Someone's turning 60 today!!!!!
Hi one and all!
He doesn't (yet) know I've "outed" him, but today is Phil Badger's 60th birthday.
Phil is the principal of BadgerBits and Gopher Models and so we are all very excited.
The photo is from his "roasting" at his birthday party last Saturday night--strategically timed to be in the middle of the Liverpool Model Railway exhibition!
Please join me in wishing Phil a very Happy Birthday!
The Little Badger
EL Progress
Well they say on laundry labels always to check for colour-fastness.
I was having a lovely time placing decals on my EL class when I decided to call it a night. Before finishing up I applied my decal-setting solution on the work I'd done already. That was when the trouble started.
It seems that my blue paint, Tamiya XF-8 Flat Blue doesn't like decal-setting solution. So it ran. What a disappointment.
Here is the EL's latest status, without the yellow lining (or the big decal on the back, not that I'll let you see that).
Furthermore, I stuffed up the long decal CFCLAustralia... and the other side was completely ruined.
Oh well... it looks good from a distance...
Perhaps in hindsight I ought to have sprayed it with a gloss paint then decalled, then sprayed with a dull cote type paint. We live and learn.
"Making" a BadgerBits EL
I confess I'm not much of a modeller. I run Phil's website for him because. well, he helps me a whole lot with my models and this is one way I can help him back! N-Scalers are like that, I'm discovering since re-entering model railways in and entering N-scale for the first time in 2007.
But I've recently convinced Mrs LittleBadger to let me own an air compressor and Paasche air brush and so my EL body from Phil is taking shape. The EL body is available from Frate-N ready-to-run or from BadgerBits as a body kit.
The EL comes as a urethane one-piece casting with a separate fuel-tank casting. The body slips straight onto an Atlas SD7 mechanism, available from various outlets. I got mine from Aust-N-Rail. The mechanism needs only two modifications, both of which even a mug like me can do:
Modifications required for the SD7 mechanism:
My 40 class takes shape
I'm not much of a modeller, I leave that to Phil. But with the release of Phil's BadgerBits 40 class body kit I thought I'd have a go.
If you follow this link you'll see the pre-production body with all the detail options added.
Here is my work-in-progress, awaiting decals, handrails, pilot, fuel tank and the proper A1A-A1A chassis!
![[Glenn's 40 class under construction]](/images/stories/lb-blog/2009/gef-40-class-web.png "BadgerBits 40 class gradually taking shape")
The smallest N-scale layout?
The voiceover claims the volume of this layout is 1/3 of a cubic inch. I guess that means it's small, right?
I accidentally found this video on YouTube:
"Model railroading is fun, even with tiny space" says the man.
Why did he do it?
My guess is it's the everest factor: it's there to be tried, so he tried it.