0_gauge_novice Posted August 20, 2015 Author Share Posted August 20, 2015 Hi too all, I moved on with the plunger pickups. They are installed with the modification that Ozzyo showed in the thread from Jim Snowdon. The installation of the pickups (PFS pickups from Gladiator Kits) was quite straighforward and did not pose a problem. However....I have the problem that the plunger is quite stiff to the back of the wheels and the wheels are not turning or with a lot of effort. Should I make the softer by bending them a little bit? Should I file the plungers to make them shorter as I think they are protruding too long out of the chassis? Except from the attachment of the springs I have not made any other modification of the springs. Thanks for all the help Cheers Andreas Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ozzyo Posted August 22, 2015 Share Posted August 22, 2015 Hello Andreas, sorry for the long time in replying. You have a number of things that you can do. The fist one is make sure that the plunger moves freely in the hole and is not catching on any thing. The second is to make two small bends in the leg of the spring that fits in the slot of the plunger. The third one is to move the spring so that the "ring" part of the spring is farther away from the plunger (that looks hard to do now). The fourth one is to shorten the plunger, to do this measure the free length of the plunger that is outside of the axle box with all of the spacing washer in place and allow about 10 thou (0.25mm) per side, to cut them back find a length of brass strip of about the correct thickness then drill a hole in it of the outside Dia. of the plunger add a bit of scrap about 25mm away from the hole that is about the thickness of the slotted head (this is to keep the bit of scrap brass about parallel) and file the plunger back to the brass. Then you should make the pick-up surface a bit of a cone or domed face. HTH OzzyO. PS. this can be one of the problems about adding some types of pick-ups to the tender. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
0_gauge_novice Posted August 23, 2015 Author Share Posted August 23, 2015 Hello Andreas, sorry for the long time in replying. You have a number of things that you can do. The fist one is make sure that the plunger moves freely in the hole and is not catching on any thing. The second is to make two small bends in the leg of the spring that fits in the slot of the plunger. The third one is to move the spring so that the "ring" part of the spring is farther away from the plunger (that looks hard to do now). The fourth one is to shorten the plunger, to do this measure the free length of the plunger that is outside of the axle box with all of the spacing washer in place and allow about 10 thou (0.25mm) per side, to cut them back find a length of brass strip of about the correct thickness then drill a hole in it of the outside Dia. of the plunger add a bit of scrap about 25mm away from the hole that is about the thickness of the slotted head (this is to keep the bit of scrap brass about parallel) and file the plunger back to the brass. Then you should make the pick-up surface a bit of a cone or domed face. HTH OzzyO. PS. this can be one of the problems about adding some types of pick-ups to the tender. Cheers Ozzyo, thanks for the reply! This gives me in any case some ideas. I tweaked one set of pickups with your third suggestion but instead of moving the "ring" I changed the angle of the wire that fits on the plunger to "look" more to the inside of the chassis. It actually worked and I think it should be fine. I will post pictures in a couple of days when I finish some stuff that I want to do still on the chassis. Today I fitted the brakes....I wished I some point I was a octopus! Fiddly some times, especially when fitting the first pair of brake shoes, but ended up ok and I dont have any problems with them touching the wheels. As I said...piccies will follow soon. Cheers and thanks for all the help. It gives me a lot of motivation to carry on! Andreas Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ozzyo Posted August 24, 2015 Share Posted August 24, 2015 Hi Guys For an O Gauge A3 I built ( wrong loco class for the thread, my apologies ) I completely disregarded the idea of sprung plunger pickups as they can quickly get covered in muck and badly affect running quality and as you mentioned they can be tight on the wheels. To counter this problem I made a set of pickup from copper clad board ( gapped halfway to prevent shorting out ) and after securing it in place on the chassis I soldered 2 pieces of copper wire per side of pickups. The 1st piece was cut long enough to make contact with the backs of the 1st and 3rd driving wheel, the other piece enough to contact the 2nd driving wheel. Due to poor running picking up from just the 6 driving wheels I took the plunge and made pickups for the tender. These were made again using copper clad board and copper wire this time using 3 pieces of wire per side. The pickups for it were cut long enough to contact consecutive pairs of axles 1 & 2, 3 & 4. Once the pickup pieces were in place the 3rd piece of wire was soldered in place to connect the 2 pairs of pickups together, this 3rd piece was cut long enough to be screwed into a powere connection block similar to those used in house lighting circuits. 2 pieces of fine stranded wire like that which comes pre wired to Hornby coloured light signals were soldered to the motor contacts then passed under the cab to connect to the tender connection block and as a result the loco runs much better. If you want to see any pictures of the pickups I will take some photos at somepoint and submit them on here if needed but that in my opinion is the easier way round doing pickups. Copper wire for the pick-ups I'm surprised that worked! As copper is not known for its springing ability. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jim.snowdon Posted August 24, 2015 Share Posted August 24, 2015 I have been using plunger pick-ups as standard for longer than I can remember and haven't run into problems with muck on the backs of the wheels clogging up the plungers. If there is anywhere the dirt gets to, it is the wheel treads. As for your A3, was its chassis sprung/compensated or rigid? If the latter, however many pickups there are, the loco will always sit on three wheels, ie with only one wheel picking up on one rail, and two others picking up from the other rail. Jim Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
3 link Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 Copper wire for the pick-ups I'm surprised that worked! As copper is not known for its springing ability. Phosphor bronze is what I always use. Martyn. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jim.snowdon Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 Like Martyn, I am surprised that this worked at all. Copper is not a springy material, and I would suspect that with any sideways movement of the wheel, it would rapidly have lost contact. On top of that, with a rigid chassis, it is inevitable that there will only be three out of the six wheels in contact with the rail at any given time unless the track itself is springy enough to give under the weight. Putting extra pick-ups on the tender at least doubles the number in contact, as the loco chassis and tender can move relative to each other, hence the improvement. A far more satisfactory material for pick-ups is, as Martyn has said, phosphor bronze wire. It has both hardness and springiness (unlike the copper) and will stay in contact with the backs of the wheels through all the lateral movement that occurs. 0.5 - 0.75mm wire is all that is needed, and should be bought straight, not in coil form. Making wire pick-ups is tricky enough without having to fight and straighten out the curve indiced by coiling. Jim Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ozzyo Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 Like Martyn, I am surprised that this worked at all. Copper is not a springy material, and I would suspect that with any sideways movement of the wheel, it would rapidly have lost contact. On top of that, with a rigid chassis, it is inevitable that there will only be three out of the six wheels in contact with the rail at any given time unless the track itself is springy enough to give under the weight. Putting extra pick-ups on the tender at least doubles the number in contact, as the loco chassis and tender can move relative to each other, hence the improvement. A far more satisfactory material for pick-ups is, as Martyn has said, phosphor bronze wire. It has both hardness and springiness (unlike the copper) and will stay in contact with the backs of the wheels through all the lateral movement that occurs. 0.5 - 0.75mm wire is all that is needed, and should be bought straight, not in coil form. Making wire pick-ups is tricky enough without having to fight and straighten out the curve indiced by coiling. Jim Jim for Martyn try OzzyO, see post #30 and #33! OzzyO. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jim.snowdon Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 Jim for Martyn try OzzyO, see post #30 and #33! OzzyO. Oops! Jim Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
0_gauge_novice Posted September 1, 2015 Author Share Posted September 1, 2015 Hi guys! Thanks for all the replies and your usefull comments on pickups. @Mersey507003: I think both me and the others here would be interested in your pickups solution so feel free to post pictures here. I finished the assembly of the basic tender chassis. As already mentioned above the soldering of the brake shoes and brackets was quite fiddly but I think because of the good design all the parts fitted and no problem with the clearances. My only "problem" was with the brake shaft and the cast pull rods. First of all the brake shaft, when connected to the brake cylinder, has the brake cylinder in the air and not on the plate of the drag box. This is not so bad though as from the picture you will understand that nobody will notice. There was scarse mention of the brake cylinder in the instruction and there was almost no way identifying it just like that as no picture reference can be found in the booklet. Thank God I have a good drawing of the original an I could locate the part. I had to file the bracket of the cylinder thinner so that it can fit into the crank and I drilled it with a 0.5mm drill in order to put a pin through. You can see the brake cylinder is in the air. You can also see the bent of the pull rods. Bigger problem were the pull rods. I was trying to fit the straight as in the original drawing by filling the chassis around the first hornblock area but to no avail. Then I took a look at the poor quality (I will mention them like that because they are not of great help) and you can faintly see that these rods have been bent. I swallowed this comprimise and did it like that because I think there is no other way except with some great effort. The overview of the tender basic chassis at this point. This is also a small critisism as if the cranks for the rods on the brake shaft would would have been about 1mm longer and 1.5mm more inward, this would be a comprimise that most people could live and certainly look more prototypical. On the other hand it will be hardly noticed as it is burried underneath. The drawings of the original WD 2-10-0 for the RG from 1944 that shows the pull rod arrangement. Now I will clean it up a little bit, finish the wheels, tweak the remaining pickups, add the wires of the pickups and I will probably paint it. The greek WDs had deep red wheels (Crimson or wine red RAL 3005) and the rest was black. Then I will move to the tender superstructure but it will be October before I begin due to holidays and other commitments. Until the beggining of Novemeber I will move slower because I need to prepare myself for defending my PhD..... Cheers Andreas Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
0_gauge_novice Posted September 6, 2015 Author Share Posted September 6, 2015 Hi Guys I hope you are all ok. I have submitted the pictures of the pickups on my A3. How is the loco build going. Hi Mersey507003, I have had a rough week at work but now I am slowly on vacation mode....still 5 workdays and then I am off for 2 weeks. Thanks for posting those pictures of your pickups. I decided to stick to the PFS Plunger pickups for this loco but I have more and could adopt it for the others... As you can see from my post #37 I have finished the tender basic chassis. I will continue with the tender body after holidays and after some stuff that I need to prepare for my thesis defence in the begining of November. It is progressing rather good for my standards and speed of built. It comes together easily without too much fettling and I can recommend the kit up to this point. After all it is only the third completed chassis that I have built so far. Cheers Andreas Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ozzyo Posted September 7, 2015 Share Posted September 7, 2015 I wish I had the money to buy a kit of the loco you're building. I have a WD 2-8-0 in OO Gauge from Bachmann and would love a 2-10-0 version in both OO and O gauges so I could have a hard working machine in either scale. How much is it for all the parts for an O Gauge WD 2-10-0 including wheels, motor and gearbox. Have a look at this link http://www.roxeymouldings.co.uk/product/687/7l19-wd-austerity-2-10-0/ For the loco, Slater's drivers are £20 per axle (so £100) the carrying wheels are £14 per axle (so £70). Add about £120 for pick-up and motor and gear box. So you can now work it out. OzzyO. PS. I get that to about £735. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
0_gauge_novice Posted September 7, 2015 Author Share Posted September 7, 2015 Hi Mersey507003, as ozzyo mentions this should be the total amount for all the parts. For me it was a one way as it is one of the few locos in 7mm scale that I can use for my Greek prototype. I also have 2 in H0 scale from Grandspot/DJH kits when they produced them at this scale (sadly not any more but 2 I think are enough). In the link below you can see pictures from the first one that was built by a friend of mine and yes, the spoke wheel in front is correct! http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/76234-0-gauge-novices-workbench/?p=1195318 Kind Regards Andreas Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
0_gauge_novice Posted November 15, 2015 Author Share Posted November 15, 2015 I am back, as I said before I had an important exam (my PhD Defence) last week and now it is over (with a good result). I am back to modelling again this time with full use of my free time after work......we....I started the tebnder body. Not big progress but I cut all the parts and formed them for the first step. In the following days I will solder the parts together. Can anyone help (Dibateg or Jim??) with the coal space door? I cannot understand how part 18 attaches to part 16... Cheers Andreas Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jim.snowdon Posted November 15, 2015 Share Posted November 15, 2015 Andreas, Having dug out the original etching drawing, I take your point. Below are a couple of photographs of the front of the prototype tender which show the door catch. If that doesn't provide enough help, shout, and I will draw a sketch showing the way the various legs on part 18 bend. What isn't obvious from the piece as etched is that the top of the left upright folds backwards, ie opposite to the normal convention of folding into the half-etch, and that the top part of the right upright folds forwards, over the top of the horizontal latch. And well done for the Ph.D. Regards, Jim Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
0_gauge_novice Posted November 16, 2015 Author Share Posted November 16, 2015 Andreas, Having dug out the original etching drawing, I take your point. Below are a couple of photographs of the front of the prototype tender which show the door catch. Dear Jim, that is perfect! It is enough and thanks a lot!!! I know now how the parts should fit together. I want also to mention that the short formers (parts 2-5 and 12) had the slots echted very tight. I thought in the begining that the tightness was in the slots of the longitudinal former but it was from te transverse one. I had to put a lot of effort to fit them using not such an elegant techinique with grinding the slots with the minidrill. Now I just need to solder everything up. And well done for the Ph.D. :blush: Thanks!!! Cheers Andreas Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Isambarduk Posted November 17, 2015 Share Posted November 17, 2015 Congratulations Dr Andreas!Now where to?David Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
0_gauge_novice Posted November 17, 2015 Author Share Posted November 17, 2015 Congratulations Dr Andreas! Now where to? David Dear David, Thank you very much! Where to? Well....back to everyday life. I was working for a number of years now on PhD besides working fulltime. I was stressful especially last year when I had to deliver the work....now the challenges at work will take over and the challenges at modelling...I have an awful lot of projects acumulated over the years and now I have started slowly working through those but it is fun! BTW....I soldered everything up tonight. Tommorow or next week cleaning up the joints. Work is progressing for my standards rather fast. Cheers Andreas Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterha Posted January 15, 2016 Share Posted January 15, 2016 Hi Andreas, So far I have been following your build with a lot of interest. But it is "all quiet on the building front"..... Is it ready yet or have you stopped? Regards, Peter Hagenaars the Netherlands Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
0_gauge_novice Posted January 18, 2016 Author Share Posted January 18, 2016 Hi Andreas, So far I have been following your build with a lot of interest. But it is "all quiet on the building front"..... Is it ready yet or have you stopped? Regards, Peter Hagenaars the Netherlands Hi Peter, ready???... I could dream of. Well actually I lost track of time and I have been away on a number of trip since November. I wont quit or abandon the project. I am determined to finish it. Stay tuned, a next installment will come and actually such posts keep me motivated. Cheers Andreas Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterha Posted January 19, 2016 Share Posted January 19, 2016 Stay tuned, ...... I will, thanks. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve fay Posted December 1, 2016 Share Posted December 1, 2016 We might get our S160, you'll need to email Just like the real thing info@justliketherealthing.co.uk they are taking expressions of interest Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
0_gauge_novice Posted December 1, 2016 Author Share Posted December 1, 2016 Hi Steve, I saw you posting and I filled out the contact form of JLTRT! I will get one kit for sure! Cheers Andreas Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve fay Posted December 1, 2016 Share Posted December 1, 2016 How are you Andreas? It's been quiet on here for a while. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterha Posted February 16, 2017 Share Posted February 16, 2017 It's still all quiet on the WD front... Best regards, Peter Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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