Uncharacteristically for me, the scissor-like contraption I designed for holding and masking trucks worked on the first try. Being made from exactly the same 3D model as the trucks themselves, it was all-but guaranteed to fit. However, there are many questions of tolerance when it comes to the FDM printer. The key question was the pivot point, where I allowed 0.2 mm all around the 3mm axle, and the same between the wings and the side of the moving arm. This resulted in a smooth, but solid mechanism.
Unfortunately, my left hand isn’t smart enough to navigate the arms around the truck’s brakes and into the journals by itself. So to paint each truck I had to put down the airbrush, mount the part onto the holder, then swap hands and pick up the truck again. Even so, I spent more time cleaning the airbrush than I did painting the seven pairs of trucks. Par for the course.
After a layer of Vallejo dark primer, I came back with Vallejo black to turn the trucks into black holes in reality. I livened them up with some Polly Scale “Rust” washed into the corners and crevices, and then dusted them with Polly Scale “US Brown Special,”which is a good match for the colour Pembroke’s dirt. I applied the dirt colour from above to highlight the upper edges and return the trucks to visibility.
Pembroke:87 