Northern Pacific (NP) W-5 Mikado Project

[Palouse51]

Max, new guy here. It was your W5 and the SP&S steam build you did earlier that prompted me to finally sign up to The Railwire.  Keep 'em coming.

Mark C.

[x600]

Thanks, Max, for your ante.
It's a good bet that I will Never build a W-5, but there was a few techniques and tools that you use that have encouraged me to attack some of the
problems I was having on a DL&W M-1 "Lackawanna" project that has moved on and off my work bench for some time now.
It's back on now!
Oh and I enjoyed the music while watching the video.

Greg O.
mrns.org

[VonRyan]

Another work of art!
Max I just love how you turn even a kit-building project into a sculpture project.

[mmagliaro]

Another work of art!
Max I just love how you turn even a kit-building project into a sculpture project.

Thank you VERY much, Cody (and everyone).
Important point about what Cody said, however:

As I go along on this project, I am doing a lot of things that are not strictly "necessary" to build this thing just
as the kit, and you will still get a really nice engine if you do it that way.  For example:
- shaving off the sanding lines, and making the working Z micro coupler in the pilot are certainly not essentials and the
  engine would look great anyway.
- Soldering the pewter metal could be tricky, but you could build the whole thing with 2-part epoxy and will still work.
- Right now, for example, I am working on the pipe hangers that go along the walkways to hold all the cooling lines.
  The W-5 parts includea set of pre-made etched brass cooling lines that can be glued on as one-piece assemblies,
  which is certainly far easier than attaching tiny pipe hangers and running .008" wire through them.   But alas,
  those etched parts will yield flat cooling lines, where as the separate hangers with round wire would look better,
  so I'm going to go to the extra trouble to do that.

The point is, I really want people to especially take note of all the nice ready-made parts that are in the W-5
parts set, and realize that you can make this engine strictly by using those parts and following my photos as a guide.

Sure, I'm pushing myself to add scratchbuilt "niceties", but that isn't strictly necessary to have success with this.

When this is all said and done, if you decide you want to build a W-5, don't let all the scratchbuilding dissuade you
when I take a vote of how many people are really interested in building one of these.

[Chris333]

Yes it is good stuff like this that would get me to buy an N scale magazine. Most articles would say "and then I glued on the pump" where you go into detail about how you built a jig to line it up, tacked it with Goo, drilled and pinned it, then set it with epoxy. Little stuff like that is what I love to read.

You and Ron could have a race to see who can include the most details    Not details on the model, but details on how to build the model!

[mmagliaro]

Yes it is good stuff like this that would get me to buy an N scale magazine. Most articles would say "and then I glued on the pump" where you go into detail about how you built a jig to line it up, tacked it with Goo, drilled and pinned it, then set it with epoxy. Little stuff like that is what I love to read.

You and Ron could have a race to see who can include the most details    Not details on the model, but details on how to build the model!

Except that if you watch how I work on a project (and I believe we can all say this of Ron as well), it is never a
"race."   

All kidding aside, I appreciate your sentiments, Chris. 
   
[tangent]
One of the things that I so love about Railroad Model Craftsman magazine is that they have always been one of the few (probably the only) magazines that are willing to devote the page and photo space to a complex building project that is really required to
express it in detail.  I sincerely hope they don't lose that characteristic in their newly revived form.
[/end_tangent]

[bbussey]

NSR would give you the photo and copy space over multiple issues for such a project.

[mmagliaro]

Hi everyone.

Here now, the next installment.  This is a large one with a lot of photos. 
In this segment, I cover all the piping on the left and right sides of the engine.

The front/pilot area will come later.

This has been a grueling few weeks.  Quite a few of these pipes took 2 or 3 hours' work to make and install one single pipe.
It is simply a matter of measure, bend, test, rebend, fix, ... and then sometimes, break, cut, throw-out, and make again.
There are simply a ton of pipes on this particular version of a Northern Pacific W-5.  (But I'm mighty excited looking
at it when they are all on there!)

And as always, the cooling line assemblies do come as single units on an etched fret in the W-5 kit.  You do not have to make
your own cooling lines by hand the way I am showing here.

The rest of the piping can be made from various sizes of wire, or omitted as you choose.

[Chris333]

Beautiful   

Any ideas what those lines are that come off the sand dome?

[peteski]

WOW!  Holly crap!  Amazing!

[lock4244]

Phenomenal work Max... the detailing is incredible! Wow, just wow!

[Cajonpassfan]

Max, truly amazing, thanks for sharing and documenting this for the rest of us.
It's the small details and scale size piping that give N scale steam a sense of mass and proportion otherwise lacking and give the model "life"! I'm drooling here...wow!

I'm also learning. This build illustrates how a variety of materials, each with its own qualities and challenges, can be used together optimally to make a piece of art like this. Pewter boiler, resin tender, variety of piping materials. Solder, epoxy, ACC. Whatever works best in a given application?..

About your piping, would you mind explaining your thinking when to use brass vs. phosphor bronze? And do you find the phosphor bronze tough enough? I'm thinking particularly of the raised .008 handrails above the cylinders....

Can't wait for the next installment of "Taking it to the Max"!
Regards, Otto K.

[mmagliaro]

Thanks, guys!   I do admit, I just did this thing with my head down, one foot in front of the other, but when they were all on there
and I took the photos at the end I thought, "Hey, this thing is starting to really look like a steam engine now."

Chris, I have no idea what those little extra raised lines are to the sand dome.   My philosophy is, I study the prototype photos,
and photos of large-scale brass versions of the engine, and if I can see a line, I put it on.  I don't even know what half of the
lines are or exactly where they go.  I am just trying to model what you can see.

Otto:
Those front handrails on the walkways are always going to be trouble.  I broke their joints more than once while working on this, and if I had it to do over, I would wait until the end to do those.  Even when soldering the joints, the fact is that pewter is soft, so a soldered joint isn't as robust as it would be on a brass-to-brass joint.  The pewter can easily bend at the joint, so if you bend it a few times, the pewter fatigues and lets the solder go.  But it is still a lot more durable than glue, or even epoxy.
I will just have to be careful.  Ideally, those front handrails would be Delrin, so they would be super-flexible, and would just bend when leaned on, and would spring right back, without stressing the glue attachments.   But I don't really have any such thing as .008" or .010" inch Delrin "rod".

As for why I choose brass vs phosphor bronze, here's how I decide.
For most piping that is close to the boiler, and especially for heavier lines or lines with a lot of bends, I use brass because
it is easier to bend and form, and have it stay put.  It isn't springy like phosphor bronze, so it doesn't fight you as much.
It is soft. 

But for piping that is going to be hanging out in free air more, brass isn't a good choice because if you bump it or squeeze it,
it will bend out of shape and it won't spring back.  Hence, the handrails and the cooling lines are phosphor bronze because they
have to be flexible, yet spring back into position if you handle them or press on them accidentally.  Those tiny lines Chris referred to
at the sand domes are phosphor bronze because they arch up off the boiler a little.

Sometimes I choose purely based on the convenience of the sizes the material comes in.  Those lines that run under the cab through
the hangers, below the firebox, would be better if they were phosphor bronze because they are hanging "out there".  But I could
get sizes I liked better in brass.  They are a little heavier, they do have 3 supports over a short distance, and they are in a spot where I am not likely to wreck them, so even though they are brass, I'm not too worried.

The guitar string pipes are by far the hardest to work with.  They are hard to bend and you have to fight with that wound layer on them, but they have "the look", so I put up with it.   I find that I can touch the ends of them with a Dremel disk and it will fling off the wound layer, leaving just the thin core wire at the tip, which can then be more easily be inserted into a small hole for mounting.

[superturbine]

Looks awesome Max!

[Lemosteam]

You take each model to a new level Max!  Outstanding.  I was feeling you pain with each new added wire....