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A recent thread in this section on the giant Schnabel cars that move ultra heavy loads got me to thinking that perhaps I should maybe give one of the Kibri Euro-Schnabels a try. After doing a bit of searching on the net and finding a couple for sale I had one of those moments....you know the ones. You look around and hope no one is looking when it dawns on you that "Holy smokes, I've got one of those things in the basement....and it is started!" So I trudged down into the deepest, darkest, dankest cobwebby depths of my train room (OK so it is fairly well lit but the part about the cobwebs is true) and lo and behold a schnabel is lurking. Now I had to sneak up on it as it has lain in wait for over four years but I was able to retieve it with minimal blood loss (Stupid deck screws sticking out) and when I opened it I found that I had painted a large portion of it and cut down the two Athearn Heavy Duty Flats for it. Now to start the assembly process you put together about a billion wheel sets...ok so there are only 40 or 50 but after three hours it seems like a whole lot more.....
....and then you build the cabs for the two road tractors. Now the instructions are in german (I think) but are very well illustrated and simple to follow. Test fit everything before the glue and surprisingly enough it goes together quickly. Of course after building all those wheel sets watching concrete harden seems to go by at a pretty good clip. No major issues during this section except some of the small parts require tweezers and patience.
I also found a pair of old ROCO heavy duty flats with three axle buck eye style trucks I had rebuilt and painted to haul the road tractors on......
One of the great things about this kit is you are given a lot of extra parts. There are another pair of platforms that I mounted on the cut down flats and another whole set of the load bearing arms included that I will probably use for another schnabel build. The construction of the arms is straight forward but somewhat confusing as to how some of the internal parts are attached and you really have to make sure it is assembled square or it won't attach to the transfomer correctly later on......I will post some more tomorrow evening after we get back from the Billy Joel concert. Ya'll have a good evening.
Good looking stuff. Good way to have some really unusual vehicles and loads. Enjoy the concert.
Got a few minutes before we leave. I painted the transformer gloss grey, cause nothing says industrial like gloss grey. Finished assembling the load arms and attached the transformer. I will post a couple photos later of the train set up.
Rich
now that's something worth having...
Great concert, got home too late to post. Here are a couple of shots of the monster in the yard.Pluses are that the whole unit rides high enough to clear ground throws and other obsticales on the layout. I am going to drag it all back to the work bench and decal it....not using the stick on style decals that came with the kit. Beautiful model, crap decals....with the workmanship involved in making the kit you would think the decals would be the same level....I will post more later on....now where did I put that caboose??!!
WOW! Now that looks great! Excellent work and patience on the assembly.
Very impressive indeed. The trainmaster should have fun routing that train.
looks great. gimme a shout if you find one for sale...
Holy shi'ite, that's alot of wheels!
Back in the day I pulled some pretty wild trailers, but that's really something. Just how many are there? Guess you'd just count them as opposed to the normal kicking them on the prototype...
Nice work!
I counted and there are a total of 56 wheels under each tractor, 48 are the smaller load baring wheels and 8 are the larger drive wheels. I am so glad they are all done.
I added decals last night (minimalist style) and must admit I used some of the stick on decals form the kit. They went on much better than I expected and I am pleased with the results. Now I need to finish the rail cars, hopefully by this weekend.
Rich
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