My Collection of Scratch Built Robot Vermin

As we close the first quarter of 2024...

My collection of scratch built robot vermin. Construction articles and updates for this series can be found here => and here: <=

Robot 2 has been Completed

Although the robot needs some touch-ups with some metalic paint it is complete. The tracks and arms are leftovers from two robot kits I built. The rest of robot is scratch built using sqaure tube and leftover bits of polystyrene.

The robot is not built to scale, but stands approximwntly 40mm tall. I found layering the parts and rounding the corners add to the appearence of the model. The inner part of the head was fashioned from a recycled piece of razor handle and a couple pieces of styrene.

The device ob the robot back is a greeble that I found on Etsy. I might go back and add a few more details here and there.

HO, 1/87 Scale Details - Wooden Crates

Freight stations and docks need all sorts of goods. Here is small collection of wooden crates, part of my details collection.

Details are molded from all sorts of materials. These four are the metal verity. The top two have been painted and weathered and are ready to be added to some dock on my model train layout.

These two have been salvaged from a freight station kit and were to be adhered to the floor of the model. The castings are finely detailed and I decided to switch things up a bit.

These crates are cast from plastic and came from a kit that included are sorts of dock castings, including sacks, wooded cases in different sizes, barrels and other miscellaneous details.

As you might notice this kit includes materials to build your own wooden crates.

Of course you could build your own crates from scribed plastic and or cardstock.You could build any sized crates you require including those for loads on your flat cars.

A Roof for a Board and Batten Structure

It seems I have a few of these roof sections. You will find these panels in kits from Pola and Concor. As provided they might be used for adding a roof over a loading dock. I haven't measured or layed anything out yet, but I do have this partial sheet of clapboard and material for a foundation and loading dock.

A partial Evergreen polystyrene clapboard siding as found in an Odds and Ends package.

Robot #2 an Update

Robot # 2 under construction and showing off its components.

Every so often I need to walk away from a project, in this case, to let the adhesive cure and to prepare for the next phase.

Selly HO Gauge Products

Back in the day there were dozens of sources for model train products. You had sources with large product lines, especailly with companies like Selly. I don't know who took over Selly's line of products or even parts of it. It is ashame that these products are no longer available. Prehaps I am wrong about this and someone will inform me of there product line still being available, hopefully at lest in part.

Here is their line at one time sold through Browser:

These were metal castings.

Selly produced quite an extensive collection.

Hopefully, someone still produces some of this fabulous line of white metal products.

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Let's have another look at Selly miniatures, shall we?

Pravda (Truth/Justice)

"The king stared at the figure in astonishment. It walked with rapid strides, moving its head up and down, so that anyone would have taken it for a live human being. The artificer touched its chin, and it began singing, perfectly in tune. He touched its band, and it began posturing, keeping perfect time..."

Liezi Text, Forth Century BC

The Clock Work Dynasty, Daniel H. Wilson

Another Thought From an Avtomat

During my first reading of "The Clockwork Dynasty", I seemed to have missed this selection of text:

"My mind flashes with a vision of this woman-she is riding a fantastical horse with tiger stripes across a lush jungle clearing. She is laughing, hair flowing, looking back at me and flashing her teeth, sharp and white. Then a primeneval forest swallows her, wet and dark, and from deep within I hear roaring..."

Pyotr Aleveyevich, an avtomat

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Other texts by Daniel H. Wilson

RV # 5 and Bonus Unit Completed

A cake topper, if you will. Although I did create a sixth unit, displayed below, this is the last robot vermin in this series for a while. I have desinated this unit as a security drone. The drone started out as a plastic tube inside a floss container. The material in which it was manufactured was of some waxy type of plastic, which at first, I didn't believe regular model cement would adhere strips to the cylinder. So I started of using super glue which made the process too fiddly. Things went better when I started to use model cement. I glued scale 1/4 strips around the spools diameter. The bottom was wrapped with a band of very thin styrene and I added scratch built rivets. The topper is a mystry, a part from my greeble collection.

This unit is signal repeater which picks up signals from other devices, amplifies the signal and pushes it out to the corresponding device. There is also a small storage area of a terabyte or two. Operating systems and the small bit of data that might be found on each device are also stored here to help restore necessary files quickly.

Adam Savage, Ghost Busters Special Effects

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Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire | Official Website

Fiddling Materials

One and three milimeter polystyrene bits.

I do use a lot of 1mm thick styrene, not for any real reason, I just have a lot of this sized material on hand. If thicker material is needed you can laminate several thiner sheets to the desired thickness.

I have seperated my plastic bits and have organized them by size. Since starting my RV project I have been using my leftovers for small details and greeble on my models.Outside of some trimings this small collection is all I have left of these smaller bits. I use these to fashion components for my models, such as applicators, hatches, and sensor fixtures.

One, two and a half, and three milimeter polystyrene bits.

I always start a new project with the right sized plastic sheets and usaully will cut something of from these leftover bits if I don't already have a piece at an appropriate size.

Robot # 2 Underway

Upper rright hand corner and under orange tube are componets of a hover craft, to the right and center are a few pieces of fiddling bits in 1, 1.5, and 2mm, in which I am wittling materials as needed, bottom left and right showing off my glue curing weights, center -in orocess robot componets: Legs, proplosion tracks, and head unit.

In addition to my robot vermin units, I have built two robots from kits, and one from scratch. I will be using a few of my leftover robot parts for my second scratch built robot.

The Humots #2

"The humots aped the vanished race to which they had been dedicated, wore old human clothes retrieved from the wreckage underfoot, assuming hats and scarves, dragged on socks, affected pipes and ponytails, and tied ribbons to themselves. Thier guttering electronic memories were refreshed by old movies ferreted from the D-Dump they copied in metallic gesture the movements of shaddows, aspired to emotion and hoped for hearts. The thought themselves a cut above the non-anthrophic automata that had superceded them."

Neanderthal Planet, Neanderthal Planet, Brian W. Aldiss

The Humots

"Humots executed slow, rhythmic dances to an intricate pattern, heads nodding, clapping their own hands turning to clap others hands. Some were grotesquely male, some grotesquely female. In the door-ways, or sitting on old refrigrtators, other grotesques look on.

These were the humots-old type human-designed robots of the late twentieth and early twenty fifth centuries useless in an all-automatic world, scrapped when the old technology was scrapped."

Neanderthal Planet, Neanderthal Planet, Brian W. Aldiss

Found - Greebles

I found this greeble at a spot I call my greeble field. I have found quite a few pieces at this spot and usaully after a good rain. This one is made from a bendable type of plastic. I have no plans for this item at this time and it will thrown into my greeble collection.

My partner found this one on the floor in our den. Neither one of us have any idea where it might have come from. It is made of a very thin plastic.

Neanderthal Planet

"Tales of Wonder and Terror!

This volumne is a collection of four of Aldiss's epic stories. First published in 1959.

On Neanderthal Planet the being were both less than human and more than human. Now they had to decide which way to go!

If you fall into the wrong matrix of the past, present or future you must beware of the choices you face. The sign is clear: Danger - Religion!

Intangebles, Inc. could not be be seen, but is ruled the lives - and deaths - of a couple and their children.

Since the Assassination a drug granting immortality is conceived; then moon vistors find that time is distorted. Would earth withstand such pressures?"

Neanderthal Planet, Brian W. Aldiss, First Avon printing in 1970.