Hi all, I know there are several of these bumpers for sale, but I thought it would be a lot of fun to build them myself.
Does anyone have a drawing of the real thing, or even better, in HO scale?
Even better, if someone has done this already (in HO), could you let me know the material list, I'm thinking of the parts from Plastruct or Evergreen, and how you did it?

Thanks a bunch!

Koos

Koos;

Well not a scale drawing, but here are some really good photos of a Hayes bumper:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hayes_...ndiana.jpg
I have several of the Tomar bumpers that really look great and have purchased some of the Walther's plastic kits, but haven't put one together to see how it looks.

Looks like some plastic I beam and strip material is all you'd need to duplicate one.

Yes indeed, there's not much to them. I was planning to use styrene strips and beams, but I'd like to know which ones to buy to get a reasonable scaled down match.

Koos

FCIN Wrote:Koos;

.... and have purchased some of the Walther's plastic kits, but haven't put one together to see how it looks.

Here's a couple views of the Walthers version:






Most of my industrial sidings get the old standby "pile o' dirt":




Wayne

Great pics Wayne!

Care to measure them up and post a sketch or so with dimensions? I know you can get them quite cheap, Peco has them in packs of two for about $4,- or so, but I just want the fun of building them myself :-)
It gives me something to do when I'm on a business trip and the hotel TV has nothing on once again, or I can't understand a word they're saying :-)
At this point I recon I need at least 10 for planned trackage, but your pic of showing more 'stored' in a yard has given me some inspiration and may need a few more.. ;-)
Koos

I have both the Tomar and Walthers models. For the price and realism, you can't beat the Tomar. I understand wanting to make your own though; I would just buy a Tomar and measure it.
Willie

torikoos Wrote:Care to measure them up and post a sketch or so with dimensions?

Sorry for the delay - probably could have drawn it quicker.











The main members, at the rear, are of a square cross-section, not an "I" or "H" shape.
The kit is comprised of four pieces: the base, the rear members (which includes the outer casting of the actual bumper), an insert for the bumper block, and the round cross-sectional braces. The one shown is cast in black plastic, while some of the other ones were a bright yellow - they all got a coat of rusty black.

Wayne

Wow!
Wayne, you've gone above and beyond expectations, not just a 'sketch', but proper photos with measurements!

I have no exuse now not to build any, except that at present, I am away from home, and have no modeling material with me, hence I'm in forum&research mode right now..... There will be bumpers build, and I will post the results here, but bear with me :-)

Once again , :hey: THANK YOU!!

Koos

Wow! Wayne has indeed gone above and beyond. I would have just said, "Figuring out the measurements is just part of the fun of scratchbuilding. Good Luck."

You're right - now you really have NO excuse. Get crackin'!

Galen

I dont plan on building any of these bumpers but I would like to thank Wayne for his posting of the measurements on the photos.

My main problem is I dont work in 'thou of an inch" like my Grandpa did, Im a metric boy [mostly]. Its my problem and Ill deal with it in my own way, maybe.

The hardest thing I can see about building these bumpers is getting the compound angles of the main beams right, especially for when Koos is working away from home.

Mark

Mr Fixit Wrote:The hardest thing I can see about building these bumpers is getting the compound angles of the main beams right, especially for when Koos is working away from home.

Mark

Yup, that sort of thing is the hardest to do. I'll be doing a lot of trial and error, carefully sanding/filing the beams to an acceptable angle.
Particularly if you're working on hotel room desks, do not have any vise or similar in tow, although I will get a better suction cup type at some point.
All I've got normally is CA glue, X-acto knife, steel ruler, cutting mat, some tweezers, Atlas track saw, a few miniature files, and some sand paper. What I take depends on the project I have tagging along, but these are 'always' there (except this time, I had to leave last minute, and am not carrying anything..... :cry: :cry: :cry:

Koos

Mr Fixit Wrote:My main problem is I dont work in 'thou of an inch" like my Grandpa did, Im a metric boy [mostly]. Its my problem and Ill deal with it in my own way, maybe.

Norway is also metric, but we have calculators that help us go from inches to millimeters or centimeters as needed.

1" = 25.4mm
2.2" = 2.2 x 25.4 mm = 55.8mm (ie 5.5cm)
0.1 x1" = 0.1 x 25.4mm = 2.5mm
0.090 x 1" = 0.09 x 25.4mm = 2.2mm

And so on and so forth.

For rough calculations (just to get a ballpark idea of how big things are), 10 centimeters is about 4" - so something 40" (i.e 10 x 4") long is about 10 x 10 cm = 100 centimeters long, while something 120 centimeters long is 12 x 10cm equals about 12 x 4" = 48".

Smile,
Stein

steinjr Wrote:

Mr Fixit Wrote:My main problem is I dont work in 'thou of an inch" like my Grandpa did, Im a metric boy [mostly]. Its my problem and Ill deal with it in my own way, maybe.

Norway is also metric, but we have calculators that help us go from inches to millimeters or centimeters as needed.

There are also lots of on-line conversion sites. It dawned on me shortly after punching "SUBMIT" that metric equivalents would have been useful to many of our Members. Unfortunately, I added the dimensions using "Picture It! Express", but saved the photos in a format that doesn't allow re-editing, or I would have done so.

Canada is also officially "metric", although our version of it, volume-wise at least, is simply American measurements converted to their metric equivalents. So a quart of oil for my car (1.14litres) first became a litre, then, without notice, dropped to .946 litres - amazingly, equal to a U.S. quart. Of course, there was no change in the price for the smaller container, but that situation now applies to most packaged goods, whether in a box, can or jar, or a drum, and it has little to do with the system of measurement being used. Packaging is being made proportionally smaller (a can of soup, for instance, becomes both shorter and of a lesser diameter - it still "looks" the same, more-or-less.

torikoos Wrote:All I've got normally is CA glue......

Koos, if you're working with styrene, a solvent-type liquid cement will give you a much better bond than CA. I find lacquer thinner works as well as any commercially-available styrene cement and it's a lot cheaper, too. Since I still use lacquer-based paints, I buy it by the gallon (formerly 4.54 litres, now 3.78) , then decant it into smaller containers depending on its intended use. For small projects like the bumpers, an old Testors liquid cement bottle (brush in cap) works well (and you can use a finer brush if the work warrants it), while for larger jobs, like structures, I use a 1" or 2" brush and a wide-mouthed jar for the thinner.

Wayne

Wayne;

I had heard that you Canadians/Canadiens [for the 'French speakers] had a strange system going, but I didnt realise it was that bad. In fact I would describe it as just plain disturbing.

Apparently at this trade school where this guy worked for a while, he had to evaluate the kids work in inches unless he/she lived in the French speaking provinces, then he had to use metric.

I usually refer to feet and inches as imperial, but how do you guys refer to it?

We have the problem here in Australia, that when it comes to nuts and bolts we can easily get imperial sized bolts at hardware stores, but we can also get metric as well, so we have to be careful to use the right size and type. At work we carry both metric and imperial nuts because some bolts are metric and others imperial. Other fasteners are just the metric equivalents of the original imperial sizes and the same goes for timber and steel etc.

No wonder we cant get space craft to meet up if we have such screwed up means of measuring.

Mark

Mark -

In Canada, we're bilingual We use both metric and imperial units. I am never quite sure though whether we refer to US gallons or Imperial gallons when speaking of things like miles per gallon. I think we use the US measure, since our paint now comes in a ~ 3.8 litre can which is roughly the US gallon measured in metric. I never understood the whole dry volume versus liquid volume measures. Because in that case, 1 US dry gallon is about the same as a UK liquid gallon (~4.5 litres).


Andrew