Baikonur rollout [1]

Filming goes well; we've made some pretty shots last Sunday. One of the young musicians we follow for this long documentary which we make performed very well in a contest.
Paper modeling is a little quiet at the moment but there is something going on. I have been working on the first leg of this diorama I want to make, as I mentioned in my previous post. As I decided not to put this build on PM until I have finished it, I will show you the progress here.

For some more atmosphere of the situation I want to depict, here's a quick sketch I made somewhere last week. I made the mistake to let the locomotive have lit all of its headlights while it actually is pushing the train, so in that case the right light would be the only one lit.

It also might be 1970, or even 1968. But you get the idea.

However, I also have started the build. I took a large oblong picture frame for the diorama base plate. I made the ridge on which the train rides and the landscape from papier maché. I still am not really happy with it, papier maché always tends to shrink when it dries. I used a lot of the stuff and while setting and drying it revealed a lot of the underlying framework I made, leaving it looking a bit like a buried spine. I have to use some modeling clay or gypsum to get the ridge smooth and straight.
The modeling of both the locomotive and the flat car went smooth and easy, even though it was in 1/400. More after the jump.

The Diorama buildup: It looks promising but after drying it showed the framework through it all. Not to worry, It will be smoothened out later on. I started on the vehicles while the base dries and hardens out.

The locomotive is a recoloured M-62 Teplovoz as it can be found at Baikonur. It originally is an H0- model (1/87) but I reduced it to 1/400. it's small but very manageable.

I even succeeded in making the wheels separate units instead of printed on. (as seen in the picture above this one on the print) For this I used some aluminium sticky tape and a 3mm hollow punch.

Time to give the locomotive a little face.

Both bogeys are underneath the train.

I also deepened the big cooling fan on top.

For all of you non-metrics out there (I mean you, Americanos) it's about 1,7716535 inches.

The train got its big beam headlights.

And a flat car for putting some distance between itself and the Soyuz transporter.

Well, this is how I occupy myself at the moment. I hope you like it. Next time it's either cosmetic work on the diorama or the start of the transporter itself.

Lastly, I want to tell you of the models I've used: The M-62 diesel locomotive is found for free, here at Mobuka.com; the flat car is freely downloadable from this nice Bulgarian paper modeling site, and the transporter I plan to make is designed by Lars Folmann and can be found for free in this corner here at Ninfinger. However, I have made a recolour and am making some changes to it to make it easier to build it in this tiny scale. More on that later.
For now you will have to do with this!