For a couple of my Sutro-Tunnel-related dioramas, I need to park one or two quite early wooden mine carts, since that’s what they began with. These are 1:20, 21-22" gauge.
This is based on several prototypes, for the simple reason that no one photo shows everything, and details varied a lot. Tried to find patents, especially on the rocker / tipper parts, but no joy. So there will be a bit of inference as well.
Pretty tiny, 2.5"L x 2.5"H x 1.5"W. Wood parts will be wood, all else 3D printed or brass rod, plus a gob of blackened sequin pins for nails.
The 3DP parts, which I expect to run numerous times before they all print right:
These could all fit on a 3x5 card (the gray outline).
Here’s the wood parts.
I hope to bang these out a lot quicker than the V&T ore cars last year. These dioramas all have different rolling stock, so I need to reign in the obsessions and not sweat the imperfections.
To that end, I should just print these all in one go, and just paint the printed “wood” areas. But I can’t quite bring myself to that point yet, so these will be real wood plus 3d-printed “iron” parts.
Here’s the track for the 1st scene. After going over old phots, I finally understood their approach: notched wooden rails, with strap-iron screwed on, using wedges banged in at each (also notched) tie.
This allowed them to easily pre-lay the track components (without fasteners) through the rough header tunnel, then take it up and more permanently lay it after the widening and timbering of the tunnel.
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