SP Narrow Gauge #18

[JohnTolcher]

Brilliant!!

[michael mott]

I'm actually projecting about ten years to get it all done,

Dave thanks for letting us know,  Beautiful work and encouraging to know that time is basically irrelevant when enjoying building models.

Michael

[Barney]

Lovely stuff - looks heavy lived in and realistic
Barney

[Dave Fischer]

Hey, all! Yes, progress is still being made on this one. Here are a couple of photos so you can see what it's looking like-- still some details to add before moving on to the rest of the frame and the drivers, and nothing is really weathered as yet (other than what can be accomplished with just paint). The headlight has a reflector turned from aluminum and polished, then encased in a styrene shell. The dogs around the smokebox door were to be cast until I found that there were actually three different designs used on the original (the bottom one turned for at least the last three years that the engine ran) so I built them up individually.

If anyone is interested, I put photos of my other three models on a website: http://davidfischermodelbuilder.com
Hope it works!   DF

[Chuck Doan]

Excellent! So glad to see more progress. Some needed inspiration for me David.

[Bill Gill]

This continues to be terrific to watch. Fantastic modeling.

[darrylhuffman]

My jaw can't drop any lower.

Wonderful model building.

[1-32]

like

[finescalerr]

I'd never seen the tank in your linked pages. Nice. Looks as though the loco may turn out as well or better. Satisfactory. -- Russ

[TRAINS1941]

Beautiful work.

Jerry

[Ray Dunakin]

Beautiful work. I think it's interesting that you seem to be working from front to back on this loco.

[Dave Fischer]

Just when things are beginning to bog down, such encouraging responses pump up the old enthusiasm... Thanks!

Chuck: I'm surprised how many welds there are on this engine (the real one), and most look like they were squeezed from a toothpaste tube...

Russ: The Sturmgeschutz was finished 23 years ago-- I'm hoping I've improved just a bit over that time. Actually, when I look at it, I mainly see what could have been done better, so it's good to hear that most went well! There's a lesson here for all of us...

Ray: Since this IS a portrait, I need to get the face right first. One benefit of working this way is that if I can't bring myself to finish it, I just need to build the front wall of the engine house and drop it all into a picture frame.   

[Ray Dunakin]

BTW, looking over the photos again, I have to say how impressed I am by the textures on the loco. Everything has a very realistic, 1:1 old-metal-and-paint look to it.

[michael mott]

David, thanks for the links to the other models, this loco is going to be more than jaw dropping.

I must say that model of the model bench in the link brought me right back to 1957 at my own kitchen table as a kid growing up in London sitting on a Saturday afternoon after going down to Woolworths and spending my 1/6d pocket money on the latest Airfix  1/72 airplane and rushing home to glue it together right out of the box with tube glue, no paint just the transfers that came with the model.

Your model suspended reality for me for a half hour.

Michael

[Dave Fischer]

Michael-- Thanks for the appreciation! I've been collecting pre-1960 kits for almost 30 years, and lifting the hyper-dramatic cover from a box of bright yellow, red or metallic blue parts still creates the same excitement as it did when I was six. Of course, the smell of new plastic has been replaced by the mildew of the old box, but it is wonderful thinking back on those first stirrings of model-making passion. The Stearman biplane on the desk model is the first model I ever owned (though it was built by my mother...) and my own first build was the old Revell B-25 in 1955. Seemed there were a lot of pieces left over... By the way, Airfix came to Tucson late in 1959, and the bagged kits in Series One cost exactly what I got as a weekly allowance, so I built more than a few of those! (Have a few in the collection now, as well.)

Okay, guys, we know what you are doing NOW... Where did YOU get your start?