Best Of New Brass EP-2 assembly & Mod clinic

[u18b]

Wow.

I'm so jazzed.

It took a while, but I solved one of the problems I was encountering.

I have a LOT of pictures to edit and get ready, so check back to see when all is updated.

 

[u18b]

Dang.

My Railimages account is about at the limit.

Well, I've only posted 700 pictures to this thread.   

I'll have to find out what my options are.

[Chris333]

Picasa:
https://picasaweb.google.com/ErieChris333

It doesn't suck like Flickr and Photobucket. Mine is 15GB and it says I'm using 8% of that.

[u18b]

I like adding a sill to reduce exposure under the loco....

but I could not go all the way.  I had to get to the screws at the back corner of the cabs.



And the heavens parted, a light fell on my head and I thought..... wait a minute.  Those "sills" are hollow.
I have brass wire designed to fill it.



So I slid the wire all the way down the tube and cut it off with a little excess.



I then measured another piece of brass tube...



Marked it.  And cleaned that much of the wire.



Fit the short tube on the end of the wire and fluxed it. on outside edge.



Soldered the end.



Removed the screw and test fit it.



It was a little loose, so I bent the wire slightly.



I installed the screw in my screw trimming tool.



And filed the head down.



Installed the screw...



And slide the cover piece in.  It actually covered the screw- but was snug.  I was a little nervous since the sill was only superglued.  Time to solder.



Tried to pick out of the way spots.


I left the iron on it too long and a little solder came out the inside.  So I have to file it clean.  I also trimmed the length.



Trial and error fitting got the length right.



I then shaved the top side with a motor tool to make room for the screw.



Repeated the whole process for the other side.  Since these are proprietary, I marked them.

[u18b]

Now, earlier, I said that when I studied numerous photos, I could see no underframe detail.

Well, actually, that is... from the side.

There is ONE detail that you can clearly see in many photos.
There is a big sill under the nose.  You can see it here in this shot where the purple terminates.



So if I've gone this far, I need to complete the look.

I have a couple of obstacles.
I can't block the front screw.
And the steam pipe on the lower side is a little problem.



Turns out a pickup from an Atlas VO-1000 is the same height as the tube at the thin part of the strip.



Trimmed and soldered in place.  Looks a bit odd here, but trust me, when the loco is assembled, you won't even be able to tell.



Reassembled the loco.
Just enough room for the front screw.



Installed the cab screws...


And slid the covers over.
Looks good.



Looks much more natural than before.



When I do the other Cab, I'll post more photos.

[u18b]

Finished the other cab.

Here is a tree-way comparison.

Original 1983 EP-2.
The new one at stock underfame.
The new EP-2 with sills added underneath to close the gap.

[Chris333]

A+ in my book. 

[u18b]

A couple of things to report.

Since I had disassembled the loco getting it ready for painting..... and then I was encouraged to do more....

Thus making an underframe as described above....

I thought it best to re-assemble the loco and test run it.

1.  It did not run as perfectly as I had it before I disassembled it.  Which was a little disappointing, but it helps my expectations.   When I finally finish painting the loco and then do the final re-assembly, I'm thus sure I'll need to fine-tune it once again.

No big deal.  This is not a low friction Kato loco.

2.  I did have some shorts-- mostly when it went to curves.  So this meant that the front truck sideframe support (up top) was touching my new sill.

I figured that was not all bad.

When I look at this photo....


It does honestly look like the loco is low on the noses and high at the cabs.

So... I reassembled the loco moving a white nylon washer I had added.

In this old photo, notice that screw over the front truck.
The order in this photo is -- top down-- 
Screw
White nylon washer
red fiberboard washer
black plastic bushing (unseen)
front truck


I moved the white washer.

So (no photo) the current order is...
Screw
red fiber washer
black plastic bushing
white nylon washer
truck.

Now, what this did was  a. it raised the nose and frame away from the front truck enough that the shorting stopped.  and b. it raised the nose AND lowered the rear just a bit.

The loco looks more balanced now (no photo).

I then cut off the two handrails on the top of the boiler room- per prototype.
There was a rail that ran down one side (red spots) and one that ran crossways (green).


The side (red) was not a problem.  Soldered in good.  Used rail nippers to cut post.  Then filed down remnant.
The crossways part (green) was harder because this rail was NOT soldered as well and I ended up with holes that needed filling.  Instead of using putty, I cleaned the holes, fluxed, and added a little solder with a VERY fine point.  I then filed the excess.

Now, the prototype photo above also shows a missing smoke stack on the boiler room.  But I was REALLY scared to try to remove that piece from this model.  What if the brass roof was not flat, but had a HOLE etched for this piece.  I didn't want to find out, so I left it.


3.  Lastly, I was a little surprised when I test ran the loco that it "bent" around curves more than I thought it would.  You will remember, that I bent the drawbar supports to lessen the space between units.  But based on this top down photo on a curve....

the loco is at the limit and the corners would touch if the curve was any sharper.

So this loco is best run on 11" or plus curves..... which since it is a passenger loco is just fine anyway.




4.  Since the last post, I have spend a great deal of time thinking/planning/studying and tinkering in regard to the wind shields at the windows.

Out of all the etched parts I have (and I have a good many) noting would look just right.  That is not to say that there are no parts "out there" that would work, but only that I have nothing and my two local hobby shops have nothing.

So I am going to pass on this detail.

5.  Bought some primer.  Ready to move to the painting stage.

I now have to go clean up my work space out in the garage.

[u18b]

Well, I got my meg limit raised, so I'll be posting many more pics.

I wanted to give more details on those wind deflectors.

I often use HO scale etched parts for N scale.  You can come up with all kind of creative re-uses if you look.

For example, the large sideview mirrors on the MOW truck actually came from some HO scale part.





I'll post some pics of what I tried on the EP-2 shortly.

[u18b]

So searching through my parts box, the closest thing I had that I could use was an etched grill, Detail Associates, HO scale for a DASH-8 radiator grill.

The original grill is on the left, and trimmed on the right.



Trimmed again.



Trimmed one more time.



Now the mounting pins can be bent down.



But it turns out it was too big.
These would not fit, especially with this paint scheme.
The deflectors have to fit in the gray triangle area by the window.


These were just too big-- even when cutting all the legs off of them.

[Sokramiketes]

BLMA #64

[u18b]

Thanks Mike.

Could someone tell me how many millimeters tall those are?

[u18b]

After a little bit of a pause, I was able to get back to work on the EP-2 project  (I'll finish the Silverliner project when there is another pause in the EP-2 project).

First, I'll be ordering some BLMA deflectors.  If I use them, I will just glue then as surface mount details flat after all the painting and decaling is done.

Second, one last thing I thought about was the placard/herald on the boiler room.



MLW Rd use a big bronze plate for the herald. 
I was thinking, this is a situation where a decal would lay TOO flat and show all the rivets underneath.  That would not look real.

So the solution would appear to be to cut a thin piece of brass and mount it to the wall.

Go I got my decals out.



I photocopied them.
And cut out the red herald off the copy (there is another white decal of letters that you cannot see).  Thus preserving the decal for later use.



Then I had second thoughts.



As you can see in this side-on shot, the herald just fits between color changes/stripes.



Since I'm not prepared to be that accurate at this moment, the herald will have to go on last after the painting.

[u18b]

Finally!  I got to the air erasing stage.
Cleaned my air erasers.  Red one is pasche.  Blue on is from Harbor Freight and is almost an exact copy.



In the past, I have always used baking soda.  I REALLY like how cheap it is.
And every single time it was a disaster.
I use dry air.  And I baked the soda, sifted into a bowl, baked it at about 200+ degrees for a while.

But even still, it would clump.

So this time, while at Harbor Freight, I picked up this container of Aluminium Oxide.
While not real cheap (like soda), it is affordable.  I think this big old bottle was about 3 bucks.



So I totally disassembled the loco.  (glad it is modular!).
But I remembered the last time I assembled it, I had a little trouble.
So this time I clearly marked each piece as to if it was to Cab A or to Cab B.
These are all the A parts.



I finally got both a day off work AND a good dry day.
(we have had terrible rain.  Parts of our area had 100 year levels of flooding).

As you can see, I use bottled Nitrogen, which has no water vapor to condense out.  It is totally dry.
But my line has a trap anyway.
The Al Oxide did a FABULOUS job (I don't think I'll be using baking soda again.).

I used eye protection, mask, and as you can see, it goes EVERYWHERE.
It looked like snow.



Here's all the parts to paint.



Air erasing left a very uniform look across the whole model.



Some have wondered if this is necessary.
For other models, maybe not.

But this model sat on a shelf in Japan for a decade.
So there was over 10 years of oxidation on the surface of the model.
This was the worst in crevices where there was a solder joint.
But the air eraser got it all clean.



In fact, I was kind of surprised at the great level of detail that was hidden under all that black paint on the trucks.



I'd rather use thinner amounts of black paint with a thicker layer of hard wax coating to protect the paint.


Next step will be a bath and then primer.

[spookshow]

OK, I'm starting to drool over here 

Cheers,
-Mark