A new ‘Old Engine’- Re-visited
I find it hard to believe that more than six years have passed since I started to build a model of one of the early standard gauge engines, transferred to the GWR when they acquired the Oxford, Worcester, & Wolverhampton Railway (The Old Worse & Worse, as it was colloquially known)
I have been reminding myself of what is in this, my older ‘Pre-Grouping’ blog, before I changed over to (became obsessed with) the Broad Gauge! My model of No.184, shown below, was the last model I built using traditional methods involving brass sheet. It also sat on the first ‘chassis’ I built – a simple pair of brass strips separated by ‘Markits’-type spacers.
My model of No.184, photographed in 2014
Although the overall construction went quite well, I made a silly mistake with the underframe and ended up with outside frames that were too wide to allow free rotation of the outside cranks, while clearing my platforms! As a result, this pretty little model languished in my spares box for many years, although I did attempt a partial rebuild in 2017, when I also finally got around to building a Tender.
Nevertheless, I still felt dissatisfied with the model and it all seemed a bit of a kludge. The boiler fittings never felt quite right, either, since I was reliant on the nearest matches I could find from the trade, being unable to construct my own components.
No.184 with old 4-wheeers at North Leigh
While reading through my old articles, I found I had written the following prophetic words in one of my replies to comments: “I'd like an affordable3D printer so I could keep everything in my own hands “ Well, a lot has changed since November 2014 and not only are there plenty of low-cost 3D-printers around but I have also got to grips with some of the problems involved in using CAD modelling tools!
The first task was to sort out those outside frames! I was amazed to find how tough it was to dismantle those parts I had re-made in 2017. The lengths of Broad Gauge rail that I used to re-make the edges of the footplate un-soldered reasonably easily but the filler I had used in various places was as hard as rock and had to be ground out with a drum sanding-disk in my mini-drill, which produced clouds of white dust everywhere!
Looking at those hand-cut outside frames, which I was very pleased with at the time, they look rather crude now, with barely a right-angle corner in sight! For rivets, I had used the brass rivet strips that used to come from ‘Mainly Trains’ but are now still available from ‘Wizard Models’. I built up a stock when ‘Mainly Trains’ closed and have used them for all sorts of things including a standard-gauge Tilt Wagon.
I still had all my original drawings of No.184, so all I needed to do in order to make a new set of 3D printed frames was to import the appropriate drawing into ‘Fusion 360’ and trace over the lines, then extrude the new frames. Adding rivets is a breeze since @Timber pointed out the ‘pattern’ tool in ‘Fusion 360’. I simply create one rivet head and copy as many as I need along a chosen direction! I think the overall design took about an hour and then I could transfer the model file to the ‘Cura’ slicer software, to produce a file for my printer.
3D model over drawing ‘canvas’ in Fusion 360’
The complete set of frames took 33 minutes to print and now I had nice ‘square’ openings for the axles boxes, smooth lines of rivets, and correct spacing between the outer surfaces of the wheels and the inner sides of the outside cranks.
My 3D-printed frames on the printer bed
The funny thing is that at normal viewing distances, it really doesn’t look any different! (i’ve deliberately kept the image small to emphasis this point). It does, however, now have adequate clearances for the outside cranks.
New outside frames in place below my original model
Sometimes, I feel I want to re-make all my old models by means of the 3D printer but, when I look at them, they bring back many happy memories of the time I spent creating them in the ‘old ways’. It’s easy to be hyper-critical and see all the faults in the old constructions but, in practice, they look fine and they each have a ‘history’ attached to them. I shall resist the temptation to re-do everything and, instead, will concentrate on new and different prototypes, especially those which reveal something about railway history but are unlikely ever to be appear in the model marketplace.
Mike
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