Hawk

Just a little bump of the thread to show the finished wheel, and to say that all earlier images in this thread has been reinserted. Hopefully, everybody will now be able to see them!

Well, my modelling career is best described as long intervals of armchair modelling interruptet by short bursts of actual modelling. Since the completion of the mineral wagons I have mainly worked on a shadowbox diorama that I have described in this thread: That overhead crane is in itself more work than one of the mineral wagons.... And those roof rafters was´nt made in a month of sundays, either. I am also easily distracted, so I putter around with several side projects that might not lead to anything substantional in the (relative) short run. My efforts to build my own engine wheels falls in this category. I have described my adventures in machining here: EDIT: All threads should now have images reinstated.

I mentioned that I built a work wagon based on the same underframe as the mineral wagons, and a picture of the finished wagon might be in order:

There are still a few images missing from this thread, but I do not have the time to reinsert all of them. Ironically, the images still missing are those I replaced from embedded images to versions stored in the forum software... But here are a couple of images of the finished wagons, at least:

I’m looking to buy James Stanley Beeson, 1906 - 1990 by R. A. Ganderton, Published by Faculity Publishing. Please note that I am located in Norway, but I will of course cover all postage and handling.

Sorry for not posting a reply before, Pater! I am indeed familier with your and Mikkels work, and a while back when I worked for the Norwegian Model railroad magazine “Mj-Bladet “ we ran articles from both of you. It did indeed inspire me a lot! I am a painfully slow modeler, but there have been a little progress on the diorama:

Thanks! I think the Shadowbox approach works for both interior and exterior scenes, but maybe especially for interior ones.

Long time no post, but some progress has been made. The roof subassembly has been completed, walls have been milled from Forex, and the whole thing now looks like this:

Brilliant work, Petri!

No trackplan in nr. 174 or 213. I doubt very much that there is a tracplan in any of the other issues. For some reason MRJ does not seem to give trackplans a high priority.

Sounds interesting! I was thinking along the lines of developing a web interface for the application. Imagine an webshop where you can order any wheel, any size, any scale. The app could fire off an order for the wheel centers to a 3D-printing service, and an order for the tyres to a CNC-machining centre. The biggest challenge might be to find someone to assemble the wheelsets for a resonable cost and with sufficiant prescision. But with the whole world as a market, it might be an viable business plan!

Looks very interesting! Have you any plans to offer a wheel design service of some sort?

The biggest subproject in this diorama is the overhead traveling crane. An object worth modelling all in itself. Riveted constructions are far more pleasing than stuff that has been welded tighter! I do not use real riveted joints for this model, I just insert machined brass rivets (from either Old Pullman in Switzerland or Hassler-Profile in Lichtenstein) in predrilled holes in the nickel-silver parts and solder them on the backside. Besides looking good, the rivets aligns everything up nicely and keep things in its proper place. For the steel trusses I milled another assembly jig. The connecting plates were soldered in place, and all the holes were drilled into the brass profiles using the connecting plates as templates. All the rivets inserted and ready to be soldered into place from the back: The massive beams have been made up from etched parts, and the subassemblies has been test fitted (alert readers will of course notice that this test was made before fitting all the rivets!): The shape of things tonight: I was a little over-eager when I machined the wheels for the cross slide, so I did not check was type of wheels the prototype have. There is absolutely no reason to believe that these wheels are single flanged, it is not like they are going to run through any paintwork! So I will probably replace them with double-flanged wheels. But I will hold back until I have some more pictures of the prototype. I will make a trip to the workshop early next year, so there will probably be no more updates until late January. NEXT: More work on the overhead traveling crane.

The windows in the building are cast iron, and they are well suited for etching. The large rectangular windows are for the skylights. In addition the artwork includes the parts for the overhead travelling crane: I drew the artwork in VectorWorks, an professional CAD package. It is totally overkill for a simple drawing like this, any vector based drawing/illustrator will work. It was etched by PPD Ltd. in Scotland, and as usually the service and quality of the etches were excellent. The material is 0.3mm nickel-silver. I find that NS takes paint and solder better than brass. And If the model (God forbid!) gets scratched, NS looks more like the steel of the prototype than brass. When I received the etches, I immediately blackened the window etchings. For chemically blackening it is essential the the metal is absolutely clean, and I reckon that I will never get the metal as clean as PPD could. Next: Building the travelling overhead crane

The first part of the model that I decided to tackle was the roof rafters. I was fortunate enough to find scale drawings of these. Based on the drawings I first CNC-milled a bending jig for the curved beams: The slots have a smaller radius than the finished beams, because even if the stripwood was steamed well before being placed in the jig, they flexed back quite a bit after drying. Another jiq was made for the assembly: The milled jig might seem a bit overkill, but I like to fool around with the CNC router at our local model railroad club. The main frames were built in the milled jig, then rest of parts were added using the drawing on a soft particle board as an underlay: The milled jig was just too tight for adding all the parts. I Should have allowed for a little more slop in the milled channels. It is also a good idea to mill double-wide channels and use filler bits to hold the parts tight. You can see that I did this for the long, straight beams. The jig also really paid off when I drilled the holes for the nut bolt washer castings for the curved, laminated beam. The holes were drilled using the CNC-router. To sand all the angles, a disk sander is almost essential: A 12" sander might seem large for modelling, but I really hate the small hobby-sanders. I had a yellow and green disk sander from a German company, and it really sucked. I feel it is easier to do precision work on heftier machines, and the size is no drawback at all. I use double-sided tape to fasten aluminium profile guides on the table. The small piece of MDF is for supporting small parts while sanding. I often work with really small parts on the sander, and at times my nails get a little shorter in the process. This might seem like a dangerous practice, and maybe I should not advocate it... But a sander is an entirely different beast than for instance a table saw. I have by accident touched the sanding disk while the machine is running, but no blood has ever been drawn. Nut-bolt-washer castings from Grandt Line were installed in the curved beams: Another time consuming task was to install all the iron rods between the woodwork: The rods are chemically blackened 0.6mm nickel-silver wire. Some images of the drilling process for the rods: A mockup with the semi-finished trusses: The finished trusses: Next up: Etchings for windos and the gantry crane

For a long time, one of the projects on my bucket list have been a shadow box diorama of an engine house/workshop at the terminal of “my” railroad, Thamshavnbanen. Thamshavnbanen was a metergauge shortline in Norway with a length of only around 30 km. It did not have more than 5 electric engines, so their rolling stock workshop was of an managable size for a modelling project in 0-scale. Earlier, I have modelled one of the engines and a couple of the mineral wagons operated by this railway. The main inspiration for the project were these two images taken in the period that I try to model, around 1935: The building is still standing, and even if all the machinery is removed (it is used as a warehouse), it still got a lot of character: Before starting the actual work, I made a couple of mock-ups: As the workshop is quite symmetrical with doors at both ends I also made a mock-up with a mirror. A half-model of the gantry crane could be used for hiding the edge of the mirror: I have concluded that the first design with the side view was a bit too static. And the mirror concept is perhaps a bit too contrived. The design with the diagonal cut has some drawbacks as well. What I find most troubling is that the floor area on the left in the mockup has a triangular shape that dissolves the clear separation between the inside of the shadow box and the outside world. I dont know if I make sense, but to me the space of the shadowbox "leaks" out due to this. I want the shadowbox to be an enclosed universe, separated from the viewers universe in the same way a framed painting is. After visiting the Lyon Museum of Miniatures it struck me that the most dramatic of their shadowbox dioramas was of the "missing wall" type, and with a depth larger than the width: Another feature that also really adds to the drama are the light sources placed way back in the scenes. So I decided to use the old black and white images as guides for the design. The viewing aperture of the diorama will be an cross-section right in the middle of the building I feel quite confident that this is a good approach, but I should probably make an mockup before progressing too far with the actual construction. Next: Construction of the roof rafters

Again, thanks a lot for sharing your experiences!

Thanks for the replies! I was not aware of the hardening effect, water jet cutting might be a better choice. But then the question is of course who offer this service and is willing to take on very small orders from individual modellers... The diameter of the laser/ cutting stream is of interest regarding the rounding of inner corners on the parts. 0.20 mm will give a noticeable rounding.

I see that PPD ltd. now offer lasercutting in metal in addition to their etching services. Have anyone here tried this service? I would love to see what the edges look like in 1 mm steel, for instance. And does anyone know the diameter of the laser beam when cutting material 1-2 mm? They can also combine etching and laser cutting, have anyone tried this? Comments on pricing would also be very welcome

How about a facsimile of the cover?

Looking for the following issues of Narrow Gauge & Industrial Railway Modelling Review: 1-11 14-15 17-29 31 42-54 56-57 59 62

Magazine outlets in railway stations usually have a far better selection of railway related magazines than airports. Probably no coincidence. The newsagent at the railway station in my hometown (Trondheim, Norway) suddenly started to stock MRJ. I am planning a little exursion today to see if it have arrived. The only downside is that they charge more than twice as much as in the UK.

I think that one should be careful about the solvents you use for cleaning the parts. Again, I do not remember the original source but there are solvents that can make this type of plastic go brittle.

Besides trying to make wheels for my engines, I am also working on some wheelsets for wagons and railcars. These are also spoked wheels, and I felt that it might be worth trying to 3D-print the wheel centers. So I had some centers printed in Detailed Plastic by Shapeways. They are oversize by 0.2mm on all surfaces that are going to be machined: They machine easily, and for an amateur machinist like me, it i far easier to obtain exact dimensions in plastic than in metal. I opted for a press fit that needs very little force. I am quite concerned about breaking the plastic. The plan is to use ACC between the centres and the rings. If there are glues more suited for the purpose, please let me know! It is hard to know if the 3D printed centres are strong enough for light 0-scale equipment, but it feels OK. If anyone have tried something similiar, chime in! How the Shapeways plastic stands up in time might also bee an issue. I think I have read somewhere that some people have problems with old 3D prints. Comments? Tried something similiar?

“If you done it, it ain't bragging.” And Roy most certainly did it!