Accurized TOS Battlestar Galactica Launch Rail

[Revell-Fan]

Howdee, fans!

My esteemed friend @Rhaven Blaack was looking for a different stand for his Thunderfighters and came up with the idea to use the TOS Galactica launch rail by Gearz for this. However, while building the model he encountered some problems. So he asked me for help to verify his finds and - if possible - to solve the issues.

Since it has already been my plan to beef up the model by adding some greeblies I swang into action. First I printed out the two PDF parts pages as they were provided.



The parts are cut out.



Upon first examination it was clear that something was wrong. The white spaces indicating the position of parts 12 & 13 are too big.



Parts 1 & 2 are connected with a joining strip which allows some "wiggle room". However, since part 12 is smaller than the white area it doesn't benefit from it at all. No matter how close you connect parts 1 & 2 - there will always be a white rim. If you place 1 & 2 closer together, the rim at the side will be eliminated but the rim at the back or the front will remain.





In addition the height of the angled sides on all parts is wrong. They do not lign up flush with the neighbouring parts, leaving a small overlap:



However, the situation is not hopeless. So stay tuned for some very surprising facts, please.

 

[Rhaven Blaack]

Thank you for taking this on and adding your magic to it!!!
I am looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

 

[Revell-Fan]

Assembly of the rail base was pretty straight forward without any real issues.







Each of the rail tracks consist of two parts. They fit quite well from the end of the rail to the beginning of part 12. They cross the white area of parts 1 & 2 which makes the size error even more obvious.



The ribbed rubber band that was attached to the back of the launch block (part 14) fits well, too. I suppose that the same ribbed rubber band which was wrapped around the Viper's engine exhausts was used on the real rail prop. Both structures look eerily similar.



The kit comes with formers which have to be attached to the inside of the railway in order to increase its stability.



However, the formers do not fit very well: They are not wide enough which makes it impossible to attach them to all three sides.

 

[Revell-Fan]

Well, and this is it: Gearz' TOS Galactica launch rail.





It is about 30 cm long and 7.5 cm wide. The resting area is about 5 cm wide.

After studying some screenshots and the original construction plans of the TOS launch bay I noticed the following


Pros:

• awesome texture
• the texture is fairly accurate
• correct angles at the back of the rail base
• nice size - scale about 1/32

Cons:

• wrong proportions of the back block parts
• wrong position of the tracks
• glue positions too big
• alignment issues on angled sides
• weak formers
• aliased graphics and compression artifacts undermine the very good texture work

No, that fuzziness around the black lines was not caused by my printer. These are the compression artifacts which have been permanently burnt into the original files.

And please don't look too closely at the bowed lines of the build; I skipped all but one of the formers because it was only a quick and dirty test to see if, how and where it could be improved.

As a first attempt to boost the quality of this kit I imported the parts pages into CorelDRAW and traced the lines as they were. This eliminated the artifacts and cleaned up the parts tremendously.



And with this vectorized pattern the real fun could begin.

 

[zathros]

This is a model that really needs to be redesigned, with greebling, using pictures from the series, a very presentable model could be made.

 

[Revell-Fan]

I thought the very first thing which would make the model pop was the inclusion of the half spheres on the sides. This was my initial goal and I'm glad that I had to tackle it now since it had been on my todo list for such a long time.

 

[Revell-Fan]

Getting a good view at the original prop is somewhat difficult. The schematics only show the base of the rail, not the block behind the Viper. So I need to rely on screenshots again.

I chose to tackle the most prominent piece first: The side plates. On the original prop these plates were cast in rubber or vacuformed and used on many sets such as the officer's mess as wall decoration. Gearz delivered an excelent template to work with. All elements were there. I tweaked the position of the single elements, adapted the size of some of them and added the rivets. So I came from this



to this:



The half spheres looked easy but due to the small scale I fear that the cutout in the middle must be omitted in order not to overcomplicate the build. We'll see. Even though I'm making the revision in 1/32 and 1/50 scale there will be another one coming with more detail, maybe with the hole, too. In 1/18. I won't tell you why.



So for the time being I'm tricking the eye with the texture.



And some tiny greeblies for Rhaven:

 

[Rhaven Blaack]

Getting a good view at the original prop is somewhat difficult. The schematics only show the base of the rail, not the block behind the Viper. So I need to rely on screenshots again.

I chose to tackle the most prominent piece first: The side plates. On the original prop these plates were cast in rubber or vacuformed and used on many sets such as the officer's mess as wall decoration. Gearz delivered an excelent template to work with. All elements were there. I tweaked the position of the single elements, adapted the size of some of them and added the rivets. So I came from this

View attachment 172480

to this:

View attachment 172481

The half spheres looked easy but due to the small scale I fear that the cutout in the middle must be omitted in order not to overcomplicate the build. We'll see. Even though I'm making the revision in 1/32 and 1/50 scale there will be another one coming with more detail, maybe with the hole, too. In 1/18. I won't tell you why.

View attachment 172482

So for the time being I'm tricking the eye with the texture.

View attachment 172483

And some tiny greeblies for Rhaven:

View attachment 172484

i like the details that you are putting into this. Thank you for the extra greebles!!! rinks:

 

[Revell-Fan]

I have taken some screenshots from the show to start the refining process. Stay tuned!

 

[Revell-Fan]

A brief history of the launch rail - or: And I thought it would be easy...

While comparing the screenshots from various episodes I noticed that there was NO DEFINITE LAUNCH RAIL!

The look of the rail changed from episode to episode. The very first shot of her was featured in the pilot movie:





You see a gap between the back block (part 12) and the rail base with two "tubes" protruding from it. Rhaven suggested that these "tubes" were in fact parts of the tracks which would run from the front end of the rail to her back end. At the end of the rail base you see what I call a ribbed rubber band. This structure is repetitive and can be seen at the back end of the rail again (twice). It also separates the squares with the half spheres which are embraced by a horizontally stretched "H" shape.

For clarification:

Ribbed band on the left, stretched H-shape embracing a square with the rivets and the half spheres in the middle on the right.

In the first regular episode "Lost Planet of the Gods, Part 1" we see that something has changed:



Now the back block sits directly on the rail base, the gap is completely gone, there are no traces any more of the tracks.

So far so good. I could very well live with that because this configuration is much more logical, stable and pleasing to the eye. However, this is a pic from part 2 of the episode:



Please take a close look at the bottom-left corner of the picture. You see that the rubber mat with the ribbon pattern is gone!

It was still there in the pilot movie.

Now there is a long plate framing the right side of the half sphere element. This replaces the right half of the "H" element. There is no ribbed band at all.

Let's revisit "The Long Patrol" and see what's going on there.



Frankly, I have no idea what's happened but you can clearly see a broken edge! The damage is so grave that it even reveals the plywood structure underneath. But wait - the plate framing the half sphere is missing as well! Now there is the regular full "H" structure again which belongs to the cast square wall element with the half sphere in the middle. Upon further examination I came to the conclusion that this is the configuration from "Lost Planet" again but without the ribbed rubber band. Maybe it was ripped off during assembly / re-assembly which might have caused the damage.

Fast forward to "The Man With Nine Lives".



Miraculously the ribbed rubber band is present again, the damage was repaired. The bottom rail looks like in "Saga" again.

To fully understand these deviations you have to know how the rail was used. It was a simple plywood construction, built from cheap materials and decorated with cast elements which were either glued on or screwed on. The full-size Viper was a very heavy prop which had to be carefully moved by a crane or a dolly. The landing gear had to be extra stable to sustain the weigth of the plane, meaning it was not designed to retract. It was always down.

So, how do you think the Viper was placed on the rail without having the landing gear in the way and without collapsing the rail under the plane's heavy weigth?

The original blueprints reveal that they simply cut holes into the rail base where the landing struts were and put the Viper into these holes. Moving the prop by crane all the time would have been too difficult and too dangerous because there was only one full size mockup available which had to be carefully looked after. If it had gotten damaged it would have affected production tremendously. In addition, the rail and the landing gear had angled sides, making it impossible for the plane to go through the holes from above. So instead of having her "fly" on and off the rail (which would have been a logistic disaster) they simply rolled her into position. To do so they took off the end of the rail, rolled the plane into the parking position and then put the back piece of the rail into place again. In "The Man With Nine Lives" you can clearly see the holes in the rail and the extended landing gear that went straight into them. I'll add a screenshot of that scene later. My theory is that the rail was redesigned to make the Viper transport easier. The different greeblies were cause by little accidents that happened on set or were simple mishaps aka continuity errors.

I'm now refining the plates and greeblies to match their on-screen counterparts. Stay tuned for updates!

 

[starbuck]

Oh wow. Finally some new BSG material is coming up.
I already use the existing launch rail for my plastic model of the Viper Mark I (unfortunately no detailed paper version exists) and will be happy
to replace it with a more detailed launch rail.

Thank you for taking this on and adding your magic to it!!!
I am looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

As Revell-Fan is working on it it will be a highly detailed and accurate model. :King:

 

[Revell-Fan]

Thank you!

To illustrate what I was saying in the essay above I created a first version of the different rail configurations based on what we can see in the screenshots:







The "Lost Planet of the Gods 2" version is not quite correct but the best I could come up with now. Apparently they shortened the rail a bit, however, in order not to deviate from the main configuration I simply added that strange beam shape at the end of the side. This was made to keep the length of the rails so that you may display all of them together. If I shortened the rail it would stick out which would ruin the overall impression. Those who might make a shorter version may do so by simply cutting off a bit.

 

[Rhaven Blaack]

My personal vote is for the "Lost Planet of the Gods" 1 version.

 

[Revell-Fan]

My vote is for all versions.

BTW, I think my assumption regarding the "Lost Planets 2" version was wrong. It would not have made any sense to toy with the length of the rail because of her size and the fact that she was fastened to the stage floor. So I took another close look at it and found THIS:



The greeblie plate arrangement was changed which explains the different look:



Maybe the set decorators wanted to bring some diversity to the look of the rail, maybe it was an experiment, maybe a mishap. Then, while restoring the original configuration for the later episodes they damaged the edge of the rail, right at the mounting point of the ribbon mat which was then absent ("The Long Patrol"). After fixing the damage the base was strong enough to hold the mat again and was fully restored, as we can see in "The Man With Nine Lives".

Please note that this is all speculation but it could make sense.

 

[Rhaven Blaack]

My vote is for all versions.

BTW, I think my assumption regarding the "Lost Planets 2" version was wrong. It would not have made any sense to toy with the length of the rail because of her size and the fact that she was fastened to the stage floor. So I took another close look at it and found THIS:

View attachment 172549

The greeblie plate arrangement was changed which explains the different look:

View attachment 172548

Maybe the set decorators wanted to bring some diversity to the look of the rail, maybe it was an experiment, maybe a mishap. Then, while restoring the original configuration for the later episodes they damaged the edge of the rail, right at the mounting point of the ribbon mat which was then absent ("The Long Patrol"). After fixing the damage the base was strong enough to hold the mat again and was fully restored, as we can see in "The Man With Nine Lives".

Please note that this is all speculation but it could make sense.

Actually, I do like the variety of having all versions available. I just figured that it would same you some work to do just one. With that being said, all versions it is!!!

 

[spaceagent-9]

I dont know if this helps. Paint.net has a -effects - relief- adjustable setting that sometimes enhances a model part.

 

[Revell-Fan]

WOW!!! Jim, that looks sweet! I want to keep everything as vectors so I won't run the graphics through Paint.Net or The Gimp. I already added some shading effects on the recessed areas and the big sphere but I was unsure if I should add them to the rivets as well. Your image told me that I should do it - to hell with the file size!

 

[zathros]

Jim, that looks like some kind of generalized Ray-Reacing. I know you wrote it's adjustable, I kind of like Revelle-Fan's version a bit better. My 2 cents worth. That ray tracing could be really helpful for very small parts that won't be greebled.

 

[Jadriancz]

Just the reason I have put off building the TOS Vipers but this is looking good and may get me to building them

 

[Revell-Fan]

Now then. As you might remember the greeblie plate was fleshed out and unfolded:




I'm making a test build soon and will give you some more pictures.