The Night Capitals: Final Master GUV shape.

After much looking at pictures, continual adding of bits and a pretty manic time in non modelling life it's great to have a couple of final shape renders of the GUV for our Night Capitals stock addon for RailWorks 3 Train Simulator 2012 to show off.

The plan has always been to create a generic shape that can be exported to create most variations that the GUV has gone through in its life time. The top picture shows a shape in as delivered condition with step boards, vacuum brakes and through steam pipe. The step boards found themselves removed fairly early on as they were frequently damaged during the transhipment of BRUTE trollies.

The second picture is of possibly the most complicated (and possibly not true to life) variant with dual brakes, through electric wiring and steam pipe along with a gangway buffing plate. The buffing plate was  a modification applied to Motorail vans to help stop shocks under braking between the clasp braked GUV and disc braked Mk3 sleepers. The buffing plate fitted vans were not recognised by TOPS when still in the standard number range so which vans in Motorail traffic were fitted is a matter for conjecture.

Now these are out of the way it's time to put some serious effort into the mark 1 sleepers!

Brakes and Lights GUV?

It's been a surprisingly hard slog today to get the under frame and equipment underneath the generic GUV shape.

Sometimes you can have too much information and there even came a point where Pythagoras had to be used.

The under frame itself is complete now and all the equipment bits are there with the exception of the air tank, distributor and actuators to add.

Just bogies and the buffer beam detailing to add after that.

Nice Body GUV

The last couple of days have seen some time put in on the generic GUV shape.

The body is just about complete now, some solebar area detail to add then it's under-frame and bogies time.

Making a start GUV

Just a quick update to show the start of progress on the GUV shape that will become the NXV/NXX version to accompany the Newton Chambers car carrier as a part of the Motorail Maxi Pack.

Really early days with a generic bodyshape on top of the solebar and buffer beam assembly, with couplings roughly placed and wheels marking their place. The buffers are the final version complete with hoop (which can just be glimpsed) to support the drop down portion of the end doors.