Monday, May 11, 2020

Re-visiting my first scratch-building project - HO Scale WDW


I may have mentioned this before but have always loved Disney. The movies, the parks, but especially the trains. Walt Disney himself had a fascination with train even building a live steam railroad in his backyard. So mixing my love for trains and Disney was very easy to do.  Case and point:
12 year old me in the Cab of WDWRR #1 " Walter E. Disney"

So during my time at college I started to build HO scale replicas of the 4 engines that you can find at Walt Disney World in Florida.  I took a bit of modelers licence because the real versions are 3 ft narrow guage but converting them down to HO scale was simpler and was what I modeled. To put it short the end result was 4 kitbashed and scratch- built engines made from tyco/mantua 4-6-0 models. They were very crude but at the time I was happy about it.   However looking back at them now, they are a bit hard to look at.  The paint is bad and there are obvious areas where I rushed to meet a deadline that never existed in the first place.  But why bring this up?

After modeling so much of the Valley's equipment I wanted to do something different to give me a bit of mental block from the same projects.  Digging in a box at home I found these old WDWRR engines and thought how can I fix these?

So I started with something simple that can be used on all 4 engines with little modifications, the cab. This was created based on online photos, scale measurements, and some reference photos I took of the engines when i was last at the parks and after about a week of working on it in between work and other projects here is the result.




So far so good I think. The goal would be to created full 3D models, in HO scale, that I can print out at home using my Photon S resin printer for each of the engines. I am currently thinking of re-using the tyco motors and wheel sets but that may change.