Copper State Railway SD40-2 progress report

[Kentuckian]

John C., not to drift the thread, but if you're doing boards for GP 7's, I'd like to be in.

C&O in Eastern KY.

[jdcolombo]

John C., not to drift the thread, but if you're doing boards for GP 7's, I'd like to be in.

C&O in Eastern KY.

Understand that this discussion of boards is NOT about a full-fledged sound decoder board.  It is simply about a board with traces and perhaps dropping resistors to help wire the motor, actual sound decoder, speaker and front/rear LED's.  You'd still have to buy a separate sound decoder, SMT led's to light the front and rear lights, speaker, etc. and find room to mount all this stuff.

A full fledged sound decoder board by LokSound would be terrific, but that isn't happening, at least any time soon.  One might hope that whatever decoder board they develop for the Atlas S-2 could be "generalized" into a smaller wired decoder or drop-in board that would fit a number of hood diesels, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.

John C.

[6axlepwr]

So I received my printed parts today. I really like them. The speed recorders are SO nice and the printing is very crisp.

First up is the buffer plate. The photo really does not do it justice. It really does look better than what the picture shows. You will see this when I get real aint on it. Currently it just has a transparent gray paint on it, but it is too cold in the garage right now for proper painting. I had to put a light coat of paint on it though to make sure there was no seam after glueing it in place. After installation, I used gap filling CA and ran a bead along the seam between the pilot plate and the buffer plate. I let it fully cure and then sliced it clean. Once painted, there will be NO visible lines and the buffer plate will look as if it is cast in place. The LE coupler fits very nicely in place and it is centered on a MT coupler height gauge. Currently I have a 0.030" styrene pin holding the coupler in place.

One thing I noticed about the LE couplers is that they have a droop to them. It is fixable by forcefully bending the shank in the opposite direction. Once that is done, they set well and in line with the coupler gauge.

With the buffer plate in place, I can now finish detailing the pilot plates.



Next is the speed recorder. I have seen this speed recorder on more units than any other type. So this is the one I produced first. I am super pleased with how this part turned out. I gave it a light coat of gray primer otherwise you would not be able to really see it all that well. This part I have been wanting to get tested printed for a while. You can't really see them, but the sending unit actually has little bolt heads around the perimeter of the circle. You can see the ones easily on the mounting flange. In the end with the cable coming out, there is a dimple for drilling. I used a 0.0073" diameter drill to drill it deper for the magnet wire. The speed recorder flange is 0.004" brass half etched to produce the bolt heads. There is a 0.020" diameter hole through it for the speed recorder unit pin to pass through.

I only asked for 12 of the spped recorder units to be made, but the shop made me like 50 of them. I am going to make a couple trees of them and send them to my son in law and have him cast them in metal to be used for masters. I was thinking of sending them off to have a bunch of them cast in white metal. The printed parts are VERY dilicate. I think I will do the same with the buffer plate. Get a couple more made and send them to my son in law to make metal masters. Then I can cast them in resin.



Overall, I am really happy with the results. As soon as it warms up (we are having a cold speel here in North Carolina now) I can get the trucks, underframe and fuel tank painted and weathered and then assembled on the chassis. In the mean time, I will work on the pilot plates and then the cab. The next part to be printed is the cab vent for the side of the cab.

[ednadolski]

The buffer plates look great!   If you are going to be casting any, sign me up for some!      Love the speed recorders and steps too! 

On the pilot itself, are you going to be filing or doing anything else to thin it out?  Might just be me, but it's looking somewhat thicker than prototype, however I am not sure what the correct dimension is.

On the LE couplers, you also might want to lightly file the parting lines, I've found that they can sometimes be persistently visible even after painting.

Ed

[6axlepwr]

I will not do anyhting withthe pilot plate thickness. It is one of those things I can live with because when the model is done with all the details, everything blends well together. HO scale pilot plates are way to thick as well and I do nto do anything abou tthem either. Photos will always over emphesize things such as "Does this photo make me look fat?" 

I do not have my notes in front of me, but I think an SD pilot plate is 1-1/4" or 1-1/2" thick and a GP I think is 3/4" thick.

[6axlepwr]

Today I finished the front pilot plate. I hate working on pilots. There is so much going on, the parts are not to scale and you have to stuff it all in there and get it to look proportianate. For this one, the part I hated the most was relocating the recess for the train line hose. You cannot see it in the photos. But it is relocated closer to the buffer plate.

The MU hoses and trainline hose is by Miniatures by Eric. I would much rather have used something like what Sunrise Enterprises had. I liked those a lot, but they are not available. I think the next best is the Miniatures by Eric part. I need to order a mess of those. I use a fine grit diamond file to clean them up. The MU hoses are not glued in yet. They will not be until the paint is done because the plow is not glued on yet either and with all the tight spots around the plow, it would be a real PITA to paint it all in place. Once the paint is done, I will glue it all in place. The plow is the stock Kato plow. I trimmed off the MU hoses and cut open the MU pass through. The plow grab irons are 0.006" brass wire. The coupler lift bar is the one that I showed in a previos photo update. I removed it from the test sheet and placed it on this model.



Time to move on and build the rear pilot. BUT, I need to design some more photo etch. It seams like it is taking me a long time to get this model done. It really is not though.  If it was not for designing new parts and having to wait for them to be made, this model would be done already. If I had the parts in hand, it would take me about two weeks to complete the model. OK, maybe three.

[GaryHinshaw]

Beautiful work Brian.  I love the stair treads; I tried that once on a loco and I was disappointed that the open tread was almost invisible when the loco was on the layout.  But your example is prompting me to try this detail again on future projects.   I have to say those MU hoses kind of detract from the rest of the fine detail, but maybe it will look better when painted.  Keep up the great work!

-Gary

P.S. What are your plans for the handrails?

[wmcbride]

Beautiful workmanship! It's even more impressive that it's N scale.

[6axlepwr]

Gary,

I have no other option for the MU hoses. If there were enough Sunrise Enterprises hoses left in the world to complete my roster so it would look uniform, I would use them. As it is, I only have two packs. Not enough for what I want to build. The BLMA ones are to flat looking. Nice effort, but they just do not do it for me. The only other option is annealed brass wire with the ends flattened and shaped for a glad hand. The glad hand does not look all that well.

The handrails ae going ot stay Kato. I want to finish these models and if I start tearing everything up, I will not finish them. They will look just fine when I am done with them. The detail painting and weathering that will be done on them will come across well.

[6axlepwr]

Another addition to the progress report. Over the weekend I nearly finished the rear pilot plate. All the main items are in, but waiting on finalizing some photo etch so I can get it sent in. One of the items will finish the rear pilot plate. So while I am waiting to do that, I started work on the cab roof and finished it tonight. I did not care much for the Kato antenna stands so last week I ordered a couple packs of the BLMA stands from MB Klein along with a Wheels of Time boxcar. Recieved them on Monday put the boxcar in 91% isopropyl for paint stripping and proceeded to build the antenna stands. I like them. The design is good and they went together well. The conduit for the antenna is 0.006" brass wire. The brackets are Sunrise Enterprises lift rings. The conduit routing is done per photos I had of the unit I am using for reference. I drilled two 0.0083" holes through the small stand to pass the conduit through.



I am starting to run out of things to work on. It is sit around and wait time now. Wait for parts to be built. I guess I could start on the second unit. It is too cold to do any painting so I guess it IS time to get the second unit started. OH wait, I still have to bend grab irons again. I'll get that done.

Tonight I also cast the HO scale Q-exhaust hatch in Hydrospan 400. Now I have to wait until the shrinking is done. I cast a number of them using differing ratios of water so I can see which combination shrinks to the correct size.

[ednadolski]

That's looking really good, Brian.   Hard to tell from the picture that it is N scale -- looks more like HO or even O.

Have you made a jig for bending grabirons?   I usually do them by hand, but that gets tedious.

Ed

[6axlepwr]

No, I do not have a special jig. I have a special way of doing them and they turn out the same all the time. Takes me about a half an hour to do all of them. Although I drag it on a bit sometimes. This model I used 0.008" wire. I should have used 0.006". The rest of my models wil be 0.006".

Let me see if I can explain. This might not come across all that well. There are two parts that I will refer too. The support leg and the rung. The support leg is the part the goes into the side of the locomotive. The rung is the part that you grab or step on. The drop is 0.015".

1. Make an "L" bend in a piece of wire. One side is the rung and the other if the support leg.
2. Stick the rung end into the flat nose pliers.
3. Measure from the nose of the pliers to the L bend. Make sure it is exactly the dimension you want the rung to be.
4. Make the next support leg bend.
5. Square this all up. Now you should have a "U" shape that will lay flat.
6. Stick a piece of 0.015"  strip styrene across the jaws of a small vise. Make the styrene slightly narrower than the inside of the "U" shaped wire.
7. Slip the "U" shaped wire over the strip styrene.
8. Close the vise in the wire making sure it is flat against the strip styrene.
9. Pull the strip styrene out.
10. Use a small block of styrene or something rigid and press it up against the wire and bend it over flat to the top of the vise.
11. Pull the drop grab out and square it up.
12. Done. Move on to the next one and do the same.

[primavw]

No, I do not have a special jig. I have a special way of doing them and they turn out the same all the time. Takes me about a half an hour to do all of them. Although I drag it on a bit sometimes. This model I used 0.008" wire. I should have used 0.006". The rest of my models wil be 0.006".

Let me see if I can explain. This might not come across all that well. There are two parts that I will refer too. The support leg and the rung. The support leg is the part the goes into the side of the locomotive. The rung is the part that you grab or step on. The drop is 0.015".

1. Make an "L" bend in a piece of wire. One side is the rung and the other if the support leg.
2. Stick the rung end into the flat nose pliers.
3. Measure from the nose of the pliers to the L bend. Make sure it is exactly the dimension you want the rung to be.
4. Make the next support leg bend.
5. Square this all up. Now you should have a "U" shape that will lay flat.
6. Stick a piece of 0.015"  strip styrene across the jaws of a small vise. Make the styrene slightly narrower than the inside of the "U" shaped wire.
7. Slip the "U" shaped wire over the strip styrene.
8. Close the vise in the wire making sure it is flat against the strip styrene.
9. Pull the strip styrene out.
10. Use a small block of styrene or something rigid and press it up against the wire and bend it over flat to the top of the vise.
11. Pull the drop grab out and square it up.
12. Done. Move on to the next one and do the same.

I have only made flat grab irons with a piece of styrene with holes drilled in it. I may have to use this method to make my own drop grabs now! Sorry BLMA!

[ednadolski]

Brian, that sounds pretty similar to what I do.   I just use a wide-jaw, flat pliers instead of a vice.  I also eyeball the drop, but the .015" strip sounds like a better way to get consistency.

I sometimes include one additional step at the end:  after finishing a grabiron, I promptly drop it into the carpet where no one will ever find it again. I sometimes think I must have left more grabirons in the rug than I've put onto the models... 

Ed

[6axlepwr]

It has been a while since my last update. I have been spending my evenings designing photo etch for this project and some future projects. Get it all done on one sheet. Plus some test stuff. I was going through plastic modeling withdrawal so I took a break from photo etch design and decided to dig out some fan assemblies I had made a while back and build the masters.

These parts were hand made or rather machined out of ABS. I also have some 3D printed parts, but the machined parts look a whole lot better than the printed parts. Even though I had the printed parts done on a super fine resolution machine, they still came out with to many visible print lines. I sort of like how these ones turned out. The shape looks much better than what is on the model. These would be sweet as injection molded parts.

I still have to get the fan blades etched. The fan blades you see in the photo were for a different test and do not fit these fan housings. The fan hubs are 3D printed. The detail on the hubs that were machined was to heavy looking. The 3D printed hubs are more subtle and have the correct shape. The fan blades will sandwich between the hub and motor assembly under the hub.

You will notice in the rear fan housing that I cored it out and put just a fan motor and support. I was looking at the pssibility of just casting the supprt assembly and gluing it inside the housing. I like the look of the machined parts better though.



Can anyone guess what that yellowish looking item is in the background of this photo. I'll give you a clue "Q". It is almost to size. I am casting another series of them with more water to shrink smaller. The shrinking is almost there though. I'll discuss this though when I gt to it.

I need to design the photo etch fo the fan grills too, but I have to wait till I get them cast so when they come back I can measure the exact size. With this type of fan assembly, I can choose different style grills. I am going to have the grills done in either 0.004" S.S. or possibly 0.002" S.S to get the fine look to them. I have an idea too on how to do the Q-fans and have them domed and not flat. It will be a tedious assembly though.



I would really like your opinion on these fans. Be brutal if you have to. I am still a bit on the fence with these. I am also just thinking of leaving what is cast in place and not bothering with the fans.