BTTF3 Time Train (Randy Cooper)

[jackdoud]

In 2019 a friend of mine bought Randy Cooper's Time Train kit. He took one look at it and realized it was out of his skill to build so he asked me to do it. It took me 8 months to complete mostly due to the many changes I ended up making to it but I finally finished it last weekend. I wanted to post a thread to document my changes and customizations so others can see what they're getting into with this kit. I'll start the thread off with some finished shots though:



More pics can be found in my Facebook Album: https://www.facebook.com/jack.doud.9/media_set?set=a.10101941002612398&type=3

 

[JediMichael]

Nice. Looks like a ton of work well paid off.

 

[jackdoud]

So here's the kit as it arrived.


At first glance it's a very nice garage kit. Parts are decently well cast with only a few serious bubbles and intelligently placed mold lines. A lot of cleanup work but you could easily assemble the kit as provided with a few weeks of work. Parts are provided for both ground and flight mode though there are some issues that I'll get in to later. My friend had a specific display space in mind and after discussion he decided he wanted the train in ground mode with a busted Delorean spread around it on a display base. That eliminated all the flight parts from having to be cleaned up.



As I worked through cleaning up the parts and figuring out how they went together I kept running into weird accuracy issues. This were mainly in two areas, the front 1/3rd of the train and the cabin section though there are various issues all over. My first big snag was the front area where the carriage wheels attached. It took me a while to figure out but he apparently went off of the filming miniature for this section instead of the full size train.



This all came about because I was trying to figure out how the drive pistons were attached on the actual train. After staring at a ton of screencaps and behind the scenes photos I came to the decision to cut it apart and rebuild. The part as provided wasn't quite the correct length and making it accurate would aid in later running the wires needed to light the headlights.



Speaking of the headlights both they and their mounting brackets are wrong so they had to be rebuilt/replaced.

 

[jackdoud]

The drive piston's cones are a little short but not wanting to completely rebuild them I could live with them. The rear covers though where the drive shafts are attached are the wrong shape and had to be replaced.



Which brings me to the cow catcher. I really didn't want to have to replace it but the one provided is too narrow, too tall and all-around wrong in details.



Fortunately I was able to keep the Jules Verne spike wedge. This brought me to my next issue, the wheels. In order to get the height of the cow catcher correct I had to get the train sitting on its wheels. There are holes marked in the train body for where the wheels are supposed to go but it quickly became clear that Randy never intended for people to not use flight mode. For one the forward double carriage wheels that were obviously casts of a model train kit are not the same width as the drive wheels when they're attached to the body. This makes it impossible for the train to sit on rails.



I managed to fudge it enough in the end to where you'll never notice it but it was very frustrating at the time. The more telling evidence that ground mode was never intended was that the rear most drive wheels are impossible to attach to the train.



I wound up having to drill out cavities in the cab floor to attach the wheels. I'm glad I caught it early on as I wouldn't want to have to do it with a bunch of detail parts attached. Which brings me to the rear deck.



For some reason Randy designed his interior based off of a concept drawing from pre-production of the movie.



Putting his interior plate on top of the rear deck shoved the entire interior height up by almost 3/8ths of an inch. I wound up cutting the entire rear deck down with a bandsaw to get it back to the correct height. If I didn't the entire interior wouldn't have fit correctly.

 

[jackdoud]

The siderails and cab walls on the train had weird rivet band detailing that has little relation to either the full size or filming miniature versions when it isn't missing entirely.



The cabin itself is a mess. All of the windows have issues, none of the padding is correct, the roof is wrong in both angle and overhang and the provided bench is a joke. I'll give the provided controls and time circuits credit for being a nice bit of detailing overall but are so far from accurate I only ended up using a few bits as a time saver.



I replaced the entire back wall, modified the windows where I could and resculpted all of the padding.



I then scratchbuilt a new roof with more accurate padding and a better cupola.



Through this whole part I had to decide if I wanted to acknowledge the gullwing door. I wound up adding a few strips of styrene to better define it and built the steps to go on the interior but unless I completely rebuilt the walls there wasn't much else I could do and I did not want to have to make all the windows from scratch.

 

[thegnome]

cool!

 

[jackdoud]

The interior was probably the most fun part to build. I started with the boiler end.



I rebuilt the time circuits in the correct scale and started adding details out of styrene and model bits.



Of course I had to paint as I went. Piping and valves were made from various styrene rod and model parts.



It took about 3 months of on-off work just to complete the controls. I like them a lot better than the included kit option.



I knew I wanted lights inside the cabin and fortunately the full size train had them though they were never lit in the movie. They appear to be vintage train lamps on weighted swivels. I did my best to recreate them in plastic and mounted 3mm LEDs on top with clear heatshrink tube around them to form the glass lens.



The bench seat was a modified vintage reversible railcar seat. Doc's drivers chair was a Koken "Talcum Brush" barber chair.



Both of which I scratchbuilt out of styrene and model putty.



The last thing was the luggage that you can only really see in behind the scenes shots.

 

[jackdoud]

The reactor tender I left mostly stock. I did have to replace a few broken fins on the front cone. The one major issue I ran into was the exterior piping. It's too big and does not sit correctly.



I cut several sections out to reduce the overall length and then filed grooves into the side sections to let it sit correctly flush over the sides of the tender like it's supposed to instead of on top as the kit was designed.

 

[jackdoud]

Painting was a continuous process throughout the build as it'd be impossible to do if not in sections. Once all the parts were ready I installed the lights. The entire thing runs off a 5v USB phone charger.



Then it was time for final assembly.



For the display base I had a set limit of 11" wide. I built a box out of wood and lined the inside with layers of cork. I cut rail ties from balsa. I then did multiple layers of medium gravel followed by two layers of fine sand to texture the base. I bought a 6' length of "I" gauge steel model rail and cut it down to length. The rail was then attached to the base by cutting "rail spikes" out of industrial staples. I could have bought scale model rail spike but figured it wasn't worth it as no one will notice.

 

[jackdoud]

To finish up I was given an Aoshima BTTF3 Delorean model kit to cut up and spread around the train. I tried to position the parts as accurately to the movie as I could though they do move around a lot depending on the angle of the shot.

 

[kruleworld]

wow, that's some nice work. Looks like you put in a fair bit of scratchbuilding to finish it off. perfect touch to add the Delorean.

 

[JHY]

Congratulations on the successful build. Great interior and display. Having built this kit, l know the vast amount of work required. The differences between the full size train, its various Studio Park display versions ( repaired, altered , repainted etc) and the studio miniature don’t help and the usual resin problems are a constant factor with almost every stage having its challenges. Like you, I did many alterations.

 

[harryhoudini]

I seriously enjoyed reading this. Great job on this! You made my day

 

[zapwizard]

Very nice build, and diorama.

 

[tek2graphics]

AMAZING! Beautiful details

 

[Real Scooby]

Awesome work !!! love the interior, the overall diorama with the Delorean wreckage spread... definatly a awesome piece of work

Whats the scale for this ?