Okay, so Ed dared us to see who would try to make a 19th century locomotive, specifically the Stephenson "Rocket" from 1829. There is a Shapeways printed boiler and tender available for it.
The very idea of building something so unusual, and so small, and actually being able to make it RUN piqued my interest.
I will use the Shapeways boiler and tender parts, and whatever I can scrounge from anywhere. I'm not out to do a 100% scratch build like the 0-6-0 was. The challenges of making this tiny thing look good and work well are quite enough.
I do have one rule for myself. It MUST propel itself. No putting a motor in a car behind it to push.
So, without further adieu, let the games begin.
First, here's what we're building...
Note how the wheels look a lot like wagon wheels....
Aside from getting a motor and gears small enough for this thing, the other thing that struck me about some of the completed ones I've seen (in N Scale, that is) is that they use commercial wheels that just look all wrong. They have a counterweight on the face, the spoke count and size is all wrong. Now I'm not out to bash anybody who managed to get theirs to run at all. But I wanted to try for better looking wheels.
So I made this:
"Oh no! He's at it again!"
No... I did NOT completely scratch build this thing spoke by spoke. I searched high and low for N scale "wagon wheels" because that's essentially what the loco wheels looked like in 1829 - wooden wagon wheels with an iron rim around them.
I got all manner of plastic, etched brass and other wheels. But they just didn't look good enough, or weren't round enough or strong enough, to be convertable into a working loco driver.
Then I came upon Stony Smith on Shapeways, who has a nice-looking plastic wagon wheel. I asked him if he could change it to N Scale, and he was happy to do so. But when he heard what I was trying to do, he suggesting trying to see if Shapeways would do it as a lost wax brass casting. And they DID IT.
(Unfortunately, the smaller wheels in brass came out with spokes that were too chunky, but the one big driver looked good.)
So that's what my wheel center is made from.
Here is the rest of the story....
What's coming next...
1. I have several different spoked carriage wheels for N Scale coming from Japan that looked promising in the photos. Hopefully, I can adapt those to make the tender wheels and the trailing engine wheelset.
2. I have found some 4mm and 5mm diameter pager/phone vibration coreless motors that
would run for hours without burning up their brushes (and some that happily burned up in an hour, as well! )
And I have a 4mm gearhead coming that I hope to mate to one of those.
To be continued....
