Renders of the whole project

The design started in summer of 2022, when I didn’t have a resin printer yet. So the first model to be printed, transporter erector, was printed in FDM, with matching detalization. Later, 2nd half of in 2023, the idler platform was adapted for resin printer capabilities.

The model is not open-source.

11Y219 Transporter-erector

Model renders
Photos

The transporter erector wagon (called officially "транспортно-установочный агрегат 11У219" in Russian) is the main wagon on which the Soyuz rocket is placed in the assembly building and carried to the launch table. At the launch table, the tower with attached rocket is erected with hydraulic piston and rocket is placed on the launch table.

The transporter can also propel itself a little bit using built-in electric motors. I could not retain any of the motorized functions on the model, so it can only be hauled by a locomotive, and the tower can be raised manually.

I wanted to make rocket detachable, and used neodymium magnets to achieve that. It turned out that 5mm round magnets on one side and 5x3x2 magnets on other side are quite good to hold this huge rocket in place (there are 4 connection points). In addition, the "claw" around the rocket is made of 2 pieces, one is kept in place with a magnet, so this does not prevent rocket from detaching.

The Rocket

Rocket model

The amazing high-detail model of the rocket itself was taken from thingiverse. The model is in scale of 1:50, so I scaled it up a bit. I was thinking of printing it in 1:100 instead of 1:87, as is frequent for large objects in HO (e.g. buildings or long wagons), but in the end decided to keep proper scale, as mating and aligning problems would surely arise later. The only thing I’d like from from a model is aid in aligning during assembly, as it is rather difficult to assemble 50cm rocket out of 9 consecutive pieces on top of each other and keep them straight. Change in angle and bending of the rocket is rather visible at this size. (When working on my wind turbine, I added a hole through all of the parts to pull a metal rod for alignment, and for motor wires.)

To reduce number of triangles during development, a simpler version is used on renders on this page.

11T750 Idler platform

Render

Or "агрегат прикрытия 11T750" as it is called officially in Russian.

While it’s called an idler car, the platform is far from an ordinary empty flatcar, as it contains complex piping system to provide air of controlled temperature/humidity for the spacecraft, scaffolding to raise those pipes to spacecraft height and ladders to provide access of workers to the spacecraft when they are detaching all those pipes.

The source of temperature-controlled air is another wagon, which I may design some time when I have nothing else to do (it is rather a boring wagon).

Due to large amount of thin scaffolding, is was arguably more difficult to design than the rocket transporter. It would also be rather difficult, is possible, to print in FDM, so I only started printing it when I got familiar enough with a resin printer, and this model of fully in resin, except dynamic coupler parts.

This is the first time I designed a dynamic coupling mechanism. I needed this because the wagon is long, and overhangs of the wagon over the bogie are also large. The mechanism uses 2mm spring (made of 0.1mm wire) and roughly follows NEM-352 standard. I tried 2 or 3 variants of design and thicker wire spring, this seems optimal. (Actually, the overhang is not larger than in an ordinary gondola wagon, so I technically could not bother myself with dynamic coupling and just use bogies with NEM pocket coupler that worked for that gondola)

I retained some of platform functionality, in particular the towers that embrace the rocket slide left and right to compensate the misalignment of the train wagons in curves. Nevertheless, I doubt that the scale version will fit into even the largest curves of model layouts. To keep the sliding functionality, the pipes from the platform to towers needed to be flexible (as on the real thing). I am going to investigate thick silicon wires, water pipes or something else that can pass for a huge hose.

The underlying platform is also used for all rocketry-related transportation needs in Russia, so in an attempt to make the model more universal, I added attachment hinges and wells that are on a unmodified platform. After I printed the platform, I realized that these holes are covered or welded on the platform modified to be a 11T750, so this instance of printed model will deviate from the prototype in this regard. (the latest design can be configured to have the attachment hinges or not)

Photos of the process
Photos of the real thing