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My great friend Adam ( @draskouasshat ) has been bugging me to get this done for awhile now and with the Photon printer, I hope to see if my plan is viable. Being I have a lot of info on the UP type 4-12-2, have some etched drive rods already, and the Kato Mike drivers are correct size, I'll be using it for R&D. I'm in the process of drawing the frame to use the stock Kato mike motor, but will have a extra set of gears to lower the final gear ratio. The first thing I need to do, is see if the resin is capable to withstand the temperature and pressure (375 degrees and 3500 psi for 40 minutes) of using it as a master for vulcanizing a rubber mold for spincasting. So, when the weather gets better and we have a few warm days that I'm able to get out into my shop, I'll give the vulcanizing a try. If it works, then I'll be doing the first castings with lead free britannia metal (what I use cost about $35 a pound). Zamak is a much better choice for price ($3.50 a pound) and weight, but needs to be cast with silicone rubber molds that I'll need to buy. If the resin doesn't work, then I'll have to make a mold of the printed parts with regular silicone and cast the masters with JB Weld and use them as masters for vulcanizing the spincasting molds. So if all of that works, I'll start on the drawings for the 2-10-2 and 2-10-4 Santa Fe type chassis. We need to find a source for the correct drivers. Adam is working on that and if they can't be found, then we have a couple of other ways to get them. Investment castings or Shapeway's 3D printed out of brass. Either method would require the drivers to be plated with nickle as what Max ( @mmagliaro ) did with the loco he built from scratch. Investment castings can be made if we have a set to make a mold with. Or draw them up in CAD and then they could be printed in brass or cast in brass from printed masters. Drive rods will be etched in either nickle or brass. I haven't investigated that far yet. I guess I need to start a thread on this when I start the casting process.
Well, That whole thing is a hot mess.....
Oddly, the Photoshopped "prototype" is a 4-10-10-6, while the model is a 4-12-12-6.Wasn't that 4-12-12-6 one of Stalin's ideas, to follow his 4-14-4? He actually built that one, and it spent most of its "working" life hauling a track repair train, to fix the damage it did to curves and turnouts.http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/russ/russrefr.htmRead all the way to the bottom of the page and you'll find this unrelated bit:" RAILWAY OPERATION IN SOVIET RUSSIAI feel compelled at this point to recount an event which may give some flavour of railway operations in Soviet Russia. In March 1937 a railway accident occurred in Siberia; the details of the event are so far obscure, and may always remain so, but what is known is that 72 railway officials were held responsible and all were executed. As Peter Semmens put it: "One's mind boggles at trying to imagine the circumstances whereby that number of individuals could have actually had a hand in causing an accident."We will, I fear, always suffer from people who think that any aspect of human behaviour can be changed if sufficiently severe punishments are available.Source: "Railway Disasters of the World" by Peter Semmens, pub Patrick Stephens Ltd 1994"
Honestly I'm just disappointed I didn't see any Santa Fe Northerns on the poll... I'd almost kill to have 3751 from Kato and 2926 would be icing on the cake... Hell may even make sense to use FEFs mech both used 80' drivers... Nobody say anything about the Bmann version. It's a train set quality toy... And you know it. Aside from my usual bitching about not seeing a ATSF Northern, I choose DDA40X. The Bachmann one is garbage, sits too high, o scale style pilots *pukes* lack of detail (what can/should I expect it's a diesel from them.) Etc. Hell maybe we'll even get ditchlights... If we get a BB from Kato, fine with me. Had a Athearn Challenger, hated it. Would not stop destroying itself.
I'll be impressed if Kato's BigBoy will be able to handle 100+ cars, just like the real deal. Fingers crossed!
My real long shot request would be for GTW steam, or some CN steam that could be detailed into GTW steam. Lacking that, can anyone suggest a ?-8-? mechanism with 73 inch driver and 19'-6" wheelbase or 77 inch drivers and a 20 foot wheelbase?
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Topic: New Kato Poll (Read 27584 times)
