Mike Boucher

Hi folks, If you go back a few pages, to post 45 (http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/76636-tales-from-the-treatment-room/?p=1223753), you'll see that I started building a wooden kit for a Chesapeake & Ohio caboose in the first "installment" of the treatment room. I never finished building it, and for a year after my first treatment, I wasn't able to work on it. But, I made a New Years resolution a few years ago to not start new projects until I finish one. (treatement room excepted). This has been the primary focus of my modelling "at home" over the past year or so. And as of now, I've just about finished the caboose (3+ years later). Here's what she looks like now: quite a difference from how it started... What's left to do? 1) Install lighted marker lamps.. I've ordered Tomar lamps from my local hobby shop, should get them in 2-3 weeks. 2) Touching up paint (from handling/drilling/cutting during construction) 3) Decaling. As the decals that came with the kit are 40+ years old, they're almost guaranteed to be brittle (that is, they'll self destruct upon hitting water!) I've used Microscale "Liquid Decal Film" on them, but that might not be enough to save them. I might need to get new ones custom made, as no one makes the right ones. If you're interested in details on what I did to get it to this point, look at my "workbench" thread elsewhere (starting at post #91 - http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/18405-bouchs-workbench-7mm-n-scale-and-model-engineering/?p=1948428)

Prior to this month’s treatment, I took advantage of an unseasonably warm day (65 degrees in mid February) and painted what I thought would be all the crimson parts for the midland brake. I grabbed all the parts molded in red, and sprayed them with Humbrol #20 Crimson. quick aside: a year or so ago, a friend in my live steam club suddenly passed away. He had a 3.5” gauge “Juliette” which he was going to repaint into LMS Crimson. I was helping clean out his house, and found a stash of humbrol paints. The family gave me the paints, since they didn’t want to bother trying to sell anything that small/insignificant. How many Hubrol tins would it take to paint a live steam loco? Dunno, but Ken had bought 12… I think that’s more than enough for my needs... Since that was fresh on my mind, gluing the body together was the first order of business. I also put the two dividers in, at the location specified in the instructions. They seemed very close to the center, but they'll be pretty invisible once the roof is on. But then I noticed that a diagram in the instructions show the duckets on the side, and some small lantern-like thing above the duckets, but there’s no text about actually adding these. To make matters worse, I found that these weren’t molded in red, they were on a brown sprue, so they had never gotten painted. I’ve run in to issues like this with Slaters instructions before, where the text omits to tell you to attach something, even though a drawing shows the part. (the Stanier brake van and Saxa Salt Wagon spring to mind). So, full stop, and before the next session I have more painting to do… And since it appears the next step is to permanently glue the roof on, looks like I have to add weight next as well. I don’t think bringing lead sheets into the treatement room is such a good idea… (and the instructions do say "you might want to so step 42 before gluing the roof on. Step 42 is to install the glazing and etched brass "security bars", which need to be painted white. glazing the windows before gluing the roof on MIGHT be a good idea?) So, back to the Porter. The next step is to start assembling the side tanks. First step is to add bolt NBWs to the front mounting plate’s flange. Similar to the smokebox saddle, drill holes, insert NBWs, glue, and let cure. I set this aside to completely harden as I built the tanks. Lot more work here than it appears, as the edges of the pieces are angled, and the sprue gates needed a lot of trimming/filing there. The tanks are made as two assemblies with 3 sides each, so you have to be careful to assemble them in the correct orientation. The next step is to finish the running gear, installing the drivers, side rods, main rod, crosshead, etc. Looking at the parts, one of the crankpins on the drivers is cracked. Since this is slippery “engineering plastic”, my tenax is useless on it. I need my 5 minute epoxy, which was at home. So, I had to stop here. And, like with the Midland brake, I want to put lead weight in each tank (being very careful to have the same weight in each tank!), so full stop on the porter loco. So, back to the porter tender. Next step was to glue these incredibly tiny valve handles on top of the tank top. Once again, showing the skill of the mold maker, there are two parts to each, one the handle, the other the tightening "bolt". Was praying they didn't fly off the tweezers...) Next was to glue the pedestals on the underframe and start fitting the journals and axles. I didn’t get too far on that when my treatment was about to finish, so I didn’t take any photos. The pedestals are on, and I started fitting one journal. That’s all for now. Hopefully by next treatment I’ll have the duckets painted and lead added to both.

And a few others recently found... http://www.railpictures.net/photo/581922/ http://www.railpictures.net/photo/595795/ http://www.railpictures.net/photo/580859/ http://www.railpictures.net/photo/574927/

Not quite OT, but one of the more stunning photos I've seen in a long time... http://www.railpictures.net/photo/604860/

Wow, that's impressive. Is it too much to ask for a video?

Here's the flyer that PWRS/NARC was handing out at the big Railroad Hobby Show in Springfield, MA last weekend. They announced it at the show. I talked to the guys, they said they're producing 90+ different, prototypically correct, configurations/paintschemes. For each version, 6 different road numbers, but only 50 cars each road number.... Ambitious to say the least. If there's one particular car you need to have, order it early!

What size is the grid? 50 CM?

Interesting to note that each track under each arch is served by a different track on the street... The leftmost track on the street serves only the leftmost track under each arch.

Yesterday's session in the treatment room was dedicated to progress on the Porter. The next step was to start work the boiler. Nothing terribly challenging, so there's not much to say. There's one modification that needed to be done for my side-tank version which was a little tricky. The sand lines go between the boiler and the side tanks. Since the side tanks sit flush against the boiler, you have to mark where they are, and then file a notch in the boiler side until the lines will fit so their outer edge is flush with the boiler side I hope I got the domes and stack on reasonable straight. I also Couldn't install the bell bracket, as that requires a 1/16" drill, and I didn't have that in my toolkit. The one gotcha was that the boiler shell is glued to the cab front, which meant I had to unscrew the cab from the frame. And, of course, I didn't have my screwdriver in my toolkit for some reason (I blame my 12 year old son, who was looking for one the other day) So, I had to use a small putty knife. Worked to unscrew, but there was no way I could use it to drive in new screws to attach the cylinders and front of the boiler. No biggie, will be the first thing to do next session. Pictures say 1000 words... Starting to look like a locomotive... Next step is building the side tanks, then the running gear. We'll see how far I get on that next time, or maybe I'll assemble the body on the midland brake. One thing to notice is that the rods from the sand domes to the cab stop at the cab front. Since the firebox top is separate from the boiler/cab roof (for disassembly and access to the motor), the cab end of those rods has to be separate pieces. Those will get done when working on the cab interior detailing kit.

Not unprecedented... photo by Bill Henze, from the collection of Mark Twain Hobby Center

There's a saying here in the US. "It fell out of the ugly tree and must have hit every branch on the way down"

Fascinating. I've never seen rollers which needed to be held in a vise. I've always seen them with both ends supported/bolted to the workbench. Are they homemade, or commercially available?

Here's a link to my workbench thread where I describe how I did it (albeit on a different kit) http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/18405-bouchs-workbench-7mm-n-scale-and-model-engineering/page-3&do=findComment&comment=1148813 Short version: Cut slots in the folded-over top of the sides. Slight offset, solder tabs to the bottom of the roof which match the slots. put on roof so tabs fit through slots, and slide roof into place, such that the tabs slide under the folded-over tops of the sides. Easier to see in pictures.

Today was my first of 5 more "once monthly" treatments. So the updates will be fewer and futher between. (and I'm not complaining!) Since I've already had a month worth with no adverse allergic reactions, this also means that the infusion times will be shorter, although we're still in the 3-4 hour range. But, today I made a major mistake. I took the Tenax and ACC glues out of the carrying bag I use for a different project, and forgot to put it back in. That meant the only glue I had was 5 minute epoxy. Not at all suitable for the Porter, but I could make a little progress on the Midland brake. Between the last treatment and this one, I had soldering to do, and also work on the cleminson chassis to make it more flexible. Soldering the remaining 3 brake levers was easy and done quickly. Then I unscrewed the 3 parts from the floor, and cut off the pointed axle extensions so they don't foul on the not-quite-aligned W irons. I used my Foredom tool with a grind wheel, which made short work of the axles (pun intentional!) This made a world of difference, things loosened up significantly. I also took the chassis apart and applied some thick oil to the sliding surfaces. Finally, I noticed that one side had limited motion, it was fouling on the plastic brake cylinder. I filed a little away to increase the clearances. As a test, I took a piece of Micro Engineering flextrak, bent it to about a 42" radius (using a gauge I made for the minimum radius for the On3 switching layout I'm planning). The chassis went around it without any issues, so I'm pretty confident I won't have any problems with it going around the curves on the club layout. If you look closely at the 2nd photo here, you can see the axle ends on the outer axles are much closer to the W irons than the center axle. Now to the treatment room. I left off with attaching springs/axleboxes to the chassis/W-irons. Since the axleboxes are plastic and the W Irons brass, I needed ACC or epoxy anyway, so I just sucked it up an attached the 3 springs on one side using epoxy, and then all 6 axleboxes. Attaching the springs was fiddly, as the clamps didn't produce a "square" force on the parts, so the springs would slide a little, but I got them on. The epoxy also oozed out of the joint, so I need to do so some careful cleanup. It actually worked out that I forgot the glue, as I was pretty exhausted from getting less sleep due to the holidays, getting up at 5am to drive in to the appointment, and getting benadryl to help prevent infusion allergic reactions. And I also had a few visitors, so I chatted with them. But, I did make progress on the 3rd project, which I haven't updated since the 1st week. That's the "Metal Earth" U.S.S. Arizona. Doesn't look like much, but that's probably 2 total hours effort over the past 5 treatments. A lot of really tiny parts, all of which need to be filed, bent, and then attached. There's over 30 individual parts there. (but this still don't think this is the hardest one I've built, "Cinderella's Carriage" was worse, lots of detail and compound curves to bend) Between now and the next treatment, I'll clean up the parts and touch up the paint where needed. I'll also attach some weight to the inside. My "rule of thumb" for weight can be summarized as such: 1) The NMRA weights are too heavy to begin with 2) Relative weight is more important. That is, if your average van is 16' long, all vans that length should weigh the same. Also, if a van is 32' long, then it shoud weigh twice as much as the 16' long van. Since the brake van is 47' long, that's pretty close to 3x the length of a normal box van. I weigh my vans to about 5 oz (that's as much weight as I can shove in the chassis of a Slaters P.O. wagon kit and keep it hidden), then this brake should weigh 15 oz. That seems pretty heavy, so I might knock it down to 13 or so, which is about what I weigh my US prototype 40' boxcars to. The Slaters instructions also suggest painting and lettering the sides before assembly, easier to do "in the flat". Might do the painting. Need to find a good representation of Midland red in a paint I can get in the US. (One shop about 40 miles away has some Humbrol, otherwise its Testors or Vallejo. I'm also looking for advice as to the right lining for this. It'll probably be in "Post 1933" LMS lettering, as the photo from post 122 is later than that, plus the idea of doing the full Midland lining seems like a LOT of work. But this van doesn't seem to be covered in "LMS Coaches" by Jenkinson and Essery, google searches haven't found any good color, closeup photos so I can really see how the lining should be applied. I think I have a good clue, and when I get the lining from Fox (I prefer waterslide decals over transfers!), I'll consult with them to make sure I get the right set(s). but pictures would really help. Still pondering this, although I need to make up my mind before painting as Midland/early LMS has crimson lake ends, while the later LMS has black ends... Might defer that decision for a little bit, and just work on the Porter next time

I'm trying to figure out what a Illinois Central inspired paint scheme is doing in CA...

Today's installment of the treatment room makes it look like I didn't do much, but it's actually about 4 hours of work. Not sure if that means that I work slowly, or if what I did just doesn't look like a lot. First, I worked on the Porter. During the week, I went to tin the pickups, as suggested, and found that I had 1, not two. Must've fell out of the package. Fortunately, I have a sheet of .005 thick brass, so I cut a new one out of that. Its not nickel sliver, like what was provided in the kit, but it should work just fine. I also finished the "chassis rear" steps, installing the rear buffer beam and the lower firebox sides. Next step is to build the cab. Pretty straightforward, but more complex than it appears. Making sure its square, the right pieces overlap correctly in the corners, etc. One thing you can see in those photos is 4 eyelets on top of the firebox. The firebox top is designed to be removable, it just clicks into place. Using a template in the instructions, you drill a bunch of holes in the boiler top, including the 4 for the eyelets Then you nave to drill two holes in the cab front. You have to align everything such that two pieces of .020 brass wire go through the holes in the cab front, and through those eyelets, while ensuring the wires are parallel to the firebox top and also to each other. Fiddly work, considering the eyelets are "engineering plastic" and solvents don't affect them, you have to glue them in with ACC. This has to be done before you glue the cab roof on, or you won't be able to get the drills in there at the right angles. The cab isn't permanently attached either, its screwed to the cab floor. You can't see it in the photos, but there's a small coal bunker in the front left corner (which is made of 5 pieces) and is used to hide the screw mount. On the right side, its a small platform the engineers seat will be mounted on (I think) The next step is to assemble the boiler, so this seemed like a good logical stop point. Worked on the Midland brake. Once again, over the week, I had done some more soldering, attaching the brake rigging. I also took Slaters' suggestion to paint the chassis, a coat of primer and two coats of flat black. When I started work, it looked like this: I fixed the wheels in place, using 5 minute epoxy to glue the retainers in. Then assembled the cleminson (?) chassis and screwed everything in place. Instead of the 8BA screws provided, I decided to use 2-56. Two reasons for this: 1) I'm in the US, so if a screw gets lost, I can replace it and 2) I'm not a big fan of screws into plastic, so I also used a nut on the inside. Next time, I'll bring some scrap styrene and build little boxes around those nuts to hold them in place. The chassis seems pretty stiff, I need to pull it apart and put some oil on the sliding section for the middle axle. I also noticed that the holes in the etched W irons aren't centered on the axle (vertically, horiontally they are aligned right), so there seems to be a little rubbing where the axle extensions go through that hole. While its apart, I'm going to cut off those pointed axle ends with a cutting wheel in my Foredom tool, as there are inside bearings and all they do is add drag. I cut the 3 remaining brake rigging pieces from the etch, cleaned up, and put them in place. These need to be soldered before the next infusion. I then started assembling the spring/axleboxes on the solebars. getting 3 springs on one side. I spent about 5 minutes reading the instructions here. The step says, "...fit the molded springs and hangers to the bottom of the solebars. See notes regarding the springs on page 1..." Page 1 says nothing about the springs and I could see, only talks about differences in the history, and noting the changes in the guard's lookout sizes over the course of these van's lives. So I read more, and still didn't see any notes about springs. So, thinking, "no one is going to know if I get something subtly wrong", I proceeded with installing them. These are engineering plastic, so I had to use ACC on them. I also noticed there was a LOT of very thick flash near the "J hanger" in the springs (sufficiently thick that I wonder if its not flash, its intentionally part of the mold for strength). I spent some time and "daylighted" them, which greatly improved how they looked. Doesn't look like a lot of progress, but the Midland chassis is now sitting on its wheels. I'm now done with the "every week" phase of the treatment. I have 6 more treatments left, once a month. The next one is 12/29, so there won't be an update next week. After that, there will be "once a month" updates to this thread.

3rd day of treatment room had a little progress on the Midland brake, the chassis of the Porter, and quite a bit on the Porter’s tender. I worked on the brake first, installing all 12 brake shoes. The styrene rod is glued to the brake shoe, and they float a little. The instructions suggest letting the glue dry at least 12 hours (?!?!) before trimming. Then I glued the remaining W iron etching and the vacuum brake cylinder assembly to the floor, using 5 minute epoxy. I also removed 3 of the brake pull levers from the etch, cleaned them up, and put them in position. At that point, I couldn’t make any more progress, as the next step is to solder more brake rigging. Should be able to get that done over the weekend. Next up, work on the Porter loco. I finished the cylinder assembly. To give an idea of the level of detail in this kit, (and the skill of Cliff Grandt, the man who made the molds) the packing glands for the valve rod is make from 2 separate pieces. I was praying to God that they didn’t fly off the tweezers when I was placing them, never would have found them… Next, I worked on the frame extension which supports the cab, has the firebox sides, and also the motor mount. After putting in 6-8 pieces, the next step was to install the rear pickups, and the instructions suggest tinning with solder before placing them, to make it easier to attach the motor wires (very good idea, there’s little room in there). So, I had to stop, as the next plastic piece to attach makes it so you can’t install/remove the pickups. So, I have soldering to do here this weekend as well. So, that meant the only thing I could really work on was the Porter tender. I built up the tank body, and tank top. They’re not permanently attached, the tank is screwed into the floor, and once the top is glued on, there’s no access for adding weight or anything else. (I might try to put a DCC decoder inside the tender tank, still pondering that. Might be able to find a place inside the firebox) So, here’s what the Porter looks like now. Whole engine and tender about 8” long.

My father has a "non-super" Simplex almost finished (and then decided to work on other stuff). Nice engine, looking forward to seeing your progress!

So, if I read this right, instead of cutting along the length of the valence (parallel), you went in perpendicular to the valence to make a bunch of short pieces, and then broke them off at the half etches? That would make SO much more sense (to me, at least) then trying to cut along the length and remove the "fixture" from the valence in one piece...

As expected, I needed to do some soldering on the underframe of the Midland brake before the next appointment, which is this Thursday. The two things I wanted/needed to get done was install the inner brake hangers, and also the vacuum cylinder linkages/brake V hangers. The trick with the brake hangers was to get them nice and parallel. After a little pondering, here's what I did... I measured the thickness of the brake shoes with my calipers, and they were .060 thick. I had some strip styrene .060 thick by .080 wide, so I drilled a .032 hole in the styrene to match the holes in the brake hangers, and about 1/2 the length of the hangers. Here's the two etched pieces with the styrene block. I then inserted a piece of .030 styrene rod (included in the kit) through the etched brake hangers and the styrene, forming a "sandwich". I clamped it together with a small wooden clothespin so everything aligned. The aluminum spring clamp is holding them in the correct "vertical orientation", and also to try to act as a heat sink so the styrene wouldn't melt. At first, I thought I would need an 80 watt iron to get the large mass of the "compenating frame" heated up. It was hard to get it in there, even after cutting away part of the clothespin (making a pointed clamp), and then the styrene melted and the two pieces squeezed together. I tried it with a 25 watt iron, and that was easier to worth with and did provide enough heat. Here's the first one installed. Here's the 4 on one axle. The two in the front look a little mis-aligned, but from the side, they don't look that far off. I've now done all 12, so I'm ready to do some work installing the brake shoes. The vacuum gear was fairly trivial. Just had to be careful that the casting is aligned above the cylinder while the actuating lever is centered and "vertical". (still need to trim the ends of the rod) I expect this week will be more "prepwork" on all the rodding once the 12 brake shoes are installed, so I'll do that first, and then work on the Porter cylinders...

Friday morning I started on the Midland brake again. First step was to glue the W irons to the floor with 5 minute epoxy. When I looked at the pictures to determine which one went where (each of the 3 are distinct), I noticed that the brass wire I soldered down was wrong on one of them. I soldered the wire perpendicular to the axle on all 3, on 1 of them it goes parallel. After a few curses, I glued down the other 2. And I also found that the next step also required soldering, this for the "other side" of the brake hangers. So, I prepped those (all 12 of them, 6 left, 6 right handed) and looked ahead in the instructions to see what I could make without solder. I glued the vacuum cylinder to the etched brass brake V hanger piece (again, with 5 minute epoxy), and glued the air cylinder together. When I stopped working, here's all the "visible progress" I had made. So, back to the Porter. I decided to start work on the tender this time, figure I’ll do a little work on each kit as we go. The first step is the tender frame, which was a lot more complex than it looks. There are 4 “stringers”, but there are two distinct pieces, and their orientation is important. Same with the ends, holes get drilled differently, and the “bolster slot” is in different orientations on each end. Even the center spacer has to be installed with a certain orientation. The instructions are quite good here, but it does take a “read it 3 times and double check before you glue” approach. Even with that, I drilled two holes in the wrong place, but they’re small (.020”) and were easily filled with styrene rod. Back to the locomotive. The next step is the cylinders. Some amazing mold work here… As you can see, there are two halves to the cylinder saddle. These get glued together, but you have to file the “mating edge” until the slot in the valve chest pieces just fit over the lugs on the saddle castings. Using a large flat file, take a couple swipes on one half, test fit, couple swipes on the other, repeat until a good fit on both sides, and the glue the 4 parts together. If you look closely at tht picture, you’ll see the next step in progress. On the inside of the saddle, there are small marks where you have to drill with a #71 drill (IIRC) To make it more obvious, a detent is circled in green, and a drilled hole in red… Once those holes are drilled, from the “outside” of the saddle you insert some Grandt #127 1 1-2 Nut/bolt castings, and glue them in place. This is to represent the attachment of the smokebox to the saddle. If you look, one of them the hole wasn’t in the right place, so I just re-drilled and inserted a piece from the “inside”. When trimmed, you’ll never see it (because you won’t be able to see the underside of the saddle, but that’s beside the point) The instructions say to wait at least 10 minutes between gluing these in and trimming/sanding. It was getting close to the end of the day, so I placed them on the chassis just to see what it looked like before stopping I also brought a small metal “no glue” kit to work on when it was getting close to the end of the day. I don’t want to start a difficult step and have to stop ½ way through it. I’ve been occasionally building kits from “Metal Earth”. They’re etched steel, and they go together with a “tab and slot” construction, origami in metal without glue. The sheets are about 4” square. I grabbed the “USS Arizona” from the pile… Note I took that photo after starting, there are a few pieces removed from the sheets. In about 15 minutes, I got through the first 6 steps, building the superstructure… Lot of little bends and folds here. Looking at their online catalog, they’re about to release a “Hogwarts Express”. Might have to acquire one of those…

Well, the treatment room opened again this week, both Thursday and Friday I had infusions, each about 6 hours. So, lots of time for modelling. Both projects got some work done, but I'm amazed at how little it looks like was done. I flipped a coin, and started with the Porter locomotive. If you've never seen a Grandt Line kit, the plastic sprues come in small bags, like this: And in the instructions, there are pictures of every sprue, identifying which piece is which. Incredibly helpful to find some ridiculously small pieces. Here's the contents of the bag with the frame pieces in it. Note the size, the grid on my "self healing mat" is 1/4". This is a small locomotive, even in O scale. The black pieces are a very slippery plastic (a delrin like plastic) The grey is styrene. There's a combination of "press fit", ACC, and Tenax/MEK used to hold the pieces together. After a few hours of work, through "step 1" of the instructions, here's what I had... To give a sense of scale, the frame is only about 3" long and 1" wide. If you look closely, there are a few parts which aren't noticeable on the sprues. A couple, like the brackets for the front pilot beam (to use the British term - Buffer Beam, but there's no buffers!) were on a sprue in a different bag. At this point, I decided to switch gears and work on the Midland Brake. Took me a few minutes to wrap my head around the huge discrepancy in the size of the pieces (keeping in mind that both these kits are O scale!) First part was easy, glue the floor together, attach the solebars and the buffer beams. And immediately I realized that the beginning of this kit was a LOT of soldering for the underframe. And I can't/won't solder in the hospital due to the fumes. But, I can cut, file, bend, and otherwise prep everything for soldering. So that's what I did. First the W irons needed brass wire bent for supports for the underframe pieces. If you've built one of these kits, you might notice I'm going down the wrong path here on one of the pieces... Then bent up the underframe compensation/bearing supports/brake hangers And at this point my treatment was basically over, so I packed up and relaxed for a few minutes. At home that night, I did the soldering, so I could work more on the brake on Friday. More info on Friday's progress later, after I type it up and get the photos uploaded from my camera...

A trick I've used is to take a cotton swab (or fine paint brush) and "paint" Vaseline on the treads before spraying. After paint is dry, wiping the treads with a paper towel removes the Vaseline, and any paint that actually stuck to it. No worry about paint seeping under the tape...

Gotta admit that I would be incredibly nervous using a high speed spinning cutting disk. Maybe I don't have enough control, or I'm using them wrong, but they almost always seem to grab somewhere, pushing it across whatever I'm trying to cut, which invariably ruins the surface somewhere...

Question: How do you cut off that "outer frame" footplate jig? Jewelers saw and a lot of careful filing? Or is there some clever trick?