Ruston Posted January 23, 2019 Share Posted January 23, 2019 I've only ever seen 3D printed models before and have never owned or worked with the material before so this is a first for me. The body kit is by Narrow Planet and it fits the Minitrains Krauss chassis. The material is a lot more fragile than I thought it would be. The main body of the print has a frame for the cab, to which are glued the nickel silver front, rear and sides of the cab. I glued these on using cyano - no problem. Then I curved the nickel silver roof panel to also be glued to the frame. When I form such a roof panel I make the curve slightly tighter than it needs to be so that pressing down and fixing the centre makes the edges conform to the profile. This is when I found out how fragile the print is as it collapsed, taking with it the panels that I had already glued on. I cleaned off the glue and soldered the NS cab parts together. The rear frame was beyond salvage, which meant there was no way of fixing the rear of the cab to the print. To solve this I drilled holes in the roof and soldered in lengths of brass wire, which act as extensions to the handrails and fix the cab in place. The stubs of the front part of the frame remained, so the front of the cab was glued to these. Before fitting the cab I took the opportunity to drill a hole and solder in a short length of tube for the safety valve exhaust. There was also a minor disaster when trial-fitting the body to the chassis. The cylinder block split in two! I glued this back together and added a length of plasticard to reinforce the joint. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Nile Posted January 23, 2019 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 23, 2019 Ah the material formally known as FUD, definitely a case of handle with care. Is there room inside the boiler and tank for much lead? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ruston Posted January 23, 2019 Author Share Posted January 23, 2019 Ah the material formally known as FUD, definitely a case of handle with care. Is there room inside the boiler and tank for much lead? There is space inside the boiler and the tank for lead but they are in fact seperate sections. I found some brass tube of the same diameter as the boiler space and poured molten lead into the tube before fitting the tube into the boiler. In that way I can get the most lead for the space. I curved some sheet lead and put it in the tank, which is open at the bottom. There's also space at either side of the motor, at the lower part of the cab side sheets. I have even cut some squares of lead sheet and put them in the open spaces at the top of the cylinders before I put the reinforcing plasticard in. I'll weight it, tomorrow, and see how it compares to the Bagnall IST 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ruston Posted January 24, 2019 Author Share Posted January 24, 2019 Working on it, this evening, and it's almost finished. It weighs 5g more than the IST at 50g. I've put a couple of crew members in the cab. The best one, an Andrew Stadden figure, is in the side which will be the facing side. The other side has an inferior figure who is really only there for weight. With the body being longer than the frames I managed to cut some lead to fit the gap between the front of the frame and the rear of the front buffer beam. Other minor additions are some exhaust ports, made from plasticard, from the cylinder tops to the smokebox saddle, and a small length of NS strip glued to the cab and soldered to the upright piece of the slidebard stamping to represent a reverser operating rod. I'll make a few more bits and pieces to look like other parts of the linkage. It needs smokebox door handles and couplings. I'm considering using magnets as couplings. 7 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ruston Posted January 25, 2019 Author Share Posted January 25, 2019 The magnet couplings seem to work. I am using circular magnets of 1mm thickness and 2mm Dia. First of all I glued the flat faces to the wagon ends but they are so strong that the wagons derailed the instant they couple. So I refitted them so they lie flat, under the buffing faces. This works on the 6in. radius test track that I have rigged. When propelling the wagon that is next to the locomotive tends to derail at the locomotive end but this is due to the overhang of the locomotive and don't expect it to happen on actual layout curves, which will be a lot gentler than the test track. This test is the first 009 train that I have run since 1987. 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium cornelius Posted January 25, 2019 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 25, 2019 These are the same size magnets, mounted in the same orientation, as used for the 6point5 minimum gauge kits - so the system works! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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