Some trains cry out to be modelled

I saw this in yesterdays paper and thought to myself, "I would love to make a model of that." It's so good I've taken the rare step of cutting out the picture for safe keeping.

In case you are wondering, the photo shows a Soyuz spacecraft heading for the Baikonur cosmodrome. It seems the Russians transport their rockets on real live trains. Admittedly the journey does appear to take place across a desert - you can see the aerial view on Google maps - so there is no worry about the out of gauge load.

More pictures on Friday photos and on the Future of Space.

But is this a realistic project ?

Maybe. The obvious challenge would be the rocket itself. Foolishly I had assumed that this would be available as a plastic kit, let's face it if you can buy obscure German aircraft then current space hardware should be easy, but no. One possibility is a model rocket designed to fly, but it's pretty basic and made of cardboard. The only plastic kit I can find is a long discontinued MPC one and even that isn't really right. And you'd have to work on 3mm:1ft which rules out using RTR or even kits for the other stock. Shame really as there is quite a lot of Russian railway modelling going on out there.

Even then there is a the little matter of the wagon it sits on. What a beast. Even Heljan wouldn't threaten to bring out one of these. There's an awful lot of detail to be worked out. Of course you could simplify and hardly anyone will know better, of if they do a quick trip to the Siberian salt mine probably beckons for them !

Perhaps the best bet would be to stick to the spirit rather than the letter of the model so to speak. Something based around Triang Battlespace perhaps. Now there are some kits out there for rockets that never launched from the drawing board. How about one of these on a repainted trestrol wagon ?