats real rust. Hope that helps.

Thanks a lot. Still a lot of work to do. Right now I am finishing the Accurate Armour Ruston-Bucyrus 17/19 excavator. What a beast! Very challenging but happy with how it's turning out. Of course I still have to do the cables which appears will be quite a complex undertaking. If anyone is interested in seeing any work in progress pics of the Ruston-Bucyrus I can post them. It was an excavator used for preparation of railbeds, etc. and was sold all over Europe in the 1930's and beyond. They were used a lot especially during the post WW1 reconstruction. The small grey tractor in the picture is made by Plusmodel. The small green tractor in the back of the truck is an Italian tractor made by Criel which I purchased from Rand J Enterprises.  

I really like the small tracked tractor, which AM kit & manufacture can this lill' beast be found?

This 'work in progress' may keep you busy for years to come, at some point you should get a portfolio of photographs and write a article to submit to FSM for publication. Or attend a local contest where they submit to 'Great Scale Modeling' The effort, scope & quality of your work deserves a 'showcase' spot in the magazine.

Spectacular, just incredible how much work is going into each little part of this enormous project.

If I may be so bold to ask, would you give some detail on your painting and finishing techniques, and hopefully a bit of detail on that work shed in the series of pics above, and the techniques you used to paint it. It would be greatly appreciated.

One thing I wasn't sure about is whether the L4500 railtruck with the crane should have leg supports. I got the idea for the crane from an original picture of a road L4500 which had this same crane and modelled it according to the picture. However, the the truck in the picture had leg supports to keep the truck from toppeling over.  I was thinking that the lower center of gravity of the railtruck version (it sits on railcar wheels rather than the much taller road wheels) and the lighter loads the crane would be lifting (railroad ties which are more unwieldy than terribly heavy) would make the leg supports unneccessary but if there are any engineers in the forum who can add any insight that would be great.

Just plain brilliant!  

I don't know what else to say.

I think I'll take up stamp collecting.

more pics soon

mpore pics soon

thanks alot! The second part of the replacement for where the flatbed crane use to be is painted and just has to be weathered and detailed (never liked that flatbed). The first part of the replacement is the Steyr railcar.  Not a lot of weathering to be done on these railcars as they are perched on tracks rathering than splashing through mud all the time. Should be good to go in a few days. Next is a replacement for the armored car under the cover in the shed which is already assembled and primed (never really liked that scene either).

This is trully a wonderful project, and the scale leaves me in awe. I hope to complete something of this caliber one day myself. Just incredible to behold. More pics please, and keep them coming as you keep going with this project.

Wagoneer nailed it, IMO.

You never posted before because you didn't feel you were 'good enough'???  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?  Let me let you down easy... You have nothing to worry about in that respect.  You, sir, are a master builder!!!  There is so much talent on this forum and I am pleasantly stunned everytime I see something of this caliber   No pun intended but I am blown away by this scene and look forward to seeing more pictures of it.  BRAVO ZULU!!!

Monotony? 80 wheel sets? Sounds like the very definition of.

And I don't recall many sets of instructions that didn't have the odd gaff or two. Some more than others, but with a mega-project like Dora, that's pretty good, I'd say.

I'm relieved to hear that about the glue. (I just bought a quart of methylene chloride.)

The Dora kit I thought was amazingly well executed. Soar Art did an incredible job. I had very few difficulties at all and the reported discrepencies in the instructions were very rare and obvious-they were not an issue at all. The only problem was the incredible monotony. I did not have any problems with the glue as others reported.

That's true with everything. You'll probably be fussing with this for years. (LOL)

There is evidently a book (in German only, and rare and made of unobtainium) which includes plans of one of the guns. There are also a couple of highly informative, if prematurely aborted, SBSs which provide some interesting insights into the kit. Otherwise, there's the internet (and its pitfalls) and a Squadron (I think) book on rail guns for material. There is a picture of Hitler viewing the gun, not likely at Stalingrad, if the photo is even real. To that end, I scooped a 1/35 Mercedes G4 (6-wheeled) limo (complete with figure) for a concept I'm mulling over.

I like an element of the unusual if I can work it in.

I understand that the kit's plastic doesn't lend itself to conventional styrene glue and cements. Was that your experience?

Wow, thanks a lot! When you stare at something long enough you just start to see the defects. Nice to know it may not be as far off as I feared. Working on the Wespe Stalinets tractor currently. MUCH bigger than I imagined! It is the size of a tank. After that is the gantry crane if the 2 other kits I ordered don't show up soon. The little tractor and truck posted are by Criel.     

I'm not usually at a loss for words....

What I can say is that (even setting aside the fabulous scratched engines which are a wonder unto them selves) is the best conceived and executed arty interpretation I've ever seen.

I've got one coming up sometime this decade. Maybe when the dust settles we could talk about the rail/recoil issues.

I'm so glad that you went to the trouble of posting this project. It's a show stopper.