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Ciao all, you have already seen my E.656 topic last week, but after posting it, I realized both the locomotive and coaches were wrongly shaped. First of all I tried to build a mockup, and move it around some Lemax track - I had bad luck, since the radius is too tight and the locomotive is badly bent, looking unrealistic. So for the moment I decided to redesign it as a static only, more solid model. Plus, during the rebuilding the "nose" was redesigned so it's more pointy. The locomotive now is longer by one stud, due to central cover for articulation (I wonder which is the correct English term!) being now in exact 1:87 scale. Since I was already working, I prepared also the freight version, called E.655, which had a gear ratio adapted for better pulling power than speed (120km/h). Then I remade all the pictures with the coaches, since the UIC-X in Livery Red/Gray paint scheme adopted an underbody protection. The express train is now more precise than its first version and I'm more happy with it. Now it is the perfect replica of my Lima H0 train I had many many years ago! It seems very elegant with all coaches in coordinated colors...but in reality Italian trains of the era were composed by coaches in different color styles. Now, having made the famous "Caimano", I needed to go on , and design the "Tartaruga", or E.444 (yes, we have a nickname for quite everything ). Modern and elegant, the E.444 has been the fastest Italian locomotive for a long time. Having the possibility to play with colors, I tried to recreate some coaches in their various paint schemes, to recreate a typical Express train of the 80s. In the picture below you can find UIC-X coaches in "Grigio Ardesia" (a kind of dark "stone gray" well fitting the Lego Dark Bluish Gray), the already seen Livery Red/Gray UIC-X, and the colorful "Eurofima" in Orange. The "Grigio Ardesia" UIC-X are a bit older then the Red/Gray ones, but not all were converted, so it was not strange to see both in Italian consists. Older UIC-X do not have the underbody protection, as far as I could understand (please correct me if I'm wrong). Now that we've seen the E.656 and the E.444, let's go back to an older model, the great E.646 and its freight version, the E.645: This has the same base as my E.656 (in reality the chassis of the E.646 was then used as the starting point to create the "Caimano"), but has a more...boxy body and it's full of grilles of different shapes. It has some different choices for headlights due to the lack of some parts in green and Dark Tan. The first E.646 locomotives featured a body similar to the E.636 and E.424. Another step back in the family of articulated locomotives...and now we're coming to the first one of the dynasty, the E.636. In its "Castano-Isabella" paint scheme (Reddish Brown and Dark Tan), this was quite a mess for me. This model requires a slight modification (I cannot do in a better way) of the "tiles with clips" parts, holding the headlights: these parts must be sand-papered on one side to fit under the "nose". I tried it before drawing the final version. Other parts did not fit or were not available in right colors. I love this locomotive, but her cabin is a nightmare! Let's make her pull an end-of-the-70s express! The E.636 group of locomotives has a special member, nicknamed "Camilla". It seems a "Caimano" but it's not. The E.636.284 was involved in a fatal accident. Cabin was completely destroyed and the engineer lost his life. The cabins were designed in the 40s, so were not so secure. Nonetheless, the locomotive was not scrapped, since it was quite intact in all its main parts. Therefore, an experiment was performed (in order maybe to renew all the 636), and a cabin from an E.656 was fitted. A particular paint scheme was used. The nickname "Camilla" is due to the name written on the unfinished new cabin by one of the workers (after the name of his beloved grilfriend)...and became the official name of the locomotive, which remained the only 636 with this body. It still is operational and historically preserved. And now, last but not least, the smaller (but not less important, since it started the whole family of these modern shaped locomotives!) E.424. Same cabin as the E.636, so same needed modification to clips parts. This one is made in 80s "Navetta" color scheme , which was used in the last employment for this little all-purpose locomotive: Commuter reversible trains. For this reason the last (or first? ) coach was a semi-pilot one, with all remote controls for the locomotive. Here it is the Semi-Pilot MDVE type coach (all other coaches of the consist are MDVC type). It is nicknamed "MAZINGA" - which is the Italian pronunciation of "Mazinger", the famous big robot featured in the 70s Japanese cartoon. It was called this way, since it resembles a robotic head That's all (for the moment)! I hope you like these trains - I will try to go on with designs on this scale since these are really fun! Ciao! Davide