Whats on your 2mm Work bench

[tapdieuk]

2 batches of wheels with crank pins attached. They are ready for the balance weights and painting. 

 

 

 

[Caley Jim]

As a postscript to the above, the small amount of cyano i had used gave way, so I implemented plan B.

 

 

I first cut the slot with a razor saw, but when I soldered it in position the slot was clearly not wide enough to allow the driveshaft sufficient angulation to either side, so I removed it and opened the slot out with a 0.5mm wide file.

 

jim

Edited July 8, 2022 by Caley Jim

[RichardusH]

Here's an update on my SDJR Class A mentioned in my post of Feb 15. The chimney took 4 attempts, it's also slightly off vertical at the moment. I've still to add the tender springs (external ones above the running plate of course), boiler backplate & crew, plus tidy up a few things and repair the tender RH handrails. I can't seem to find any tender springs of the appropriate size so think I will make my own. It was painted using Vallejo Model Color Prussian Blue darkened with some Vallejo Model Air Panzer Grey. The decals are from the Fox MIdland Railway lining & SDJR lettering sets, I managed to get the letter spacing on the front buffer wrong.

 

Richard

[Caley Jim]

Another nice blue loco!😀

 

Jim

[queensquare]

3 hours ago, RichardusH said:

Here's an update on my SDJR Class A mentioned in my post of Feb 15. The chimney took 4 attempts, it's also slightly off vertical at the moment. I've still to add the tender springs (external ones above the running plate of course), boiler backplate & crew, plus tidy up a few things and repair the tender RH handrails. I can't seem to find any tender springs of the appropriate size so think I will make my own. It was painted using Vallejo Model Color Prussian Blue darkened with some Vallejo Model Air Panzer Grey. The decals are from the Fox MIdland Railway lining & SDJR lettering sets, I managed to get the letter spacing on the front buffer wrong.

 

Richard

 

Great work, they really are very pretty locos

 

Jerry

[Richard Hall]

I appear to have two working locomotives.

 

 

I found a set of reprofiled Farish diesel wheelsets that I bought about 20 years ago, so I thought I would see if they fitted a new-tooling Derby-Sulzer Type 2.  Unclip bogie frames, prise out old wheelsets, pop in new ones. Job done. The wheels are slightly undersize but not too obviously so. It runs very nicely. 2mm doesn't get any easier than that.

 

Back to the J39 which initially ran like a three-legged donkey but is now rather better.  I made a few mistakes:

• Drilled the holes for the crankpins fractionally oversize, making it difficult to get them absolutely square in the hubs.  Only 0.1mm but it makes a big difference.
• Tried soldering the crankpins into the wheels with an RSU which heated and distorted them.  I had to straighten them by eye.
• Pressed several driving wheels into the muffs slightly off-square.  I was using an Association quartering press and haven't quite found the right technique.  If the stub axle isn't exactly concentric with the muff it effectively increases the crank throw on that axle, so the thing runs as though the quartering is slightly out.  I finally spotted it when I took the body off and powered the driving wheels while looking down from above.  N gauge wheels wobble around all over the place but I don't think I'll get away with that much slop in 2mm.
• Not sure if this is a mistake or not but I went for very fine clearances between the crankpins and the rod holes.  I wonder whether a bit more clearance might help.

With all the problems put right it runs quite nicely although the gear train is a bit noisy.  It crawls along at unfeasibly slow speeds which is just what I want for a branch terminus.  However it is desperately short of adhesion, even though I have replaced the boiler weight with lead and added a cube of the stuff between the frames.  I suspect I am going to have to pack bits of lead into every available space including the cab floor and possibly even the underside of the roof.  I wondered if the tender might be dragging, but it seems to roll freely enough for something on plain bearings. 

 

Not a bad start: just need a layout now. I'm working on that.

 

Richard

 

[Chris Higgs]

On 10/07/2022 at 22:22, Richard Hall said:

I appear to have two working locomotives.

 

 

I found a set of reprofiled Farish diesel wheelsets that I bought about 20 years ago, so I thought I would see if they fitted a new-tooling Derby-Sulzer Type 2.  Unclip bogie frames, prise out old wheelsets, pop in new ones. Job done. The wheels are slightly undersize but not too obviously so. It runs very nicely. 2mm doesn't get any easier than that.

 

Back to the J39 which initially ran like a three-legged donkey but is now rather better.  I made a few mistakes:

• Drilled the holes for the crankpins fractionally oversize, making it difficult to get them absolutely square in the hubs.  Only 0.1mm but it makes a big difference.
• Tried soldering the crankpins into the wheels with an RSU which heated and distorted them.  I had to straighten them by eye.
• Pressed several driving wheels into the muffs slightly off-square.  I was using an Association quartering press and haven't quite found the right technique.  If the stub axle isn't exactly concentric with the muff it effectively increases the crank throw on that axle, so the thing runs as though the quartering is slightly out.  I finally spotted it when I took the body off and powered the driving wheels while looking down from above.  N gauge wheels wobble around all over the place but I don't think I'll get away with that much slop in 2mm.
• Not sure if this is a mistake or not but I went for very fine clearances between the crankpins and the rod holes.  I wonder whether a bit more clearance might help.

With all the problems put right it runs quite nicely although the gear train is a bit noisy.  It crawls along at unfeasibly slow speeds which is just what I want for a branch terminus.  However it is desperately short of adhesion, even though I have replaced the boiler weight with lead and added a cube of the stuff between the frames.  I suspect I am going to have to pack bits of lead into every available space including the cab floor and possibly even the underside of the roof.  I wondered if the tender might be dragging, but it seems to roll freely enough for something on plain bearings. 

 

Not a bad start: just need a layout now. I'm working on that.

 

Richard

 

 

Mick Simpson always swears by a bit of slop between the crankpins and the rod holes. 

 

Weight is always going to be an issue in 2mm, unless of course you are modelling a P2... 

 

But otherwise congratulations. Don't forget to put the loco brake blocks on! Oh, and change the handrail knobs.

 

 

Chris

 

[martin580120]

I've been absent from the forum for a wee while as the other hobbies of Scouting and Wargaming took priority, building towards the summer camping season and a large (2500 figure) game set in a particular weekend in June 1815 - it remains railway themed because there's a London Terminus named after the battle!

 

But with all the pressing engagements over I came to realise I'm at a critical juncture in my 2mm modelling. I certainly see myself as a beginner, but I've built a small fleet of wagons and carriages (some of them even look okay..), and now I face the need to build/adapt something for them to run behind, and something for it all to run on.

 

Over the weekend at the Forth & Clyde Area Group meeting, I finished assembling some more wagons, two RCH 1887 5 plank wagons from Association parts, and a Caledonian Railway pre-diagram brake van from Jim's etches. I've got some more of the RCH wagons to modify into NBR and HR types for a bit of variety.

 

 

I also took the opportunity to pick the brains of one or two members regarding building a loco, I've had a Worsley Works etch of a Caledonian Jumbo for near enough two years now, and I've made exactly zero progress on it. But now, maybe, a shop 3 order will be forthcoming as I look to start that adventure.

 

I've also been thinking about a layout - it's wonderful having all these wagons and things, but they do need something to at least sit and look (relatively) pretty on. I had to fight my original ambition of re-makinf Glasgow Central in 2mm, if only for now, and settled on something 3-4' by 12-18" as a maximum scenic area, with 3-6 turnouts to start with.

 

I have been playing with AnyRail, and found they have a track library for C&L finescale 2mm track, which, when printed, seemed to match some of the Templot templates I'd managed to create. Which led me to designing a 3' x 1' shelf type layout based around some old scratch built buildings from one of my dad's old N Gauge layouts. (He's braver than I'd be, sticking the family name on a building, model or otherwise)

 

 

I'm happy with the front half of the track plan, but less sure about the back, my plan is to build a short traverser that can feed any of the lines so I can sort of simulate receiving sidings behind the main buildings, but I also considered some of the other parts to a distillery, either some sort of coal drop (I even thought about some mousehole/casette loading out the side so full wagons go in and empties come back out) or some sort of siding for the grain wagons to sit and be "discharged", or both. Any thoughts the general forum have are greatly appreciated.

 

I have a Dapol Class 26 in BR Green I'm intending to 2mm-fy in short order, I ordered the wheels when I saw the journal article about converting them a few months back. This is likely to be the main loco, though I do have half an eye on trying to make a J94 from the Association chassis etch and the P&D Marsh body before jumping into the Jumbo. I also have a stash of BR vans and wagons I was building before settling on the Caley as what I wanted to model.

 

I did, briefly, consider trying to jump straight into to building interlaced turnouts and Caley-ing the layout from the word go, but given I've (semi) successfully built a single Finextrak turnout, and I've had an older easitrac one as WiP for nearly two years, I thought perhaps smaller teps (for once), and, once I have a Caley loco to haul my Caley stock, rule 1 can be applied until I learn how to make soldered turnouts.

[Richard Hall]

4 hours ago, Chris Higgs said:

 

Mick Simpson always swears by a bit of slop between the crankpins and the rod holes. 

 

Weight is always going to be an issue in 2mm, unless of course you are modelling a P2... 

 

But otherwise congratulations. Don't forget to put the loco brake blocks on! Oh, and change the handrail knobs.

 

 

Chris

 

 

Handrail knobs?  I've only recently started fitting my models with handrails...  Spent an hour this evening snipping lead flashing into tiny pieces and glueing them inside the top and sides of the firebox, with some success.  Previously the J39 would spin its drivers on the level if power was applied too quickly.  It can now propel seven not too free-running N gauge wagons up an approx 1 in 60 slope (approx because my test plank bows slightly in the middle).

 

There are still a couple more places I can add a tiny amount of weight, but the two stage gearbox is a bit of a space hog. Ideally I'd have the first stage reduction in the tender and the driveshaft hugging the cab floor, but it's a bit late for that now. Next time, maybe.

 

Richard

[CF MRC]

Hanging the weighted tender off the back of the engine would help with traction. 
 

Tim

[Richard Hall]

1 hour ago, CF MRC said:

Hanging the weighted tender off the back of the engine would help with traction. 
 

Tim

Sometimes the simplest things are overlooked.  Can't believe I forgot about that, especially as I was running an N gauge "K1" last night with precisely that arrangement.

 

(Please don't ask to see the K1, it will make any proper modeller cry. Shortened Langley B1 body on a Poole Farish Black Five chassis. It looks a bit like a K1 from a very long way off, in the dark.)

 

Richard

[Chris Higgs]

12 hours ago, Richard Hall said:

 

Ideally I'd have the first stage reduction in the tender and the driveshaft hugging the cab floor, but it's a bit late for that now. Next time, maybe.

 

Richard

 

That method has its downsides too. If you think metal gears are noisy when run at low speed after the worm, just wait until you hear them whine at high speed right next to the motor.

 

Also, given the design of a J39, just think whether you will be able to conceal the worm directly above any of the 3 axles of the loco on a single stage drive. Same applies to a GWR 2251.

 

Chris

Edited July 13, 2022 by Chris Higgs

[Caley Jim]

6 hours ago, Chris Higgs said:

That method has its downsides too. If you think metal gears are noisy when run at low speed after the worm, just wait until you hear them whine at high speed right next to the motor.

 

Also, given the design of a J39, just think whether you will be able to conceal the worm directly above any of the 3 axles of the loco on a single stage drive. Same applies to a GWR 2251.

All my 4 existing tender locos, plus the one I'm working on at the moment, have the drive dropped down in the tender to take it under the footplate.   See the link to my last build in my signature.  I can't say that the gear noise is excessive, at least to my ear.   I'm prepare to put up with any additional noise there is in order to get the drive shaft out of the open cabs in these c19th locos.

 

The worm is located in the bottom of the firebox with the worm-wheel above it.  This requires a lay gear between the one on the worm-wheel shaft and that on the driven axle.

 

Jim

[Chris Higgs]

2 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

All my 4 existing tender locos, plus the one I'm working on at the moment, have the drive dropped down in the tender to take it under the footplate.   See the link to my last build in my signature.  I can't say that the gear noise is excessive, at least to my ear.   I'm prepare to put up with any additional noise there is in order to get the drive shaft out of the open cabs in these c19th locos.

 

The worm is located in the bottom of the firebox with the worm-wheel above it.  This requires a lay gear between the one on the worm-wheel shaft and that on the driven axle.

 

Jim

 

Leaving the noise aside, your interesting arrangement shown in previous postings would in the case of a J39 leave the gear train exposed to the front of the firebox and probably not create that much space for extra weight. The short fireboxes and high boilers of 'modern' 0-6-0s are quite a challenge to keep everything hidden.

 

Chris

[tapdieuk]

“things are never as bad as they seem, but never as good as you hope” 

 Been building a replacment chassis for a Dapol M7, the chassis etch was picked up at Derby. 

It's the subtle things, like intermediate gear and worm gear muff needing to be fitted before the wheel sets are, as the flanges overlap the intermediate bushes. In the end the driving wheels came out 3 times. After all of this, one of the wheels was sliping in the muff after the final assembly.

Still after, dinner another assault was launch with a small amount of Loctite and a small hole drilled in the muff. 

It's not pretty, but i am please as the quarting was done by eye, it all goes around, still and reasonably freely at that.

Another win was the removal of the hopelessly light weight metal ballast from the boiler, allowing a much denser replacment to be fitted. 

The body or rather the splashed have had the thick plastic hacked back.

The livery on the body is a time saver. Although some of the pipe work and handrails need reworking. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Richard Hall]

On 18/07/2022 at 23:20, tapdieuk said:

After all of this, one of the wheels was sliping in the muff after the final assembly. Still after, dinner another assault was launch with a small amount of Loctite and a small hole drilled in the muff. 

 

 

You total and utter genius.  I've had another tender wheel come loose on the J39 and really didn't want to have to take all the brake gear off to fix it.  Thank you.

 

Richard

[Ian Smith]

I generally drill a small hole in the centre of the muff to allow a little superglue to be deployed on the end of a bit of wire. Additionally, I also file a small flat on the end of the stub axles so that the glue can seep in better and hopefully lock the wheel in quarter.

 

I say generally as I know that at least one of my chassis has the axles just a “force” fit into the muffs (although I’m pretty sure that the muffs still have the holes to allow air escape and future deployment of glue if necessary).  I’m not too worried about the quartering being upset if a wheelset does move because personally I find quartering a doddle (although a little more awkward to rectify on a completed chassis, but then only my railmotor has outside motion).

Ian

[2mmMark]

It's a good idea to introduce some insulating medium such as superglue into the gap between stub axles.  Stewart Hine's Standard Stock tube train on Copenhagen Fields once had a "failure to proceed" due to a combination of the HF lighting and a slightly too small gap between stub axles creating a spark gap, heating then melting the plastic muff.  The failure had us puzzled for a while until we figured out what had happened.  Very handily, Peter Clark was running the machine shop demo stand so making a replacement muff was reasonably easy. 

Alternatively, a small disc of paper or card made with a leather punch would suffice as an insulator.  As a pious avoider of the Devil's Control Circuitry, I don't know a similar occurence would happen with that particular witchcraft the higher track voltage.

Mark


 

[Caley Jim]

I usually stuff a wee scrap of tissue paper into the muff before I put in the second wheel. 

 

Jim 

[queensquare]

Must admit Ive never put anything in. If the wheels are at the correct back to back then they wont touch

 

Jerry

[Caley Jim]

1 hour ago, queensquare said:

Must admit Ive never put anything in. If the wheels are at the correct back to back then they wont touch

 

Jerry

Agreed. I started doing it on stub axles just in case I had made one or other a tad too long. With the design I've used on my latest 2-4-0 and the 0-6-0 'Jumbo' I'm currently working on there's no need for stub axle's as the gearbox is insulated from the frames. 

 

Jim

[Richard Hall]

 

J39 is getting close to being finished.  I need to reattach the sandboxes, a bit more attention to the weathering especially on the chassis, and of course some couplers: I haven't yet decided whether to continue developing my own "Magpie" coupler (so named because it steals design features from just about every tension lock ever made) or go over to DGs like everyone else.  Overall I'm happy enough with 64705 as a first stab at 2mm.  In the end I solved the adhesion problem with a variant of what I call the "wasp drive", which I originally developed for N gauge locomotives with tender pickups to avoid having to permanently couple the loco and tender.

 

 

Here we have a long piece of springy nickel silver wire, projecting from the rear of the loco chassis and looking a bit like a stinger (hence "wasp drive") and "live" to the wheels on one side.  Underneath the tender is a strip of PCB sleeper soldered across the frames and gapped at one end: this rests on the end of the wire, carrying current and allowing weight transfer from tender to loco. This one isn't perfect yet: I used 0.45mm wire which is too thick and tends to lift the front tender wheels off the track.

 

64705 spent most of the fifties at Blaydon, then went to Alnmouth for an agreeable 18 months on the branch lines of North Northumberland before being transferred south to spend its final years around Leeds and Wakefield.  Perfect for Longframlington, my "might have been" Borders branch terminus. What next? Probably a J27: I scratchbuilt one in N gauge a while back, and though it is not a thing of great beauty I'm rather fond of it as it was my first attempt at building a locomotive from brass sheet and tube. Happily it resides on a Farish 57xx Pannier chassis which provides an obvious and easy route to a 2mm conversion.

 

 

[Caley Jim]

Slow progress with the Jumbo for a number of reasons including several cases of one step forward and two back!  One of the latter was when I started on the loco body and I realised that I had made the bosses and oil boxes on the rods too big and they were going to foul the footplate!🙄  They had to come off again and be filed down.  I also had to replace one of the axle muffs as it was allowing the wheels to slip out of quarter and issues with shorting required lining the inside faces of the splashers with tissue paper soaked in cyano.   This is the current state of play.

 

The smokebox front is vertical despite how it may look in the photo.  The eagle eyed will note that the tender has acquired a rear coal plate, something I had omitted to include on the etch.   The cab door on this side has come adrift, but I'm leaving it off for now and will probably fit it folded back against the tender after painting.

 

Next step will be to cut a piece of tube for the boiler/firebox/smokebox.  I've printed out a template for that with all the holes required for handrail knobs etc marked on it.

 

Jim

[Yorkshire Square]

On one of my 2mm workbenches, 9.25km of Code 40 rail. Yep, 18,500 0.5m lengths...

[Crosland]

41 minutes ago, Yorkshire Square said:

On one of my 2mm workbenches, 9.25km of Code 40 rail. Yep, 18,500 0.5m lengths...

What are you modelling? The "iron silk road"? 😀