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eldavo

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  1. eldavo

    Steaming

    By eldavo,


    Steam effects
    Some while back as part of the work on the Winchester Railway Modellers Redbridge Wharf layout we decided to add smoke and steam effects to a model of a TID tug.  After a bit of research we harked upon cheapo piezo electric mister units as used in humidifiers.  These can be obtained in various sizes and with various control boards from all the normal sources.
     
    The unit we settled on was a 16mm disc connected to a control board that takes a 5v input.
     

     
    This was rigged in in an old plastic bottle, fed by a wick and supported by a 3D printed contraption underneath the baseboard.
     

     
    Fed with 5 volts from the layout and set on it's random setting it gives a quite pleasing effect and certainly catches the attention at exhibitions.
     
     
    Of course it was never going to stop there!  Would it be possible to do something in a loco?  Others have done it so it had to be done.  I happened to be respraying a model of the A4 Mallard to create a model of Sir Nigel Gresley as running in 1967.  An obvious candidate for running on a model of the ex-LSWR mainline to Weymouth!
     
    Quite a lot of space in the smoke box of an A4 so with a bit 3D printing a mounting and water tank was produced and all I had to do was figure out the electrickery bits.  It's currently very much a prototype but it seems to work...
     
     
     
    The loco is fitted with an ESU loksound micro decoder but that isn't man enough to drive the mister circuit which needs 150+ mA.  To get round that I've rigged up a rectifier and voltage regulator to provide enough 5volt oomph.  That feeds the supplied control board but with a slight twist.  
     
    Giles of this parish produced a chuffing narrow gauge radio controlled loco and poked around in the control board mechanism.  He found that in order to get the mister to chuff reliably you need to trickle 2 volts or so to it all the time then when you give it a squirt of 5 volts it responds immediately.  Very very useful info.
     
    In my case I have a solid state relay controlled by Aux 1 on the DCC decoder.  This function output is turned on by function 4 and is defined to trigger on every sound chuff.  The relay effectively switches the power supply to the mister control board from 2 volts to 5 volts.
     
    The problem at the moment is that all the control gear takes up rather a lot of space...
     

     
    I have my work cutout to miniaturise all this.
     
    Cheers
    Dave
  2. eldavo
    As a member of the Winchester Railway Modellers on occasions I get asked for help or suggestions for other members projects.  The most recent came from our chairman who is building an OO gauge GWR layout and wants to build a route indicator box for a signal. Of course as he is a bit of signalling enthusiast and the layout would be controlled via mechanically interlocked lever frame the route indicator would have to work.  He sent me a rough sketch with some dimensions based on a standard GWR  pattern box with the question "any chance you could 3D print one of these?".
     
    The whole indicator box will be about 10x9x4 millimetres and it needs to have 3 working indicator boards that slide up in to view as required.  I have a Wanhao duplicator 7 resin printer so it sounds as though it should be possible.  I knocked something together using my favourite CAD program, Designspark Mechanical, and attempted to print the complete box a a single entity.  It came out OK but I couldn't successfully clean out the uncured/semi-cured resin from the slots where the indicator boards were meant to slide. Back to the drawing board then...
     
    Mark II was created from a kit of parts, a rear panel, a couple of dividers and a front panel.  Here's the parts as they came from the printer.  They are about 0.7mm thick at their thinnest and were printed directly on the print bed..
     

     
    You can clearly see there is a ridge around the edge, rather like flash on a plastic moulding, which is caused by the first few layers being fired longer than the rest to bond the model to the build plate of the printer.  A couple of gentle passes with a small file easily removed the ridge but these parts a pretty delicate!
     
    The pieces were bonded together as a sandwich with super glue (cynoacrylate).  I simply positioned the pieces the put a few spots of very thin blue along the outside edges. Capillary attraction was enough to draw the blue into the joins.  I then cleaned the assembly a bit more with a file then set about roughing out an indicator board to test it. A bit of work with some thin brass, a piercing saw and a file and something good enough for testing was obtained.
     
    The pics below show the completed prototype.  A kit of parts will be posted off to Mr. Chairman for him to build the final model, mount it on a Dapol signal and figure out how to drive it with 3 servos!
     
    Cheers
    Dave
     

  3. eldavo
    While I don't have an O gauge layout myself the club I belong to does and there are some folks who are very keen on 7mm. Being my normal cheapskate self the prices of O gauge stock (and everything else) scares the whassanames out of me so I have been lured to the dark side, ebay. Many times!
     
    I have a number of O gauge locos including this rather nice M7...
     

     
    She was a Tuesday afternoon finisher with a largish, though cheap for an O guage loco, starting bid. I took a punt and put a snipe on for the minimum and she was mine!
     
    She arrived in a rather delapidated state from the infamous auction site and had clearly seen better days. Some botched repairs by someone had to be undone meaning I also had to repaint parts of the loco and so she was weathered to look pretty grotty to hide the nasties. Underneath was a very nicely made loco that runs very well.
     
    All she needs is a train. She's not pull/push fitted so a rake of Mk1s in BR(S) green would do the job...
     
    I could have gone out and found some coaches ready made, they come up on ebay fairly regularly and often advertised by members of the Gauge O Guild in their magazine. Too rich for my blood though! There are cheap secondhand Lima options as well but they wouldn't cut the mustard.
     
    The only option left is to build from kits. There have been a number of different kits around and there are at least 3 different manufacturers still in production. The easiest and most expensive option would be to pick up "Just Like The Real Thing" kits and indeed for my 3rd coach I did just that.
     
    Pretty simple to build as the major bodywork components are plastic or resin and the detail levels are high. I bought a BSK kit (corridor brake second/standard) from the companies ebay outlet and saved a couple of quid. Apart from missing a few bits of brass etch, which were supplied next day following a phone call, everything was plain sailing.
     

     
    The interior is built up on the floor of the coach from various brass and plastic bits held together with super glue.
     

     
    There's a fair bit of detail including a ton of stuff in the guards compartment. I admitted defeat in trying to assemble the wire mesh document pigeon holes out of fiendishly thin nickelsilver!
     

     
    The bogies are whitemetal and not particularly clean castings but actually make up into reasonable structures with a bit of movement in the axleboxes to cope with track irregularities. Strangely no brake shoes/blocks.
     

     
    The underframe is assembled from brass etches and whitemetal castings. Not overly difficult apart from bending the long truss members to form the 'L' shape. It all makes up into a nice coach.
     

     
    Definitely has presence.
     
    I needed another BSK as most of the Southern Region coach sets had a sequentially numbered pair. In fact I had acquired a set of brass etches from ebay some time before buying the JLTRT kit.
     
    The etches were labeled as Acorn kits "First Class Coaches". I had a full set, body, interior, underframe and bogies. All looked really nice on ebay and when I opened the box. However, on starting to assemble the thing a few bits didn't actually fit and also some of the order of construction seemed to be impossible.
     
    Eventually I found a little statement in the rough instruction sheets along the lines of "if this pre-production kit is a success we may put it into production". Ah!
     
    So this kit has been a challenge. The interior of this coach is all brass except for the fairly crude plastic seating strip. Practically no interior detail at all and in fact there were several internal partitions not provided for. The bogies are again whitemetal and the parts very nearly fitted together though not in the way the instructions might suggest!
     

     
    The underframe and body are brass as well and with some imagination could be soldered together. Much much cruder than the JLTRT kit.
     

     
    I did eventually get thing thing assembled but of course there is always a twist. The body is double skinned and you are supposed to sandwich the glazing between the two layers and secure it by running the door handles, grab handles and destination board brackets (brass wire and imagination) through all three and soldering. OK, so if I do that I have to prime and paint it with the glazing in situ? I think not.
     
    Also the roof is supposed to "clip or glue" between the two side skins. I suppose it might if it were the right shape!
     

     
    Eventually I primed and painted then glazed then soldered the roof. This meant I had to carefully scrape away a small amount of paint to solder then cover up again. Not easy and it's a bit crude.
     
    So can it get sillier than trying to make a decent coach out of a set of prototype etches? You bet.
     
    Another ebay "bargain" that came my way, albeit very cheaply, was an Eames coach body set. This is basically some bits of wood, pre-cut cardboard sides and a shaped laminated cardboard roof. The kit wasn't dated but given that the instructions weren't clear what coach type they made and alluded to "the latest Mk1 coach type" it had to come from the late 50s or early 60s. In fact the kit would make an SO (second/standard open) or possibly a TSO.
     
    No underframe, bogies or castings with this one! Heres the sides, ends and floor gluing with the interior bits laid out. There was a generous, if rather faded, one sheet of instructions. Basically said "It's a coach. Stick it together".
     

     
    I did just that and primed it...
     

     
    Then gave it a blast of green...
     

     
    The bogies are "EasiBuild" plastic jobbies that are very easy to build, cheap and don't look too bad.
     

     
    Most of the previous work was done a year or so ago and in the last couple of weeks I have finally got round to completing them.
     
    The SO now has a scratch built underframe made from bits of brass, plastic and various spare castings and all 3 coaches have had their handles and end detail added and a final paint and weathering job. Here's how they stand now...
     
    The JLTRT BSK. Going to have to fix that bowed roof!
     

     
    The Acorn BSK.
     

     
    Finally the Eames SO.
     

     
    They are numbered as part of set 881 using Fox transfers. A little more weathering and attention to glazing and they'll be ready for service. First outing will probably be with the club layout Abbotstone at Wycrail in the autumn.
     
    Oh of course I've acquired a semi-assembled kit for a CK (corridor composite) from ebay recently. You guessed it, it's a mess!
     
    Cheers Dave
  4. eldavo
    Oh no what have I done? Having had great succes in picking up the little 02 kit I placed a bid on another kit on Ebay. All the experienced folks tell you never buy a part built brass kit without inspecting it closely. What did I do? There is certainly no fool like an old fool!
     
    So what I bought at a bargain(?) price was potentially a nice kit. It's a Jinty from Connossieur and a kit that was recommended to me and I was thinking of buying new.
     

     
    On receiving it I opened the box and things looked pretty good. There's a complete set of wheels, albeit a little rusty, a motor, gears, plunger pickups and even some spare glass fibre pen refills. The chassis looks to be fairly square and the wheel offered up to it OK...
     

     
    Then there was the seperately packaged body...
     
    This looked largely complete and was primed but I was suspicious of a few joints and there were definitely things that didn't look right. Never mind, the body is only cosmetic so I'll strip the paint adjust a few things and all will be well.
     
    With the paint off things took a definite turn for the worse. A few bits fell off which was not a good sign but then I looked in detail at how things had been put together. The cab floor didn't fit so clearly the cab wasn't assembled square so I started to check other things for squareness and the true horrors started to emerge.
     
    The smokebox apart from being soldered on with an awful lot of solder is clearly not square. The chimney came off easily though as it appears to have been glued on with something like UHU!
     

     
    Looking at the side you can see that it isn't even in the right place and should be further back. Arghh look at the way the smokebox wrapper has been fixed!
     

     
    What's going on with those bars across the cab windows?
     

     
    It gets worse! The boiler is not at the right height, it's not level, the firebox hasn't been shaped to have the right curvature and the cab front is not square!
     

     
    There's nothing for it I'm going to have to take large parts of it apart and re-build so out with the soldering iron(s). I managed to get a few minor bits off cleanly but there is so much solder of indeterminate melting point that neither of my irons (25w and 48w) can make any impression. So after pondering the situation for a while I decided drastic action was required...
     

     
    It's disassembled. Yes that is a blowtorch in the background! A few of the bits may be damaged beyond repair and I'll have to make replacements but at least I have a kit of parts to work with. As one of my fellow club members would say, "a kit is just an aid to scratch building". In this case it may not be much of an aid. At least all the parts fit in the box now. :roll:
     
    I'm just off to the garage to build a Jinty, I may be gone some time! :?
     
    Cheers
    Dave
  5. eldavo
    Never one to run from a challenge I thought it was about time I did some of this blogging lark. Like many I had nothing to do while RMWeb was in transit so I had to resort to modelling! Amongst the many projects in flight at present I have been spending odd moments finishing up the greyhound stadium for my local club's OO layout. Due to the size of it the structure has been bedded on to a sub-baseboard so it can be easily removed from the layout so we can get at other things. Fences have been added and the odd bit of greenery here and there. Also a really manking looking entrance has been added with turnstiles. The modelling is pretty crude but then again most folks won't be able to get close enough to see any detail.
     
    The original remit was to create something that looked a bit rundown, cheap and tacky to add to the general air of urban grot. Not sure whether it meets the requirements but I think it's at least interesting. Here's some piccies...
     

     

     

     
    Cheers
    Dave
  6. eldavo
    You know how it happens, sometimes things on Ebay are just too tempting. Well they are to me anyhow! This is another item that was listed to end at an odd time and with probably too high a starting bid so I put in the minimum bid on a snipe and here it is. It's a rather nicely built O guage M7. No idea what kit it was built from but it is very solidly made and quite nicely finished. It's had a knock or two and someone has done an awfully crude repair to the cab roof which has resulted in some rather unsightly glue runs. It has had a basic look over and runs beautifully. You can see the jauntily angled cab roof and glue blobs in the following shots...
     

     

     
    I couldn't live with that repair so off came the cab roof and a craft knife removed the unsightly glue. The body was then given a good wash to get rid of accumulated dust, affected areas rubbed down and primed. While I was at it I also applied gun blue to the sharp edges that were already showing signs of paint wear/chipping. As the roof was off I also dropped in some crude plastic glazing held with Klear.
     

     

     
    The primer was then rubbed down a little and some Halfords satin black applied by brush where necessary. Of course this has resulted in some missing lining so this has been roughed in this evening using acrylics and a cocktail stick. It's far from perfect and needs a little adjustment but with some weathering should be good enough.
     

     

     
    Finally this evening the whole loco has been given a thin coat of Klear to even things out. Next up will be some repairs to odd details like the bufferbeam pipework and brake gear then some weathering. I need to get my finger out with this one as the loco is already rosetered to run on the club layout at Woking show in 3 weeks time!
     
    Cheers
    Dave
  7. eldavo
    As ever I can't help looking for a bargain. Something in me just won't let me buy something at full price. Fortunately I have managed to pick up a little gem of an O gauge kit from Ebay in the last month or so. For some reason hardly anyone placed a bid on it and it went for a song despite retailing for something like ?‚??199! The seller advertised it as a part built kit with one or two items missing and even provided a list of the bits missing. Always up for a challenge I figured I could source a few missing screws and scratchbuild some brakegear so put a silly low bid in on spec. It arrived on my doorstep shortly after.
     
    The kit is a Tower models Class 02 diesel which is mostly whitemetal, in fact pewter, with some brass chassis bits and all wheels, gears and motor. An ideal starter kit in O gauge for a bodger like me. As it happens when I inspected the kit I couldn't find any bits missing!
     

     
    The previous owner had started the assembly of the chassis and also cleaning up the castings. Sophisticated chassis? NOT! On arrival I gave it 12 volts to see if all was well and with a couple of minor adjustments to get the gears meshed nicely the wheels fairly whizzed round.
     

     
    Most of the castings are actually very clean with the exception of the cab which is a single piece and has required hours of filing to get it close to good enough. The hood and cab are mounted as a unit onto the footplate with screws and here they are roughly offered up.
     

     
    I assembled some pickups as per the instructions and took it up to my local model railway club for a little amble round on the O gauge layout. It worked fine and will even run quite slowly despite not having been run in. The pickups though were less than wonderful. The phosphorbronze strip provided seemed a little too thin for the job and so after consulting some experts I decided to scratchbuild something better.
     
    Several of the O guagers at the club use scratchbuilt plunger pickups made from 1/8 inch brass tube and rod with either wire or phosphorbronze springing. I opted to try some guitar spring and having sourced some brass rod and tube from a local model shop and dug out some copperclad sleepers knocked, something up. Here's the result as yet untested on the layout so will probably require some adjustment, certainly works if you whack a couple of wires on the tyre treads.
     

     
    I'm waiting on delivery of some low melt solder via the postie so I can get on and start sticking the castings together.
     
    Cheers
    Dave
  8. eldavo
    First up let me say I am a sceptic when it comes to sound fitted models. Having said that I did purchase a Baccy 66 from my main supplier, Ebay, sometime last year. Well at 90 notes it would have been rude to let somebody else buy it! Here she is on the kitchen table which I have been known to refer to as my "workbench".
     

     
    When I first got the thing I found it very interesting though none too spectacular. I had a bunch of issues with the sound resetting and it generally did not sound very good. The resets and general running were tracked down to over enthusiastic oiling on the part of the previous owner. A good clean up and things improved considerably. Also I took it to my local club and gave it an hours running on our roundy roundy layout which further improved it and all seemed to be working well.
     
    Having done all this I was still not that enamoured with it and it went back in the box apart from demonstrating it to a couple of folks. I even refrained from detailing it, fitting my favourite couplers and weathering it as I may well sell it on.
     
    Over the last few weeks I've read a bunch of posts on these forums and other places about sound locos and the poor fitting of the systems in various Bachmann models. Being too idle to tackle anything significant yesterday evening I decided to open up my one and only sound loco and see what made it tick. Surprise surprise the speaker fitting in this loco is lousy! There is a single oval speaker clipped into a very small plastic enclosure underneath the cooling array grills. Contrary to all the advice of acoustic engineers and others the fitting is not air tight, in fact there are gaping holes everywhere!
     
    So then what to do. Being a cheapskate my first thought was to find some blue tac and seal the speaker into the enclosure and block the holes. So that's exactly what I did. I popped out the speaker, rolled a really thin sausage of blue tac and set it around the edge of the enclosure and blocked the 4 sets of holes in the sides of the enclosure that allow the mounting spring clips to move. Here's the result.
     

     
    You can also see from this picture that there is a whopping great hole where the cables to the speaker enter. The speaker was refitted and the cable hole bunged up with more blue tac. Taking a look at the result there were then 4 more holes where the speaker can be screw mounted! These were duly plugged giving this elegant(!) result.
     

     
    At this point I reassembled the loco and powered it up. My sceptical mind told me I would hear no improvement. After all my ears are over 50 years old, I spent my youth working with speakers the size of telephone boxes trying to get Hi Fi sound and I played for 35 years in brass bands, how could a bit of blue tac improve the sound from a speaker the size of a large postage stamp mounted in a bit of plastic? Well it did and I could hear the difference especially in the horn sounds!
     
    Sound is rather subjective so I was still prepared to believe I was deluding myself. Having worked for 8 or 9 years on Fourier transform software and analysing data many years ago I thought a touch of careful measurement might be in order. Before making the modifications I shot a short video clip of the loco sat idling. I framed the shot carefully so the camera would be at a known distance from the sound source. I did the same after the modification, ripped the video from each into a copy of CoolEdit and took a look at the waveforms and frequency analysis. Bear in mind this is using a crappy microphone in a mobile phone so you wouldn't expect great results. I should have used a high quality mic but, as I said before, I'm a cheapskate.
     
    The upper traces in this screenshot are the original and the lower the modified. The green trace is the audio waveform, the blue the frequency analysis. They are, very surprisingly, significantly different. The volume level in the modified appears to be greater, and more significantly, there is a distinct shift in the frequencies from high to lower. Some of the "tinny" higher frequencies have been removed and the peaks have become more distinct.
     

     
    I'm now wondering whether the lower frequencies couldn't be further improved with some judicious damping of the plastic body of the loco...
     
    Oh, and a nice teak speaker enclosure the size of a phone box!
     
    Cheers
    Dave
  9. eldavo

    Going to the dogs

    By eldavo,

    Had a bit of a change in focus for the last week or so and been tinkering with a building. Actually it's just another excuse for not getting on and sorting out the traverser on Cramdin really! This is a building for the Winchester club OO layout to fill in a rather large gap along the rear of the baseboard. It's on a slightly larger scale than the buildings I've created for Cramdin being about 3 feet long.
     
    The thing is a pretty crude construction of bits of MDF and card with the roof clad in corrugated plastic. Here's an overall shot. Can ya see what it is yet?
     

     
    It's supposed to look like a fairly seedy and run down stadium at a dog track. It's a freelance design but location is inspired by Catford (I think) being next to the railway but I've lifted design elements from Walthamstow and the dark recesses of my head. It has a sort of art deco ish sort of frontage planted in the middle of a cheapo corrugated iron main structure. Signs and things to add here.
     

     
    Originally the idea was for it to be brick below the cladding but I couldn't be bothered to faff with brick paper and stuff so I thought I would modify a Jim S-W idea of using Plasticote textured paint to give a concrete render finish. This is actually suede effect! To give it a more run down appearance I did use some brick paper on some parts, masked of ragged random areas then after spraying it all peeled off the masking. The idea is to give the effect of bits of the rendering falling off. Doesn't look too clever close up but when the 3 foot rule is in play...
     
    The cladding has been painted with a gunmetal/silver enamel then roughly sort of dry brushed with my favourite Tamiya Nato brown to give a rust effect. This was then liberally dusted with Carr's rust weathering powder. Also there's a bit of Mig Russian Earth weathering powder applied in places on the rendering to make it look generally dirty. Must be the effect of passing steam trains.
     

     
    More to do to it yet and also it has to be fitted in to the layout somehow.
     
    Cheers
    Dave
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