A Neilson 0-4-0ST Project, evolution of a 3d model

[Quarryscapes]

This is another little saddle tank I love. I did think about trying to improve a Hornby Smokey Joe type, but to get it looking reasonably accurate for a more generic Neilson product rather than a Caldeonian copy thereof, would take so much work and consign most of the Hornby offering to the bin. So I thought, lets make one, RTR style with a plastic chassis and drop in wheelsets. 

 

I'll draw the line at wheels (Gibson), gears (Ultrascale), motor (Mitsumi) and motion (Markits crossheads, the rest will have to be etched or machined) and off the shelf details such as smokebox darts, handrail knobs etc, they won't be 3D printed, but the rest will be, just to see how well it goes. 

 

I started last night, and a couple of hours work had a pair of drawings imported into sketchup, scaled up and the basics drawn.

 

I use components for everything, and have a couple of copies of the drawings on the go - so I can draw the parts individually over the drawing then move them over to a complete loco over another drawing to make sure it all fits together.

 

After a couple of hours, I had this:

 

 

A very basic lump, but recognisably a locomotive. 

 

 

 

 

 

Progressing through the detail adding stages gets us right up to now - very subtle changes taking place at the moment to make sure there is perfect fitment and clearance between parts, hollowing out stuff etc. There is still final detailing to be added. The gearbox took an age to sort, as it always does - but the end result is a 131:1 Reduction using ultrascale gears and a Mitsumi M15N-3 motor. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm very happy with progress so far, it certainly looks the part on screen! I have been fathoming out how to explode the model for printing. It will see the footplate, buffer beams and frames printed as one. A Boiler bottom half with the gearbox and motor mount integral bolts into this, with firebox acting as cover for gears, a hollow saddle tank filled with lead shot will sit on top, with the smokebox integral. Cab I'm not sure about. I have a lot of worries over warping with it, so it may get some hefty spruing to form it into a cage structure which should be more resilient during the curing stages of printing.

 

Next stage will be to get the motion components laid out - for which I'll need to order some crossheads, then crack on with the detailing!

 

If anybody has photos of the cab interior of either the Caley Pugs or the LNEY Y9s or eveb Kelton Fell, I'd be very interested to see them. 

 

 

Edited October 5, 2016 by Quarryscapes

[Steamport Southport]

There are some very useful photographs in this thread.

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/95404-Hornby-0-4-0t-y9-caledonian-pug/page-1

 

 

 

Jason

[Kelly]

Looking good so far. What package are you using? its interesting the use of the scale plans as a start like that rather than making shapes to set sizes, not a method I'd considered.

[DougN]

Most impressive. 

 

Have you thought about a Etched brass roof and cab sheets? you obviously have the CAD skills to draw it all up! 

[Dava]

Impressive, I have cab photos of the Bo'Ness locos and will look those out.

 

Dava

[Edwardian]

This is another little saddle tank I love. I did think about trying to improve a Hornby Smokey Joe type, but to get it looking reasonably accurate for a more generic Neilson product rather than a Caldeonian copy thereof, would take so much work and consign most of the Hornby offering to the bin. So I thought, lets make one, RTR style with a plastic chassis and drop in wheelsets. 

 

I'll draw the line at wheels (Gibson), gears (Ultrascale), motor (Mitsumi) and motion (Markits crossheads, the rest will have to be etched or machined) and off the shelf details such as smokebox darts, handrail knobs etc, they won't be 3D printed, but the rest will be, just to see how well it goes. 

 

I started last night, and a couple of hours work had a pair of drawings imported into sketchup, scaled up and the basics drawn.

 

I use components for everything, and have a couple of copies of the drawings on the go - so I can draw the parts individually over the drawing then move them over to a complete loco over another drawing to make sure it all fits together.

 

After a couple of hours, I had this:

 

y9.png

 

A very basic lump, but recognisably a locomotive. 

 

y92.png

 

y93.png

 

y94.png

 

y95.png

 

Progressing through the detail adding stages gets us right up to now - very subtle changes taking place at the moment to make sure there is perfect fitment and clearance between parts, hollowing out stuff etc. There is still final detailing to be added. The gearbox took an age to sort, as it always does - but the end result is a 131:1 Reduction using ultrascale gears and a Mitsumi M15N-3 motor. 

 

y96.png

 

y97.png

 

y98.png

 

y99.png

 

y911.png

 

y912.png

 

y913.png

 

y914.png

 

I'm very happy with progress so far, it certainly looks the part on screen! I have been fathoming out how to explode the model for printing. It will see the footplate, buffer beams and frames printed as one. A Boiler bottom half with the gearbox and motor mount integral bolts into this, with firebox acting as cover for gears, a hollow saddle tank filled with lead shot will sit on top, with the smokebox integral. Cab I'm not sure about. I have a lot of worries over warping with it, so it may get some hefty spruing to form it into a cage structure which should be more resilient during the curing stages of printing.

 

Next stage will be to get the motion components laid out - for which I'll need to order some crossheads, then crack on with the detailing!

 

If anybody has photos of the cab interior of either the Caley Pugs or the LNEY Y9s or eveb Kelton Fell, I'd be very interested to see them. 

 

Brilliant.  I have long wanted one of these as a small industrial.  I got as far as a Hornby body, yet to be cut up, and a Bachmann 'Percy' chassis!

[Knuckles]

Very impressive so far!

 

I thought you were using more sophisticated CAD than Sketchup for your stuff so was a surprise to me.

 

I mostly use Sketchup for Loco's and such like. I find it easy to use and have been happy with the results so far, quirks aside.

 

How do you scale things when putting the drawing in the program? I'm getting by quite comfortably scaling drawings on paper and using a rule but your method seems more popular.

 

Anyway, interesting thread, will be following this.

Edited October 6, 2016 by Knuckles

[Quarryscapes]

Thanks for the kind words and the pics - some extra variations there I hadn't seen before, much appreciated. I particularly like that last one Edwardian with the two tank fillers, I wonder why that was thought important?

 

Scaling a drawing in sketchup is straightforward, but it needs to be the very first thing you do (or you can start a new instance of the program running and copy and paste the result if you want to add it to an existing drawing.

 

First off - you need your drawing as an image file, then you import it as an image into sketchup and lay it on the 'ground', any size will do for now. Check that it is level by drawing guidline along straight features, if it's not, rotate it now. 

 

Then draw a guide along a known dimension - do this as accurately as you can, the measurement will be something totally random. Now type in what the dimension should be  I'm working at 10x model size, so for my scaling I picked the wheelbase and drew a guide from the wheel centres, and entered 280. Press enter and one of two things will happen. If it's playing ball, a dialog box will pop up asking if you wish to resize the model - hit yes, and voila your drawing is set to scale. The second thing that may happen is that a new guide will appear, if it does simply hit undo and repeat the guide drawing and typing, and it should this time work. If you have other things in your drawing the whole lot will be scaled, which is why you need to do this in an otherwise blank drawing. 

 

This is all done in Sketchup 8, so it may be slightly different in later editions, 8 has a lovely bug whereby after you undo a command, any command, you cannot draw a guide straight away, you have to fake drawing one, then the next one will work!

 

I use sketchup for all my 3D work - I've been using TurboCAD for 2D for years but it is just so flaky with 3D I gave up. I have a few very useful plugins for sketchup which allow me to do things that would either be very slow going or impossible otherwise - ones used in this model are:

 

Arc Centre Point Finder (for when curves get exploded from intersections, very useful)

Roundcorner - for chamfering and rounding edges, incredibly useful!

Curviloft - for creating the flares around chimney bases and making all manner of complex curved joins and formations.

SPGear (I think it's called!) - an infuriating plugin but it is needed to draw the gears!

 

About 10 hours have gone into this so far, and a couple more this morning have seen the keeper plate added, and a cock up rectified with the frames and gearbox - I'd managed to somehow get one of the slots at an angle, so when I tried the axles in place it didn't fit!

 

Edited October 6, 2016 by Quarryscapes

[Knuckles]

Thanks for the advice.

 

Curviloft sounds a godsend, will have to check that out. I actually enjoy making chimney and dome bases listening to some music and drinking a beer but yhey take between 2 and 5 hours to craft - all hand made. Method I invented is long whinded but accurate.

 

For rounding edges I have been making an arc between two edges and using the follow me tool to extrude it. Bit of a ball ache that takes several attempts but works eventually!

 

Been using Sketchup 15.

 

Anyway again thanks for the tips.

[Quarryscapes]

Here's a video of the scaling procedure - far quicker to do than explain! 

 

[Quarryscapes]

An example of how Curviloft can be used to create a dome/chimney flare

 

[Knuckles]

BLIMEY!

 

I must try this. No ifs and buts.

 

You have done a base in 4 minutes...

 

The whole time I've been hand stitching them (very neatly and accurate mind!) in 4-5 hours each.

Edited October 11, 2016 by Knuckles

[Knuckles]

Libfredo6 and Bezier Curve Tool are the only things that come up in the Extension Warehouse when I search Curve or Curviloft - any ideas?

Edited October 11, 2016 by Knuckles

[Quarryscapes]

Libfredo6 and Bezier Curve Tool are the only things that come up in the Extension Warehouse when I search Curve or Curviloft - any ideas?

You'll need the library as well I think for it to work.

 

http://www.crai.archi.fr/rld/plugin_details.php?id=674

[Quarryscapes]

A little more work on the Neilson, smokebox door hinges added, modifications made to the compensation arrangement and general tweaks here and there. This section shows the hollow saddle tank up pretty well, and the massive space available in the boiler for a small decoder. Under the boiler is plenty of space for a PCB for attaching Pickup wires.

 

[JCL]

I use Blender myself, and I wish I could get it to do a cutaway view like yours.

 

I really enjoy seeing your work.

[Knuckles]

I am using Sketchup at the moment and I don't know if it can do cut away views.  What I can say is for the J1 I had the idea in bed one night to design half an engine as you see above and then mirror it at the last minute and do any 'one side only' details then. 

 

This idea proved awesome and maybe you'd adopt it because it saves 50% of time and ensures 100% symmetrical accuracy.

 

Good init!

 

As this trial worked wonders I'll be doing it probably for everything from here on in.

Edited October 25, 2016 by Knuckles

[JCL]

Hi mate, I do something similar, but I'm probably not quite as organised. Depending on how good the drawing is, and the scan, it can be difficult finding the centre.

[Blandford1969]

Loving this, have you had a go at the backhead yet?

[Quarryscapes]

I am using Sketchup at the moment and I don't know if it can do cut away views.  

 

Yes it can, see above! I'll do a vid one day. 

 

Loving this, have you had a go at the backhead yet?

 

No pictures of one, so no, not yet. 

 

Progress on pause at the moment with the house move, been concentrating on Cambrian rolling stock when I have had a chance to mess with sketchup. 

Edited October 27, 2016 by Quarryscapes

[Daddyman]

Pictures of the NB backhead any use? I have hundreds! 

[Quarryscapes]

Pictures of the NB backhead any use? I have hundreds! 

 

Yes please! The project is kind of stalled without the cab detail. 

[Daddyman]

Yes please! The project is kind of stalled without the cab detail. 

Here you go. I have many more, but I think these show everything? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Quarryscapes]

Those will do nicely, many thanks indeed! 

[Beatty 139]

That's a later boiler originally only a single water gauge and try cocks, the science museum used to sell of poster of the coloured GA drawing for many years.