The Western Maryland in Free-moN Modules

[amato1969]

Heck yea, looks great!

[Pomperaugrr]

Looks great.  I love that last photo with the tunnel and telltale.

[PiperguyUMD]

Moving right along, got a batch of 55 ton U-Channel hoppers through the paint booth this afternoon. Decaling these suckers is tedious to say the least, but it’s something I can do a little at a time once my schedule picks up for the holidays.

[PiperguyUMD]

I was sorting through some photos today and found about a dozen that documented the truck dump build that I never shared. These are really my first efforts into scratch building, if anyone has any feedback, I'm all ears!

After painting the frame and hopper, I wanted to build a pad for the whole assembly to sit on. This would also allow me to build the retaining wall behind the loader at the work bench. I used some scrap styrene, and eventually trimmed the footprint down to fit the scene.
 


Will the scrap styrene was out, I cobbled together a shoot that channels the coal from the hopper doors to the conveyor. This got a coat of spray bomb flat black.


With the model in hand, I stained a pair of scale 4"x4" and glued it to the front of the hopper, this would be the frame that supports the walkway roof.


Happy with the fit of all of this, I made the retaining wall by gluing scale 8"x8"s the the back wall of the pad. Next I trimmed down the pad and drilled holes to plant the vertical posts that support the various walkways





Next I whipped up some of the most noticeable pieces of the walkways. All of my previous scratch building efforts have closely followed blue prints. It was actually difficult for me to wing it on the walkways! While I was at it, I found some HO scale MU receptacles in the junk drawer which did a great job standing in as the electrical panel. Once that was attached, I added the lean-to roof.



After building the shelter over the conveyor by eyeballing and CAing scale lumber together, it dawned on me that this thing is going to be fragile!. Before going too much further, I glued the cribbing in place and also put down a base coat of spilled coal, as this may well be inaccessible once everything is in place.



Next up was the corrugated metal siding. This was by far the most tedious part of this entire project. Using the Brunel Models Corrugated Iron maker tool, I made the sheets of siding from strips of aluminum foil. It definitely requires a touch - It's very easy to puncture the foil when pressing the sheet. I did this before adding the walkways, but in hindsight, I'd probably do it last, as its very easy to flatten out or bend the corrugated sheets. I glued the siding to the frame (and each other to keep them from lifting up!) using CA. These shots also show off some of the framing that surrounds the conveyor.





I did the siding in three separate sittings, but once it was done, I hit it with some Tester's Dulcoat and moved on to the walkways. This was intimidating at first, but I realized that many of the horizontal supports extended into the hillside, and therefore didn't have to be measured exactly.



Happy with all of this, I planted the whole piece on the module using sculptamold. Once the sculptamold was set, I tied everything in with the base coats of ground cover.







On to the next one! 

[wm3798]

Okay.  Talk to me about these passenger cars...  Custom decals?  Or did someone release them and I missed it?

[PiperguyUMD]

@wm3798 Got them from John Frantz at Mount Vernon Shops. He's done them in HO and was kind enough to rescale them and do a run in N. The spacing on the road name is off for baggage cars, but beggars can't be choosers. Going a letter at a time can backfire big time, but I got lucky on RPO 183.

[PiperguyUMD]

Did a recon mission this afternoon to the 4th canal crossing in preparation for the next module. Beautiful country out here!

[wm3798]

How long are you in the neighborhood?
I'll be back up to my place in Great Cacapon on Friday.  And the Roundhouse module is there...
In that picture, you're about 25 minutes from my house.
Lee

[S Class]

I tried emailing Brunel more than a year ago to get that rig, never got a response.  Did you get it state-side, or have better luck or have better luck communicating with the Aussies?

I'd recommend trying again if you are still after it, they are in Melbourne and you probably tried contacting right in the middle of the bad lockdown period.

[freedj]

Do you find your module structure design to be rigid enough?  It looks like the facia is an important part of keeping it flat, but it doesn’t look like there is much to resist twisting.  I am going to be building out a few new sections and I really like your minimal approach.

[PiperguyUMD]

@freedj The foam is laminated to a 1/2” plywood frame, with faceplates made out of 3/4” ply. The fascia isn’t structural at all. I haven’t had much trouble with twisting, however I have noticed some cupping on the straight modules. I’ll be reinforcing these with some strips of 1/2” ply along the edges as I make the next few modules. I’ll post a pic of the cross section of the 4th Canal Crossing module this weekend. For better or worse it demonstrates everything described in this post!

[PiperguyUMD]

Wow! Busy week! 25 private students plus rehearsals and performances of the sound track to one of the Harry Potter movies.

At any rate, here are the photos of the rudimentary 4th Canal Crossing module. The cupping is difficult to see but it is there, as the faceplates have a tiny gap at the top when joined to the next module. Hopefully some strips of plywood along the edges will take care of that.



Here you can see the 1/2" plywood frame and how it ties into the faceplate box.

[PiperguyUMD]

Help me get over it! I need to build a bridge

My module project for the spring will be the 4th C&O Canal Crossing. After visiting the location last month, I feel like I have a good grasp of the lay of the land and would like to get rolling. Obviously the center piece is the 135' Baltimore Truss bridge that spans the C&O canal. Of all the cool bridges on the WM, I chose this one because I felt I could build it to scale without it overwhelming an 18"x48" module. A google search yielded some dimensional drawings that I'm sure will be invaluable in the endeavor.







I picked up a CV bridge kit last year to explore kit bashing, but by the time I complete the major surgery, I think I might be better off cannibalizing some parts and building the rest on my own. This kits seems to have mass in all the wrong places to accurately represent this bridge. For example, the stringers under the rail - 2'1" tall on the prototype, 4'2" on the CV kit. My first thought was 3d printing, but after a quick test print with two 135' girders, I have serious doubts that using 3d printed parts will be strong enough for the main structural components. Not to mention I had serious warping issues on the first go!





So honestly, I'm thinking about a good ole' fashion styrene bash using a few of the CV parts, some Gold Medal Model details and lots of styrene. Starting with the four 135' stringers on the bottom. I think I could make these with two Evergreen Styrene channels (264 is basically spot on) joined back to back with GMM bridge bracing. I am a little concerned about strength though. The styrene channel is like spaghetti! Would the previously mentioned beam be rigid enough not to sag over 10"? Would four of them be enough to support the structure and a train?



I think I have some ideas about how to make this work, but I'd welcome any feedback from anyone who's been down this road before!

[garethashenden]

I bashed the CV bridge into a skew Baltimore Truss. It came out ok, but its definitely not right in some places. The hardest part of the actual assembly was getting the GMM bracing to stay stuck to the styrene. If I were modelling a prototype bridge I think I'd at least experiment with 3d printing some of the pieces.

[John]

Could you start with this?

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5528906