I am in the process of building the Faller Big Dipper coaster model shown above. This page will keep track of the progress I am making on this project!
Thanks to D. Kraig for his permission in using the pictures from his site and for the overall idea as well. You can visit his journal page and see his progress.
The instruction book is 44 pages long, and there seems to be a lot of detailed work with tiny parts. This is the first model I will have built (except for a disastrous grey plastic submarine when I was 10 or so), so I have no idea how hard it will be or how much precision it will take.
HINTS are scattered throughout as I discover them.
The model has almost 600 pieces of multi-colored plastic. Besides the model itself (which cost $100 on-sale from $150 from Walthers), I also got these other tools:
My workspace is a card table, with a triple-ply chipboard purchased from an art supply store.
Although I received the model during the summer, this is really my "winter project". I'll start it when it gets too cold or dark in the evening to rollerblade. But of course I opened the box when I received it, looked through the instructions, and generally marvelled at how complicated it would be. Would it take 50 hours? 100 hours? My guess was about 2 hours per page, which makes 84 hours total. We'll see!
|
|
|
|
| Friday, October 3 1997 | 2:30PM - 3:30 PM (1 hour) | 1 hour | Pages 2-3 (baseplate, and track sections) |
OK, time to start! The baseplate is just two large pieces of grey plastic. The glue says to hold the pieces together for 15 seconds, but I just pressed them together for about a minute to be safe. Not too much trouble, and then I set it aside for awhile.
There are 16 track pieces total, 4 with some strange 'ridges' and 12 without. Each pieces is about a foot long, so we're talking about 16 feet total track length.
| HINT: Pretty obvious, but you can save time by gluing 2 sections together 8 times, then 4 times, then 2 times, and then finally the last 1 time. |
| Sunday, October 5 1997 | 4:15-6:00PM, 6:45-7:15PM (2.5 hours) | 3.5 hours | Pages 4-8 (upright assembly) |
OH NO!!!!!! I looked through the box and found out that
I was *MISSING* one of the sprues! I definitely did not lose
it, so it must have been left out during manufacture. Of
course, this means that I'll have to send mail to Germany and
hope that they send the right parts back. I went to the photocopy
place, copied the instruction book with the missing pieces indicated,
and sent a letter off to Germany. The missing Sprue (what
a strange word) means that I can't do 2 of the 17 supports until
I get the missing pieces. This means that until the parts
arrive, I'll have to just "work around it" until I get
the missing pieces.
Note: To Faller's credit, I received the missing parts
by air mail on October 29th, less than a month after sending away.
Putting together the various supports was extremely easy. After each one, I put a clothespin on the bottom and stood it on the grey baseplate so I can see how my progress is going!
| Tuesday, October 7, 1997 | 9:30 - 11:00PM (1.5 hours) | 5 hours total | Pages 9-10 (starting the loading station) |
Gauze and effect :-) I'm starting to put together the loading station. I am quite pleasantly surprised at the precision of the plastic pieces. For the station (and, it seems, the last 20 pages of the booklet) you create "fencing" by sandwiching a piece of gauze between two pieces of model plastic. But first you have to cut out the gauze. The Exacto-Knife works very well here. By the end of the evening I have finished the seven "fencing" pieces needed for the station. Not too hard yet.
| HINT: When cutting the gauze, cut EXACTLY on the printed lines, and not outside the lines. This way the pieces will fit exactly into the model-plastic sandwich. |
| Saturday, October 12, 1997 | 3:30 - 4:30PM (1 hour) | 6 hours total | Pages 10-11 (finished the loading station!) |
The loading station is done, and it looks Way Cool! Assembling
the little ticket-booth was a bit tough because of the tiny pieces. Once
I dropped a piece with glue and left a melted-blue-plastic stain
on the cardboard mat. Also, the "window foil" was
a pain to cut, even with Exacto. But the finished product
looks damn good!
| Tuesday, October 21, 1997 | 9:15 - 10:30 PM (1.25 hour) | 7.25 hours total | Pages 11-13 (supports on baseplate) |
I made the "part M" decorations. They were a
bit of a pain to X-acto because of the "jagged mountains"
motif. Then I attached the station to the baseplate and glued
the 15 uprights (of the 17 that will eventually be there) to the
baseplate as well. D. Kraig was wondering if the uprights
should be glued or just pressed in, but I'm taking the strategy
of "glue unless told otherwise". The upright supports
snapped into place nicely and did not wobble during the gluing
process.
| Thursday, October 23, 1997 | 9:45 - 10:45PM (1 hour) | 8.25 hours total | Pages 12-14 (cross-braces) |
The coaster is starting to resemble a coaster now! The upright sections are in place, and I'm now gluing the "cross brace" stabilizer bars. The method I'm using is working VERY NICELY for this part. Each cross-brace is specified at a certain height (in millimeters).
|
HINT: Here's my method for doing the cross-braces.
|
| Wednesday, October 29, 1997 | 8:00 - 8:30PM (0.5 hour) | 8.75 hours total | Page 25 M/N (starting the Train) |
Well, I can't do any more work on the uprights or track until the missing parts arrive from Germany, so it's time to move on and start the train! Let me just say, THIS PART IS A PAIN.
The directions have you use a nylon string to tie together
each pair of cars (there are 5 cars total, so 4 "couplings"
of string are required). This slippery nylon string unties
itself, and you have to use tweezers to do a double-knot. However,
after putting the instant CA glue on the knot things improved.
Today I did two of the four couplings.
| HINT: The directions say to put the knot into the recess. Do not put the dangling string in the narrow notch that stretches across the width of the car, because that will block part "q" on page 26 from fitting. Instead, let the glue on the knot dry and later cut off with the X-acto knife any remaining string. |
| Thursday, October 30, 1997 | 7:30 - 8:00PM (0.5 hour) | 9.25 hours total | Page 6, 13 (missing parts arrived!) |
I was feeling ill at work and went home, to find that the parts
from Germany had arrived! So I put together the two uprights
and glued them into the board. The only things left to do
before laying the track are the remaining cross-braces and a few
parts ("M", "P", and "Q").
| Saturday, November 1, 1997 | 3:30 - 4:45PM (1.25 hours) | 10.5 hours total | Pages 13 (crossbraces, parts P/Q), 25 (couplings), and 3 (track) |
Today was a day of doing miscellaneous parts. First I did the final 6 cross-braces so that all upright supports are now stabilized. I also put together the parts "P" and "Q" which will sit on top of the supports at the top of the lift hill. More "gauze" pieces similar to those on the station.
Then I did the last two train couplings with string. Still a pain, but they're holding pretty well.
Finally, I glued the 4-foot section of lift-hill track to the
12-foot section of running track, forming one long piece of flexible
pink track.
| Sunday, November 2, 1997 | 3:15 - 4:00PM (0.75 hours) | 11.25 hours total | Page 26 (assembly of train) |
I wanted to finish the train before I attempt to lay the track on the supports which seems like it will take hours and hours. So I assembled the train, which went quite well. There are two metal "flywheel" components which get sandwiched between two plastic frame parts. They just press together quite nicely. This frame then gets pressed onto the bottom of the joined car tops. Lastly, a holding bridge of plastic secures the bottom part to the top. Everything presses together via friction and no glue is used. As I've discovered, these plastic parts are quite well-designed and fit together perfectly. I used the tip of a clothespin to press the bridge parts all the way in.
The next step was to super-glue the seats to the car chassis. I wish I had used tweezers, since I got super-glue all over my fingers. I used a wooden toothpick to transfer the glue from the glue bottle nozzle to the plastic parts -- this technique worked well. The train is now complete except for the decal work.
Yes, it's true: It's been one month since I started this project. Here's where I stand:
So far things have been fairly easy. I expect to spend a large amount of time on the track laying, which takes up 9 pages in the booklet. After the track laying, most of the rest of the modeling work is detail fencing, except for a Cashier booth!