Dave's corner

[Frederic Testard]

Yesterday and today progress : detailing the gears and drums.
Circles have been cut with an Olfa circular cutter to cover the gears as per the AH&D prototype. The ratched was hand carved with an X-acto (easy to see...)
The small collets around the axis were done starting with a 1/8" piece of rod. Since there seemed to be a mark at the center of the rod, I decided I could hand drill a concentric hole in order to make it into a tube. So I progressively drilled, starting with 0.04" then 0.06" then 0.08" then 0.095". This makes a tube with wall 0.015" thick, so one has to use a very delicate end with the bigger drills, but I'd say it was really easier than expected.
Then I set my Chopper II to cut 0.04" thick, and I cut the collets (I didn't try to cut them in one time but rather made partial cuts and rotations to have a piece as flat as possible).
Finally, I was so proud of my little parts that I managed to glue one on the wrong side (it is missing on the left gear, in the first pic). So tomorrow, I'll cut two additionnal ones and add them where I had not expected to do it (making the mistake everywhere is a way to correct it). In fact, I'll cut four since I'll use two more to set the position of the axes on the frames.

[Frederic Testard]

And even six, maybe...

[eTraxx]

Looking good Frederick. I found that I had to use the same process cutting tubing on my chopper .. a slight cut .. rotate .. cut .. rotate .. cut .. rotate .. until the slice falls over. Just chopping through you will get crooked cuts.

[Frederic Testard]

Next step : the flywheel and the associated fittings. The first picture shows a set with the flywheel (visible) + an eccentric (hidden) + eccentric rod (visible) + one of the two halves of the valve rod (visible). Currently I am not totally happy with the valve rod and may change it.
The second picture shows the flywheel and the eccentric (the second eccentric rod hasn't yet been done).

[Frederic Testard]

As I said yesterday, I was not very happy with the design of the valve rods, so I made two new, thinner ones. In the two shots below, a temporary rod connects the eccentric rod to the valve rod, to show how rotating the eccentric allows the valve rod to move back and forth.

[Malachi Constant]

The assembly is looking good, but the slots in those white wheels need some clean-up ... perhaps the tip of a small round file to remove the burrs.  (Okay, so you probably know this already, I'm just saying it anyway.)    -- Dallas

[Frederic Testard]

Back to the boiler.

After a closer examination of the plans sent by Marc, I removed two small boards on the sides of the channels to model a more prototypical crosshead guide.
After two days of laminating, glueing, thinking, filing, sanding, thinking, swearing, reglueing, drilling, reglueing, searching the little rascals (NBW that is), swearing, reglueing, the two cylinders were finally done...





The pics are much bigger than the real thing, and this increases the texture to the point that things nearly unnoticeable in real become conspicuous. Below is an image closer to the real size.



Then I painted the frame. Dirty but not too worn.
The wooden boiler was wrapped with some 0.0052" thick styrene riveted with a rivet wheel (later, you'll see that I was not too satisfied of my work and finally added a myriad of NBWs).
The valve rods were completed and installed, and the piston rod and crosshead started on one side.





A few more shots. Even with the time devoted to pictures, plus the remaking of a part that has flewn into the ether, the second one was made much faster now that the concept had been created...

At assembly time, the Evergreen strips are kept long enough to ease their handling (except those which location would make the cutting difficult or impossible).

The north side...



The south side...



The same thing after trimming :





And the basis of the donkey :



On to the connecting rod. The hardest job : drilling two 0.6mm holes in a 1mm wide strip. It requires care and politeness...
It was still working at that time (but I still had to make the other side...)

The two first shots show the assembly concept. The plastic rod has 1mm (0.04") diameter.









And when it was done, an uinfortunate wrong glueing made the thing immobile for the eternity... Which is frustrating from an intellectual standpoint but not a practical one, since nobody would have been able to turn the gears once the thing is concealed inside its shed...
Other additions : the clutch handles and their supports, and the covers of the pillow blocks, with their VectorCut nuts.





And the final progress before starting the piping : brake bands and pedals. I was afraid the bands could be difficult to install in the relatively awkward space, but it worked very well in fact.

I was not very happy with my wheel rivets, so I drilled a few holes and planted a few tichies.

I drilled holes for the various boiler fittings and painted it grimy black.

And I made the steam gauge (hope it's the right name, if not please correct). A short length of evergreen tubing was painted humbrol brass, then I inserted an even smaller length of concentric rod. On top of this I glued a print of a real thing cut with a punch. Finally, I added a piece of transparency material (also punched). I put it on top of the piece of tube, delicately added a small drop of ACC glue, and used a pin to draw it under the transparent piece all around the piece of tubing. In general, the thing you're glueing ends on the floor and you just have an awful blob of glueish plastic to throw away, but gods were in my team today!



One more work session alowed me to add most of the fittings (I was then waiting for some tubing for the main pipes). Thanks to Precision Scale and Cal Scale for their great castings...





When I got the tubing I could make the piping. The piece was made out of five parts of brass tubing, with evergreen styrene used to connect them, as well as to avoid distortion when I bent the tube. The connections were made out of paper, and one of them was later filed because it was too thick.

Before adding the central part :



After :





Almost done, finally, with the end of the piping. To avoid any problem with the fitting of the pipes in the top of the boiler, I milled two slots in the bottom of the cone, so that when the pipes were installed I simply had to slip the cone over them. It seems to be close to actual practice by the way, since these conical hats were often articulated so as to ease the transport of the machine, I guess.
To avoid any breakage, I've decided not to add any detail to this conical top, and I won't either install the rods connecting the boiler to the side frames. In spite of this, I've broken the end of the crank that actuates the clutch of the forward drum. Since I'm afraid any attempt to repair might make things worse, it will stay this way...

Only thing still to be done : adding the two gipsy drums at the ends of the axis.

The slots :



Piping partially done :



Three shots of the (nearly) done hoist :







The two gipsy heads were turned out of translucent rod which I simply shaped with a file. The shot below shows that no special care was used to make two identical parts, but I think they look ok on the model.

Here is the complete donkey inside the shed. The donkey is too short so I'll add a vent above it as in engine houses.

The gipsy heads before painting them :



The partially assembled roof. The two end triangles were installed first, and then the longitudinal planks were glued to act as guides for the other triangles (and provide some support for glueing).



The finished shed (still lacking its corrugated cover) and the hoist.

[Chuck Doan]

Your donkey came out nice. That was a lot of fabrication. All that work and now to cover it up!

[chester]

Nice work Frederic, it does seem a shame to cover it up.

[finescalerr]

A scratchbuilt donkey and he hides it in a shed! The man is nuts. Very nice job, Frederic. -- Russ

[Frederic Testard]

Thanks for the comments. You were not alone to say that it was a bit crazy to hide such a work, so it was decided that the roof of the shed was undergoing some major repair, with the replacement of old corrugated by some newer one. I'll post it soon.

[lab-dad]

Very Nice!
After just recently finishing a donkey "kit" I am very impressed!
Not sure I would really want to fabricate a donkey!
-Marty

[Ray Dunakin]

Very nice!

[Frederic Testard]

With the donkey done, it was time to start the completion of the dio.

Scenery was added to the rear of the diorama. Ivy comes from Ian Hodgkiss' store (artizen here). It flew like an arctic tern : it left Europe and went to Australia and then came back to Europe. Not very good C02-wise, but I thought it was nice to purchase it from a forum member. The weeds come from Jadar store in Poland.

Other details : the telegraph pole, a partial cover of the roof in repair with reasonably new sheets on one side, rusted ones not yet removed by the workers on the other side. A few planks and another workbench to a side of the hoist shed, plus a few more details to the ground. The compressor motor is an inexpensive casting by Life-Like.





I tried to avoid overdoing the scene. The pictures I've been able to download showing marine operations show clutter but not overclutter in general.





I purposedly chose the standing out colors of the drum, partly because it provided a more pleasant base to add rich rusty colors, partly because I thought the place was a bit "sad" (it's not the perfect word) with all the dark colours and this touch of light would enhance the whole thing.





Wood for the boiler. The wood was cut out of branches of thyme, and I think they look reasonably like the pulpwood Troels has stocked in his neighbor mill on the Coast Line RR.
The thyme being cut (with the rail nippers, not the chopper). Not a very tidy job...



The first layer of wood, and glue waiting for level 2.



The hose starting from the water tank, that the crew connect to the hoist when it is used, was made out of 1mm diameter solder. A homemade tin cover was added to the top of the water tank, with a rock to hold it against the Maine wind.





The "vent" over the boiler stack. No plan used, just followed some pictures to get what seems a reasonably convincing device.







Next, it was time to make the buoy. It was made after a model by Marc Reusser displayed here : http://www.finescalerr.com/smf/index.php?topic=316.90

First the method used to perform an angled cut.





Then the technique used to cut the half-circles on the upper part of the buoy. Full circles were made using increasingly large drills and then a triangular file to enlarge them to the right diameter (I marked a pencil line on the file to get the same radius on all circles). Finally the strip was cut lengthwise to obtain the half circles..



And finally the assembly jig, drawn on the computer.


Several steps :





If I haven't made a counting mistake, there are 141 different parts in this model.. Next it was time to paint it.

A first layer of rust color. First Polly Scale Boxcar red, then a mixture of Golden Burnt Umber and Burnt Sienna. Great acrylic paint, impressive adhesion on plastic, impressive covering.



Then a coat of orange on the basis, and the same color applied by tapping the end of the brush on the upper part. Paint was then scratched with finger nails or bits of wood, and rust (the same as above) was applied in the resulting holes. Finally, a light wash of Vallejo umber and a few more dabs of rust. I'll have to sand it lightly and it will be declared done. Below are three views under slightly different angles.

[Chuck Doan]

Your scene is coming together nicely Frederic! I have really enjoyed your black and white pics on the RR Line this month.