My expierience with big locos

[faraway]

That cab is amazing!

[Schraddel]

The tender of the M-68 was treated in a similar way as the one for the L-105:


Similar because it is indeed the same prototype as the L-105 tender but different construction. This Max Gray tender is about ten years older.





This pipeline was completely missed and i made it out of brass stock orientated of those of the other tender.





Grab accident safety.
When you handle the M-68 with it's relative heavy weight, you will grab it by the running boards. But what is under the running boards? Here it is a bundle of air lines in fine brackets and these will inevitably bend inwards when you grab the loco to handle it. You know this is a critical point and you can handle it with care to avoid bending the brackets. But there is alway the risk of wrong grabbing and therefor bending the brackets accidentally. Of course you can bend it back to straighten it, but the real question is: How often?
To improve the structural stability here, i set some bores of 0.8mm into the boilershell behind the brackets.





Pieces of 0.8mm wire were soldered onto the lower ends of the brackets od into the bores. This give the much wanted additional structural stabilty and coarse grabbing here does'nt matter anymore. When the boilershell is mounted onto the running gear, you see nothing of these additional stiffeners.





The many bended and askewed details of the cab interior were were rebend an straigthened. And this it looks alike when the cab interior light is turned on (photo without flash).





Here to this socket has 4 poles, but actual only 3 poles are needed, so the the two middle sockets are electrical connected. Thus enables me to plug in here two 2-pole plugs, one for the front head light and one for the cab interior light; remember the cab is detachable. The function "+" (blue wire according NMRA colour code) will plug into the inner two sockets, the white (decoder front head light) into the very left and the green ( decoder function F1, here green) into the very right. This will avoid cable spaghetti.





An other proven device for impeding cable spaghetti is my spectacles shape cable guide. Here 7 cables are to guide, all have black colour because they will be lateron full visible, but should be as invisible a possible.
The 7 cables are (in the photo from bottom to upper):
- pick up left rail (NMRA colour code: black)
- motor (grey)
- front headlight (white)
- common "+" (blue)
- cab light (green)
- motor (orange)
- pick up right (red)
In this strictly order the wires were be soldered onto the connector plug to the tender and the plugs were shrinked in.





The tender wiring loom. Colour codes according NMRA.





The completed electric installation.
The loco to tender plug was marked to avoid wrong connection by distortion of plug and socket to each other. As a safety function there will be a heavy direct short which does not affect the decoder.
There are two more sockets leading from the decoder. One (colour code black and red) is leading to the pick ups of the tender wheels.
The other (colour code blue and yellow) is still unplugged, here later the back up light will be plugged in.





Because with the Max Grey tender the front end sill is part of the shell, so i have to create this solution. This enables me later to demount loco and tender witout the need for soldering. This will be necessary when the loco will be painted or for maintenance purposes. The connector can be slided into the tender to hide it.






That is the connection between loco an tender looks from underneath. A thread was cut into the lower portion of the drawbar pin and a nut screwed onto. This makes the handling of loco and connected tender much easier, because the drawbar could not slip off the pin when you put the loco onto the rails.





Here the movable diaphragm is still missing. The prototype had one and the model should get one.





Everything straight?


Cheers Lutz

Edit: misspelling, syntax

[modelsof1900]

Lutz,
very solide work! I hope for full success without problems!

[Schraddel]

Back from the hollydays it is time to continue this thread.





A trio of semi finished D&RGW steamers.



The L-105:

No it does no became an porcupine.
Here the connections of the overfire jets were made. Drilling 0.5mm bores into the massive brass parts took time.





Still in the process of becaming sth.




Also, but the other side. Here the bundle of pipes circumvented it to solder all parts. So the pure press fit has to do it.


Cheers Lutz

[Schraddel]

The next construction site were the flying pumps which were devoid of any plumbings:


Fortunately the pumps were bolted on so they were easily to remove. Lagged pipe was made out of brass wires. Onto a core of 0.5mm wire a layer of 0.3mm soft brass wire was wrapped around.





The method was just the same like making coil springs. I used my lathe, but it works practically exact with an cordless screwdriver. When you have catched the trick each winding will turn exactly beside the other. Because this is soft wire it will stay on the core. But keep the rpm's below your pain level





Next was drilling some bores into the pumps in alarming angles to the surface of the brass pumps. To make it possible to drill in an angled mode, the points were he bores will be were marked with an tiny cherry miller. Thus enables the drill bit to "catch" in an not rectangular angle to the surface. This was necessary to do in several places.
So the plumbing was complemented. The plumbing was made out of brass wires of different diameters, all soldered sloidly together. The grasp safety was here in the fore.





The feedwater heater was also complemented with lagged pipes. I orientated my self on several photos of the prototype were these lagged pipes were clearly visible, but lacked on the Westside model.


Greetings Lutz

[doctorwayne]

Very nicely-done, Lutz.

Wayne

[ngauger]

Wonderful Work!!!

[Schraddel]

These photos are showing my attempts to get the things right:


Here is the relative harmless engineer's side. The sandbox on the pilot deck got a filling lid, this part was primarily intended as a number plate for the smokebox front and redictated by me.





Here a control photo of the firemen's side. The two lagged pipes coming out of the feedwater heater really submerging into the smokebox and reappears again unter the runing board if form of these two thick tubes. On prototype photos these tubes are lagged too.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15330coll22/id/49290/rec/8">http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/si ... 9290/rec/8</a><!-- m -->
And my intention is to "catch" the look of the prototype according the given possiblities of this Westside Imports model. It can't be 100%, but i will make effort to get als close as i can.
The photos shown here helped me.











Note there are some little changes and alterrations.





The whole loco, still a interstage

Cheers Lutz

[Schraddel]

More corrections on the "snake's nest", to which the complex plumbing has developed meanwhile. The smokebox front must be removeable, so you have carefully plan how to mount the plumbings and tubes.
Lifting brackets were made and mounted onto the superheater hatch behind the stack.
The railing around the sandbox was complemented to meet a more prototypical appereance.





The "ears" on the feedwater heater are handles. In this case they were fixed just by mounting them, so no other fixtures like soldering or glueing was necessary.










The excess solder was removed by filing and grinding with an silikone polishing disk fixed in my micro drill. After cleaning the site from superfluous flux, abrasive dust and accumulated dirt it looks alike.
The whistle actual has to be standing upright. But after i rightened it three times and it just leans accidentally again to the stack, i decided to leave it just so as it is. In this lean to stage the whistle is much more out of danger for breaking off.





The long rope pull for the whistle was mounted in this way.

Cheers Lutz

[Schraddel]

Hello,
the 4-8-4 M-68 is still much too light, i got her without the leadweight, so i decided to make my own weight.


But at first SAFETY!
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead</a><!-- m --> Especially the chapter: "Biological and environmental effects"
And:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning</a><!-- m -->

Precise: Lead is poisonous! No eating, no drinking, no smoking while handling lead; wash your hands thoroughly and clean your tools, the model and your workbench painstakely afterwards. And do not allow children get lead into their fingers.



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When my house was fitted with new roof tiles, i kept the old skirting for the chimmneys made out of lead sheet. So the lead i used here is about 100 years old. The sheets are app. 1mm thickness.
The first step to form a cylindrical weight is to cut a suitable piece which can be rolled into a cylindrical form. To get a starting point bend one edge as shown. Here i took the help of pliers and the belief of soft hammer blows.





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With the aid of the pliers you can the roll the sheet. When it reached a certain diameter you will be able to do that with your fingers alone. Roll until you have reached the diameter which will just fit into the boiler. Hammer not so straight ends, lead is soft so it can be easily done.
At the rear point the cylinder was slightly flattened with several hammer strokes to get clear of the gearbox.
Here the cylindrical part of the weight was secured with a woodscrew.




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There a still space for additional lead besides the narrow gear box. Here I preferred the method of zig-zagging the sheet to get a similar "D" shaped part out of a strip of sheet.





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The parts of the weight were fixed with plenty of Pattex glue, a contact adhesive based on Neoprene. Let it stink out and hardening.
When it is all dried and hardened, clean the shell with warm water and soap. Your hands, the used tools and the workbench too! The cardboard, which i used here as pad, was disposed afterwards.

When this work was done the 4-8-4 M-68's weight (loco alone without tender) has tipped the scale at 830g (app. 29.3oz).


Cheers Lutz

[Schraddel]

Hello,

when all the lead was inside the 4-8-4 M-68 this loco was pretty heavy, about 800g. When handling it, as a matter of course you grip it on the edges of the running boards, i saw the running boards buckling when the loco was lifted. :o



So i decided to make additional fixings for them by drilling into the boiler shell and solder short pieces of brass wire into the bores and onto the running boards.
But in this case this loco has a radiator for the compressed air and this radiator impeded acess to the boiler under the running boards. So i had to do the nasty thing and install this reinforcements above the running boards.



But ...


No that is not the camera lens fooling you with distortion. That running board is really buckling.





So i had to fix it, don't ask me what i said at the same time when i was doing that :wait:





On the other loco, the 4-6-6-4 L-105 i found this. Here a piece of he additional lead weights ha shifted during the glus was hardening. So it could perfom lateral pressure onto the gearbox and as a result the wheel on one side was lifted up in the air. When i removed the excess material, all the wheels come back onto contact with the railheads.





In this stage the work on these two locos was interupted for several weeks, because other projects got preferential treatments.
But this was last year. So this thread will not be interrupted for several weeks.

Cheers Lutz

[sailormatlac]

Having completed reading all Don McQueen "Canadian National Steam!" extensive book series, I'm now in better disposition to appreciate the mechanical and technical aspects of your chirurgical work.

Your pipe lagging trick is really interesting! At 29 oz. that locomotive's gonna pull down a wall!

Continue your excellent and inspiring work!

Matt

[Schraddel]

Matt,

the pulling power was not yet tested. Can't say what she will pulling at least, but i think it will be enough.

There was still the problem with the gap between loco and tender.

Finally i got a piece of brass casting from PSC which is sold out long ago and for this it can be called "antique" rightly. This brass casting is the diaphragm head for a diaphraghm and to be mounted onto the tender front end. It is intended for an other loco type. But i was lucky to get this part. So let's see what i can do with it.
This is the Max Grey tender for the 4-8-4 M-68. The first step was removing of the tunnel parts which came with this tender. They were too short and too wide to fit into the collar of the diaphragm head, so they had to be gone.

Next was the hunting for black styrene sheet. Eventually i got some sheets with 0.5mm thickness; 0.3mm would be better, but was not available.





Onto the front end of the diaphragm head and the rear end of the loco cab each a layer of black styrene sheet was glued. And that is the reason for the black coloured styrene sheet. There will be relative movements between loco an tender while running, ever. Any painting, varnishing or other contivance will not last very long. Any paintings or coatings will be rubbed off when the two plates between loco and tender move and grind on each other and soon the white coloured styrene will shine thru.
But when the styrene is solid coloured that does'nt matter. Black is black.
Also i built a new tunnel on the tender front out of this black strene sheets.






The trick is, the tunnel has no paralell side walls, instead it is tapering to the front end. Thus enables the diaphraghm head to take angled movement without sticking or jamming.






A first static putting together to see if it will fit.






Taking some static simulation of possible movements.






O.k. this is the maximum possible angle between loco an tender. Till to this angle the diaphragm will have a closed appereance. I think this will be more than enough, we are model railroaders and this is real model railroading and not German toy train stuff.


Cheers Lutz

[Schraddel]

Hello,

the next thing was to make the diaphragm sprung action. O.k. it is very simple to fix a suitable into the tunnel, but ...


The "but" are the guide rods for the diaphragm. They start as sections of 0.8mm brass rods. On one end M1.2 threads were cutted.





Because this head primarily was made for anothe type of tender, i could not use the original fixing points moulded on. I had to set the upper fixtures somewhat lower. Otherwise they were above the level of the tender deck.
And the guiding rods went right into the coal bunker. That does not really matter, because there will be later a false bottom fixed into for not coaling the whole bunker but only the upper portion.





That was the first try. The ends of the rods were bent in an 90° angle an flush counter-sunk into the 0.5mm strene sheet. To became flush the angled portion was filled down.
The bores had eventually to be enlarged up to 1.5mm to allow enough play for the diaphragm head can take angled action to create a continuosly closed apperance.





It seemed to work.





But at least it was clearly a failure.
The rods did'nt stay in their sunk holes.

Let's think again :ugeek:

Cheers Lutz

[doctorwayne]

The rods didn't stay in their sunk holes.

If possible, remove the rods and the black plastic sheet, then solder the rods to the brass sheet through which they pass - you may have to remove or modify the bent-over ends. After doing so, you can then cement the black plastic back in place.

Wayne