It's been a while since I have completed a Cummons model project, so I thought I would share some photos of my new Kamikaze. The ride was cast and partially assembled by Don Cummons (Cummons Scale Amusements). The ride was assembled with the exception of the arms/cars being soldered on and of course the entire model was unpainted/decorated.
I added the following to the ride:
1) Created jackstands and added blocking to the ride (thanks Sean for the idea haha)
2) Omitted Don's dog house and built my own that was more in line with the prototype. The trailer was actually lengthened by about 2 HO scale feet to accomodate the new dog house.
3) Added the custom "Windy City" sign on top of the dog house that was originally on the Kamikaze owned by Windy City Amusements, the ride which this was modeled after. The sign was laser cut by Anthony at Laser Tech. Anthony did a great job cutting the sign and getting it very close to the original with very few photos or measurements.
4) When the ride was built, I asked Don to put both of my entrance/exit ramps on the back side of the ride and also add two flood light poles to both the sides of the deck so there was a total of 8 and not 6.
5) Don helped me create a commentator so that I could add working flood lights to the arms, just like on the real ride.
6) After seeing how cool the flood lights looked on the arms (especially during operation), I thought it might be neat if I added real working LEDs to the bottom of the cars. After contemplating it for a few days, I shared my idea with Don and he basically told me "DO IT" lol. So, I took on the challenge. There was a lot of trial and error involved in wiring these tiny SMD leds. Soldering was a real chore, so I searched online and found a product called "CircuitWriter", which is a electroconductive pen used to repair and make prototype circuit boards. I glued the tiny SMD LEDs to some strips of evergreen plastic and then glued them to the bottom of the cars. I used the pen to create the circuitry and wire them all together. The first few tries didnt work, but after a lot of trial and error I figured out a better way to do it. Anyway, the end result was fantastic and I am glad I spent the extra hours working on these lights. If I were to ever do it again, I have an idea on how I would do it differently to make it a little easier.
7) The last thing I did was put woodland scenics ground turf on the base and accented it with some of their trees. I added some HO scale people infront of the ride to help form a crowd.
Additional photos can be seen in the MCW photo gallery by
clicking HERE .
