Resin casting a railway...

[Aurelius 12]

Hello chaps,

I'm looking at making several imperial trains/carriages for use as scenery, and it struck me that rather than spending almost £40 a carriage, it would be more prudent to scratch build and cast most of what I want. I'm looking at around 20 carriages of assorted types along with one or two locomotives.

I've never done any resin casting before. I've read a lot of the articles on it, and feel fairly comfortable with using the materials to a point. The thing is I'm pretty stumped as to where I might start!

The main things I have and want to cast are the railway lines, sleepers and the wheelbase/ underside of the rolling stock (which is armoured and slab sided so avoids all the fiddly bits like brakes). The wheelbase is about 15cm long and about 8cm wide from memory.

Does anyone have any suggestions/recommendations about where to buy supplies from and in what quantities? I've looked at a couple of the starter kits, and this one seemed the most promising. That said I've no idea if the material for the mold is suitable, or if it comes in large enough amounts.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[Ynek]

I get all my mould-making stuff from mbfg resins on eBay.

( an example is shown here: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/RTV-Silicone-Mould-Making-Rubber-1kg-Kit-ShoreA-27-/220432590506?pt=UK_Crafts_Other_Crafts_EH&hash=item3352ce66aa)

Since this stuff DOES have a limited shelf life (about a year or so, if I remember correctly, and I'm not entirely sure that I do...) I tend to buy it in terms of 1kg kits.

When buying silicone for moulds, be sure that you're buying room temperature vulcanising (RTV) silicone. Also, get your hands on some clay for making the 'mould negative'. To recycle an old image, here is an example:
Essentially, what this does is act as a disposable placeholder for the other half of the mould, when you're pouring the first half. Whilst in my first attempts for making moulds I used plasticene or blu-tac, I can say with some certainty that clay is much easier. (It's quite chemically unreactive, so behaves rather well, and doesn't go reacting with the silicone in any significant way.)

For a release agent, I use a mixture of two - Vaseline acts as an excellent release agent for silicone-on-silicone, whilst a wax-based spray acts as an excellent release agent for silicone-on-resin. (I simply brush vaseline onto the first half of the mould before pouring the second on top of it.

Another tip is using a 'flip box' method when pouring the second half. Instead of dismantling the mould box, pulling the miniature out, removing the clay, then flipping the mould upside down, putting it back into the mould box, replacing the miniature and then pouring the second half of the mould on top, I use a simpler, and more efficient method.

Simply cut the bottom off of your mould box, scoop out the clay, and pour the second half of the mould into the upside down box. The first half of the mould should maintain a watertight bond on what is now the bottom of the box.

That's just a few things I've picked up in my brief and light dabbling into the art of mould making... Basically the things that I wish I knew when I started.

[MarcoSkoll]

The main things I have and want to cast are the railway lines, sleepers

Not really sure that's worth it. Inquisitor is 1:30-1:32, and Gauge 1 track is 1:32. It's only about £10 a metre, and you wouldn't need that much to get a decent amount of track on the table - while points/switches are fairly expensive (£80 a go), the track itself is fairly cheap and would be a good starting point.

Take the cost of making the mould, the resin for casting and the time and fiddliness involved, it's probably just buying premade track. I wouldn't recommend buying Gauge 1 rolling stock (it costs an insane amount), but the track would be a brilliant starting point.

Of course, that assumes the Imperium would still use "Four foot, Eight and a half" Standard gauge, but as standard gauge is the norm in most of the world, it's what most people would use as a mental reference for deciding whether your stuff looks in scale.

The other reason I recommend using Gauge 1 track is that I may eventually build some Inquisitor railway stuff to that scale, so it would make them both project somewhat compatible at events.

~~~~~

If you are making an Inquisitor scale railway, bear in mind the size of an Gauge 1 scale locomotive will start at almost a foot long, but a large diesel or tender locomotive could easily be twice that or more. Locomotives are HUGE!

Being a steam locomotive fan, I figure I'll show you this for size reference:


You do get smaller locomotives, but that's at the lower end of things and it'd still be 30cm long at Inquisitor scale. Admittedly, that's not much longer than my Rhino, but if you start adding in a train of goods vans or something, it would take up a most of a table's length. You may not need as many carriages as you're planning - they will take up a lot of space.

[Aurelius 12]

Thanks for the advice guys. Very helpful indeed. With regards to the Gauge 1 stuff, I'd totally forgotten about that. I'd started out by looking at exactly that, but my local stores only sold track in large bundles at £100 or so a pop. Then when I got the idea of casting into my head I forgot to just check online!

As for the locomotives, I too am something of an enthusiast, so I'm aware of size. My initial mock ups are running at around 40-50 cm. I agree, 20 carriages/trucks etc may be a bit ambitious. That said, I'm looking for about 7 foot of train!

[judge-minos]

Awesome, thanks for the tips.

I'll have to try it sooner or later

[Heroka Vendile]

Seven foot of train? That's about 1 loco and 4 carriages, if that - using G Scale at least, which is what I've got. It's the nearest scale to 1/32 that's readily available.
VanHelser and I had a game at my house where we used my collection as scenery, setting it in a rail yard - it was kind of intended for DM as a bat rep, but 2 years on we've still not written it up =/

[Molotov]

I wanted to use railway stuff as well, but for INQ28. I wanted to play a game fought on a train, but all the stuff I found was incredibly expensive for something that was going to be effectively disposable after one game. Alas, that plan failed straight away...

[Heroka Vendile]

more than anything, the real problem is bases make all models bulkier that realistic for any scale terrain.

[Aurelius 12]

Well the 1/35 armoured carriage which sparked this off works out at 17.5 cm long or just shy of 7 inches. I'm using it as a guide for my master model of a wheelbase. I reckon my various stock will be mounted on one or two of these bases. So yeah 7 sounds about right. I might make 8 to appease the gods...

[Molotov]

When it comes to the 40k universe, bigger is always better. There is a converted train in the Apocalypse rulebook that's 40k-sized - that might provide some inspiration!

[MarcoSkoll]

When it comes to the 40k universe, bigger is always better.

I'm not sure I agree. Sometimes it can be detrimental simply because the various things start to look out of scale with each other.

My 54mm Rhino is more or less 1:30 to the dimensions in Imperial Armour, but on reflection I wouldn't really mind it being a bit smaller - I'm almost tempted to take the detailing off the bottom treads to take a pinch out of its height.
While I'm not upset it is its current size (because it's just about right to hold five 40mm based models), future vehicle projects are going to be a bit more cautious about IA dimensions, which I'm not sure GW thought through brilliantly, and may substitute common sense in place of them.

~~~~~

Actually, on the note of resin casting, I would rather like to cast a model in clear resin to represent a character "cloaked" (In the same vein as the clear resin "Frodo wearing the ring" GW did at one point). Ideally, it needs to not come out all cloudy - although I guess translucent would be acceptable. Does anyone have any words of wisdom on that front?

[Shannow]

This link may be of interest Marco,

http://www.smooth-on.com/Urethane-Plastic-a/c5_1120_1156/index.html

Rob