Atso's occasional workbench

[Atso]

Just now, grahame said:

Very impressive modelling - a nice looking loco. My only comment would be the overly glossy finish. Will you be matting it down?

 

G

 

I will be matting it down and weathering it, but only once I've finished the detailing. That's been on hold while I've been working on the other issues this locomotive has been throwing up.

[Atso]

I've not been happy with the wiper pickups on the C1's tender. No matter how much I adjust the fine wires, too much drag is produced. Therefore, I've been experimenting with converting the Peco plastic centered wheels to split frame pickup and came up with this.

 

 

A fine slot was filed in the back of the tyre and some fine phosphor bronze wire soldered to the rim and seated in a tiny slot cut into the center of the tyre. A couple of stub axles were produced and fitted to the wheels. I just need a muff to assemble them.

[Atso]

I've been spending a bit of time designing a better (more detailed) C12 than my previous effort seven years or so ago. Still plenty to do but it is getting there.

 

[Atso]

I've almost completed the CAD for the N gauge C12. Just little bits, such as the bunker step and cab hand grab still to add.

 

Hopefully this and the N1 body will be test printed in the next couple of days.

[Atso]

The first test prints of the C12 and N1.

 

 

[Atso]

I've made a start planning out the etched chassis arrangement. Still plenty more to do but I'm pleased with how this is coming along.

[Atso]

At the risk of boring people, I've done some more work on the chassis design. Just a few more bits to design and a couple of tweaks (i.e. clearance for the motor!) to make and I'll be ready to start thinking about converting the relevant bits into 2D artwork.

 

 

[Atso]

Some further work on the N1 chassis this morning resulted in the roughing out of some chassis weights.

 

 

I've left 0.5mm clearances all round so that nothing can short out and to generously allow for modest intolerance's in the internal dimensions of the prints. I'm toying with the ideal of 3D printing the weights and then casting them in white metal. The calculated volume of the weights is 3.22 cubic centimeters which would make them 33.35g in white metal (27.05g in brass). Having weighed up the loco body, wheels and motor, this would bring the theoretical weight of the N1 to between 44g and 50g, with most of the weight over the drivers; by comparison, the loco end of a Dapol A3 (minus bogie and cartazzi truck) weighs in at a little over 55g . Given that the rear radial truck will be a swinging bogie, I may revisit the bunker weight in the future as it may prove to be more of a hindrance than a help.

Edited September 15, 2019 by Atso

[Atso]

Needing a break from designing the N1's chassis, I looked about for a suitable unfinished project to do a bit more on. I found a Worsley Works 51' Third that I'd started building just after Christmas and decided to do a bit more on it. I've more or less sorted out the fact that the floorpan is slightly longer than the body (probably my fault). I've also soldered the body and frames together as well as adding some strengtheners from 0.25mm nickel silver sheet. My plan is to 3D print the roof and attach this using magnets. I'll be sourcing some bogies from the 2mm Association and truss bars from Ultima Models. Battery boxes will be 3D printed and the partitions will likely be made out of plastic to keep the weight down.

 

[Atso]

The full third had a couple of bearings soldered onto the underside of the floorpan today. The holes were then opened up from 1.5mm to 1.6mm and tapped to accept M2 screws. I found a couple of bogies (2mm Association for a full brake) as temporary substitutes for the ones on order and added these to get a feel for how the coach will eventually look.

 

 

It needed a couple of packing washers to bring the ride height to roughly the same height as a Dapol Gresley.

 

Encouraged by this, I also made a light start on one of the brake thirds.

 

 

 

[millerhillboy]

Always great to see what you are up to ATSO so please keep it coming.

 

I'm just hoping you do something else applicable to me as I'm really enjoying my V1/V3.

[Atso]

Thanks Craig. At the moment I'm concentrating on my own bits (along with finishing a couple of commissions) so it'll be a little while yet before anything new is made available.

 

The Worsley Works brake third scratch aid got assembled today.

 

 

There are a couple of minor wobbles, which are annoying. I'll waft the soldering iron over them tomorrow to remedy these.

[Atso]

I spent a bit of time correcting the wobbles on the brake third this morning. I also decided to make up the compartments out of 0.25mm nickel silver sheet and soldered these into place to strengthen the body. While this adds a bit of weight, it really isn't much so I think I'll use this method going forward.

Here is the current state of the brake third.

 

 

 

Chris H has pointed out elsewhere that I'll need to remove the roof profile from the center bulkhead if I want to fit anything other than an etched/sheet metal roof. Some surgery is required mes thinks. 

 

[Atso]

Further to Chris pointing out about the issue with using a 3D printed roof, I've removed the roof profile from the center partition.

 

 

Having already soldered some strengthening pieces in place, I took a pair of etch scissors to the offending section and snipped it out. I then used a marker pen to cover the tops of the surfaces so that I could see where I was filing and filed the remains flush with the top of the coach sides.

 

The etches for the bogies arrived from the 2mm Association yesterday (fast service as always).

 

 

Sorry about the out of focus photo. These look the same as the 8' versions that I have previously built and, as they went together very well, I'm really looking forward to building these.

[Atso]

The first of the 8'6 Gresley bogie etches got assembled today and fitted to the brake third body.

 

 

 

 

[Atso]

I spent a bit of time building up my first ever DG couplings today. Nowhere near as difficult as I first feared.

 

 

 

Having built up a few of the DG couplings, I thought I should test them. Please ignore the wobbly coach, that's because my finger was resting on it!

 

 

I think I need to make the steel wire a little longer to better work with the magnets, but otherwise an encouraging start.

[Atso]

A visit to Scale Forum in Stoke Mandeville yesterday provided me with the opportunity to buy some bits and pieces. Following Tim Watson's advice, I purchased some 4mm scale long handrail knobs to represent the queen posts for the turnbuckle underframe. The underframe is 10 thou guitar string while the buckles are bits of phosphor bronze wire, wrapped around a 0.8mm rod and then soldered before cutting off the excess wire. These were then squashed to make them oval and soldered to the guitar wire. It looks reasonably effective in reality but a bit messy in the photos. I may revisit these but will leave it a couple of days before I decide.

 

 

 

The 'V' hangers are 0.6mm brass wire, bent to shape and then filed flat before drilling a 0.3mm hole (yes, I broke two drill bits!) to eventually take a wire to represent the linkage. Again crude, but doesn't look too bad in reality. 

[richbrummitt]

It'll should all come together just fine once it's a uniform black grey colour. 

[Atso]

It's been awhile since I last posted, but things have still be moving forward on my N gauge 51' Gresley's.

I discovered that the 2mm Association sells and etch for the battery boxes (not supplied on the third brake etch!), voltage regulator and "v" hangers. I also purchased some turned brass vacuum brake cylinders at the same time. This left the dynamo being the only under frame component unaccounted for. I ended up turning these, using needle files, out of 2mm brass rod in my minidrill. Once turned, I cross drilled a 1mm hole through the dynamo and soldered a piece of 1mm brass rod into place. Some cutting and filing saw the results tidied up and the 1mm rod flattened. This was then bent into shape and soldered to the under frame, along with the other components.

 

 

 

 

 

You may have noticed that I've only fitted battery boxes to one side of each coach. Information differs as to whether this had battery boxes on both sides, but the photos available to me suggests that they didn't.

 

The second of the brake thirds' basic body has now been constructed, but it is lagging behind the other coaches at the moment.

[Atso]

With my etched N Gauge 51' stock nearing completion, I thought I'd try some experiments with teak effects on some Maroon Dapol Gresleys. While I was in Pickering a couple of months back, I spent some time studying one of the teaks that is undergoing restoration. I noticed that the unvarnished teak was a very light earthy colour and thoughts I'd try and recreate this and get the final effect using some red/orange tinted varnish. The lighter coaches were sprayed with Tamiya Desert Yellow as a base coat, while the darker coach was sprayed with Humbrol Natural Wood. The "teak" was created using Windsor and Newton oil paints, Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna and Yellow Orca. I applied tiny dots of the paint to each panel using a OO brush and then melded them together. Small additional amounts were then used to create various grain effects.

 

I'll have to leave this to dry out properly for a few days now before applying the varnish.

[Atso]

Well at the moment I'm still slowly designing stuff to etch and saving to get it made. In the meantime, I've been looking at what I can do with some bits and pieces that have been sitting around for awhile now. Therefore, I decided to turn my attention back to the J6s I was building a few years back.

 

The problem for me with my original efforts was that the J39 donor loco chassis was too long in both the loco and tender and spoiled the overall look of the J6 for me. I've been contemplating a solution to this problem for some time but lacked the courage to go for it.

 

First of all, the donor chassis placed over some scaled down drawings for Isinglass Models.

 

 

As can be seen, the front coupled wheelbase of the loco is too long (1.545mm) and the LNER tender is huge compared to the GNR one; some surgery was going to be required.

I started with the loco chassis and disassembled the whole thing. I then used epoxy glue to permanently bond the two chassis halfs together (being careful not to get glue into the recesses for the wheel bearings) and reassembled the basic block. Once everything had set, I made a 'Z' cut between the front and middle wheels, carefully cutting around the retaining screw, and filed around 1.5mm from the pieces.

 

I found a set of B1 coupling rods and fitted these to the J39 driving wheels and test fitted everything together. Once I was happy that the chassis parts were the right length, I elongated the front screw hole in the keeper plate and screwed everything together before carefully introducing epoxy to join the two chassis halves together. I test ran the chassis along a piece of track to ensure that there was no binding and left it overnight to harden.

 

The next morning, I drilled two 1mm holes into the block and pinned everything together with a couple of 1.2mm self tapping screws. Once I was happy with that the two sides of the chassis were picking up off of all wheels, I cut the heads off the screws and filed them flush with the top of the chassis. Below is a comparison photo of the altered chassis with an unaltered one.

 

 

 

I also had a play with the tender to see if I could somehow make it fit into a GNR tender body. By losing the DCC stuff and some modest trimming, I managed to get it to fit.

 

 

However, all but one of the J6's had tenders with an equal wheelbase and, having gone to all the effort with the loco chassis, I decided to see if I could do anything with the tender drive. Some time ago, a very talented friend of mine built me a tender drive which was powered on the rear two axles only. This works surprisingly well (and hauls twelve Gresleys on the level), so I thought I'd have a go at replicating this. I stripped the idler gears from between the front and middle axle holes and cut the chassis, shortened it and epoxied it back together. When everything has hardened in the morning, I'll fit another screw to pin the two halves together. Below is where things stand as of tonight.

 

 

[richbrummitt]

Brave and brilliant. Some new skills learnt. 

[Atso]

1 hour ago, richbrummitt said:

Brave and brilliant. Some new skills learnt. 

 

Thank you.

 

Some proof that it all works!

 

 

[richbrummitt]

You'll be starting with blocks of metal instead of incorrect chassis sometime soon...

[Atso]

I've not had a huge amount of time for modelling recently. This has been just as well as my soldering iron gave out at the beginning of the month and my CAD program developed a fault and kept crashing (I think I've managed to sort that now!).

 

Anyway, a surprise Christmas present was a new soldering iron and I've had a few days where I've been able to test it out. I'm not keen on the end bits that came with it, but I have managed to sling together the bulk of a couple of brake vans.

 

First up is a 2mm Association kit for a BR Dia 1/506 brake van that I've worked into a representation of an early LNER Toad D. The step boards have been shortened and the cast concrete ends have been replaced with some thin brass sheet to represent the early steel plate ends. The roof detail has been filed off and the roof turned over to provide the original locations for the ventilators and stove pipe with the lost detail being reinstated.

 

 

Next up is a GN eight wheel brake van. The body for this came from two BHE kits (one recovered and reduced back to component parts from my aborted six-wheeler project) that have been cut and shunt to create the correct 20'2" body length. The 'W' irons are 2mm Association items, which I've left unaltered which means the wheelbase is a bit over length. However, I was concerned that modifying them would make aligning everything up too difficult; I'd like to build another one of these in the future and may have a go at getting the correct wheelbase then. Solebars are scratch-built out of 0.2mm nickel silver sheet but I'm yet to tackle the step boards. The roof is an offcut of a BHE etched roof with the holes for the ventilator and stovepipe drilled but no rainstrips attached yet.

 

 

Neither of the roofs have been attached yet, this will be done after painting and glazing. Further detailing will have to wait as I'm out of 0.3mm and 0.4mm drill bits at the moment!  :'(

 

A final view of the two vans to sign 2019 off with.

 

 

Wishing everyone a happy New Year!