Ray,yes, they were enclosed 0-2-0 superheated steam locos, 6 of them in the last years of the railway and all built by Henschel between 1913 and 1927. Weight was between 20 and 22.7 to. The wheel base was 1.50 m so they were able to manage the tight curves down to 12 m radius. One of those locos survived at the
DEV historical railway in northern Germany. This year, 50 years after the farewell ride, it returned for a few weeks to Plettenberg and ran on the
Sauerländer Kleinbahn, which is situated close to Plettenberg, but unfortunately doesn't use any of the former embankments of the Kleinbahn, but a former standard gauge line. See a video of the loco running at this museum:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_kWVkHVZc8.
Russ,you should trust your forum members' apprehension. It rather depends on the print quality of your book
.
Marc,I learned a lot during my time with the exercise module and by participating in this forum. I hope not to disappoint your expectations. They are mine, too.
Maybe there'll be some repetition from other posts. Please don't mind. It belongs here.
One of my first attempts was to do some reverse engineering for the bridge. Fortunately there are a few vertical shots with good objects of comparison and - even better - some pics of dismantling the bridge. At this time one year ago I didn't know too much about CAD and so I made all drawings 2D with Macromedia Freehand.
Next step was to "translate" those 2D drawings of a 3D object into 2D Drawings for milling the different material thicknesses. Helmut and Frithjof did several attempts to use them, but the milling software has a lot of problems to translate it.
So I decided to redo everything in CAD, which I command now. I'm not too far with this. There were some other challenges.
My very first 3D object was a steel sleeper, that I had drawn once with SketchUp and then redone in CAD. As mentioned in the exercise module thread I'm going to build the trackage to scale. So my gauge isn't 45 mm but 44.5 mm. The groove width of the rails is 1.7 mm.
The siding on the Mühlendamm had those steel sleepers. The track height of "Preußen Form 6" corresponds roughly to Code 250. But the rail base is far to thick, as you can see in this comparison of Code 250 and a conversion to scale (in the background).
That's what the sleeper finally looked like in CAD:
The sleeper is the German "Form SW50 mit Haarmann'scher Hakenplatte". All pieces are exactly constructed to scale. But there were more difficulties with the rails: Helmut helps and mills down the rail base to scale.
Next step was a cheap low resolution print, colored with water color:
And this is what it looks like with Helmut's milled rails. Apart from the far too thick rail web (which you don't see when built in) this looks like a rail for me.
The surface recalls strong corrosion, but the details were not clear enough. Printing all 100 sleepers was no financial option anyways. So I had another high resolution print.
This print has been slightly smoothened with an exacto and some sanding as there were some layer lines on the slopes. This master form then has been casted 100 times with resin by the company, which had done the high res print.
All sleepers were a bit warped but I could fix that easily with a hair dryer.
Next step were the rail joints.
Combined with some other pieces like fish plates, joints for grooved rail, gauge bars and brake blocks (what? Brake blocks?) I had those items printed via shapeways.
That's the result in FUD:
After I had removed some wax stains with warm water and detergent all parts were clear and sharp, apart from the printing lines, that one can remove easily on even surfaces. Did some more at the master forms for the brass castings after I had seen the pics:
The biggest problem of all was the grooved rail. Of course I had done the CAD, but there was no way for an affordable production. There's no possibility to pull or press those profiles. I had some offers for eroding; costs 13.000,- € for 6 meters.
Good to have friends:
This is from a guy who works with a five axle CNC mill. It's the transition of the Plettenberg rail profile NP4a to scale, apart from the web, which is 0.3 mm too thick (0.8 instead of 0.5). Otherwise he could not have done it. Believe me: We fought for every tenth. The material is steel CK45, an easily millable sort.
Please compare with standard trackage:
From left to right: Peco nickel silver silver code 250, Miha/Llagas Creek stainless steel code 250, Peco nickel silver code 250 with soldered angle section for grooved rail (in the next post I'll continue with that), "my" rail, LGB brass code 332.
Have fun.
Volker
