AO 10 - TranzUnders

DB prattles on:

Back in 2010-13 I made four TranzAlpine AO big window cars (scroll down this ten years and you will find how they were made).

But I never got around to finishing off the underframes. I've pondered this for a long time. Being solid resin, the cars are heavy, derailments are inevitable, so their truss rods can't be too fragile.

Some time ago I purchased some square brass rod from Russell at Trackgang thinking that might be a piece in the puzzle. In the end the solution ended up being the usual blend of realism vs pragmatism.

To add strength, the vertical supports are solid across the car, being solid rectangles of styrene, with small notches in the corners for the truss rods, and larger ones for the existing underframe sills.

Then it was simply a case of folding the brass rod into the right shape, filing an angle in the ends and glueing it on straight.

The it was time for some underdetails. Of course who can remember what they are! Fortunately there is a nice picture on this blog showing what are probably water and toilet retention tanks on one side.

Some leftover slightly oversize wooden dowels from the dollar store were used for those. 

It took some digging around the hard drive to find some pictures of the other side. Most cars had what I assume is an air conditioning radiator and a few boxes on that side:

On the prototype trains, viewing car AG 90 was in the 'middle' of the train, and it looks like the cars 'west' of it all had the tanks on one side (north) and on the east end of the train, the cars were the other way around, with the radiator sides facing north. Here are some pics of both sides of the model:

My 'radiators' are radiator inserts from dash-8 shells cut down the middle and trimmed slightly (ex my DXCs).

And a splash of paint later: 

Not bad for an evening's work. A little weathering and touch ups to the windows and the blue might come next. Maybe more. 

New feet for old vans

DB says:

My FM van dates from the Otaki to Cass days, but still looks as decent as it did then.  The 30 foot van below is newer, so its a nicer model. 

Both have ugly feet.

Holy Rollers, Batman.

Despite these elephantine rims, the van can be dragged through pointwork, but rewheeling it has been on the agenda since it was built. The bogies have always looked quite appropriate, but unfortunately the wheelsets have an odd axle length that I've never found replacements for.

Never fear, for new shoes are now in hand from Dr Kato-san's Orthapedic Bogie Shop. 

Outer brake shoes removed and the top copper tabs and supporting plastic filed down:

The brake pipes/headstocks are a nice idea, but too 'far out' for use on this short van. They might look good under a 44 foot wooden car where the bogie mounts are a little further inboard. One of these Kato couplers will be retained, and a Peco/Rapido/Arnold one added to the other end.

Little angle irons were placed in the bogie sideframe corners (white unpainted styrene on the near one, and painted on the rear one):

When asked whether this was worth the effort, or whether these are likely to survive the first few seconds of operation, the writer was uncharacteristically evasive. 

Note the white plastruct tube in the background above. As these bogies have large mounting holes, this will be a pivot for the bogies to swivel on, and being a tube, will take a small screw easily.

Old mountings removed, holes drilled for the plastruct tube:

Mounted up:

The washer was needed because the screw head was a bit narrow. Adds a few micrograms of low-down weight too.

The Peco coupler, at the end where the white XC wagon is, has been moved further back under the body after this was taken. The Kato knuckle at the back end sticks out a bit far, but will couple to MicroTrains knuckles. Although its unlikely this will be attached to a set of modern coal hoppers.

The end of the UBC cement wagon is visible at right too. A little more white weathering helped hide those rings, but what really made the difference was a coat of  Tamiya Flat Clear. The Dullcote left a semi-shiny surface, whereas the Tamiya made it quite flat, so the ring doesn't catch the light nearly as much.

Work to re-bogie the FM will be similar, with replacement Kinki-eqsue bogies having been purchased a long time ago as part of my TranzAlpine experiment, way back when.

Weight for me! A heavier LC.

 DB applies lightweight thought to a weighty topic...

One of the the things we learned early on in the NZ120 story was that lightweight four wheel wagons don't always play well with a loco's body-mounted couplers. The loco end tends to throw out from the track centreline on tight curves, through crossovers and on other yard pointwork, and take the light four wheeler with it, whether there is any track there or not.

So before I start testing that old coal train around the big curve, I decided to add some preventative weight to the front LC which has a MicroTrains coupler at one end, for connecting the train to the locos. Ideally I want a low centre of gravity so the wagon won't topple over on curves.

A 20mm long section of steel rod was cut (the same stuff used for the CEs recently) with my knock-off Dremel. A matching slot was cut out of the Peco chassis to mount this low down, but not so low that it would be visible.

And a lead slug, which was recently found in the LA which became the yellow depot coal wagon, was squished in some big pliers. A hole was 'drilled' out of the coal load and the flattened slug was glued to the floor.

And then coal was reappplied. 

Nothing to see here, folks.

Re-built rebuilt DG

DB gets all nostalgic:

Recabbed DG 2330 was either the first (perhaps second?) successful NZ120 loco I built. Even though it has a lot of balsa wood, plastic and paper inside, it still stands up pretty well more than thirty years later. 

In about 1992-3 not long after it was built.

It has always had freestanding handrails, near-flush windows, see-through roof fan grille and a decent level of detail, including window wipers (in the early 90s!  - made from single strands of aluminium electrical wire), and '3d' brake hoses. The proportions aren't too bad given that it was built off a recabbed DG plan that Fettler von Amateur and I drew up with pencil and ruler in the mid 80s. 

The Microsoft Paint NZR logo on the cabside was printed out on a work laser printer (new tech back then) with the red flash painted in. It even had a crew, albeit HO scale giants, and the assistant's side window is partially open.

The hand painted numbers were not exactly a highlight, nor the chunky plastruct steps. The horns are probably a bit big. I'm not sure where they came from.

The chassis was an EMD E8 from Kato. The E8 is a long loco, so the Kato chassis had to be shortened. The rear end of the drive shaft was cut off with a hacksaw, and during exhibitions, the sharp end of it ground a circular hole in the DG's plastic back wall which is still there. 

In 2012, when 2376 was built.

By 2012, it has received a new DCC-able Kato PA-1 chassis, some finer steps, a headstock number (thanks MS-Excel!) and had lost its crew, who were still still glued to the old E8 chassis. Not much else changed. It still didn't have glass in the portholes nor much on the back - its never even had a rear headstock.

Fast forward to my thinkings of yesterday, where I thought I might give some of these old models a tidy up.

The numbers would have to go, and I still had some old leftover cabside ones from when I made my DXCs which looked like they may fit. While I was on the go, the paint was touched up in a few places. For example, you can see some superglue haze above the cab steps here, and a brown blob under the middle porthole, and no yellow on the edges of the front headstock, a white chip and some old contact glue residue on the cab roof -  all of these were later sorted out.

I decided to renumber 2330 into 2007 to match my 9mm one.

The handrails by the cab door and cab front corners were painted silver to represent the prototypical chrome ones.  Headlights in the form of MV Lenses were added. A bit of 'support' was added (a chunk of Evergreen H-iron in front of the fuel tank) to stop the engineroom steps getting bent in all the time. 

The crew were rescued from the E8 chassis and returned to DG duty! As this metal chassis is a little taller, they needed to have another slice of torso removed, so they are not much more than driving heads now.

The rear coupler was swapped from a Kadee (which kept lifting up) to the stock Kato plastic one, and this will mate up solidly to the matching one on DG 2376's backside. This ended up being a very time consuming process, as I ended up swapping the whole bogie out for one from another PA-1. And then tried to file a millimetre off the back of the chassis. Then reassemble the whole thing, whereapon I found one of the drive bearings was missing. Then I couldn't get the copper current collectors and DCC board to reassemble..... Then I kept dropping bits on the floor. Then I had to colour-match the bogies. Etc etc. So changing the coupler ended up taking one and a half hours or more.

Note the white hole in the styrene rear end (in the rear door)

The rear end got a partial headstock, a few brake hoses, a step, some MU plugs, and then I went mad and added some handrails. I didn't do the two on the back end of the roof as I didn't want to mess up its weathering. 

You might even see the recab has porthole glass now. Microscale Kristal Klear (not completely dry yet in the pics) was applied after black rubbers were painted in.

These widebody Kato PA-1s are big heavy chassis, so this pair of DGs should have no problem lugging a long four-wheeled coal train about. I still need to change that front headstock number though...

Elmer Lane 30 - Clutter

DB returns...

My field research tells me that my Greymouth platform verandahs have too many bays. 

I visited the train dungeon today for a few hours. A few minutes were spent assembling and installing some clutter along my Depot fence.   

Bits of stripwood, some offcuts of rail, and a nice 30 foot bridge from 3 Foot 6 models. This is rather tasty. 

The real thing: 

Hmmmm, needs some weeds added. 

The rest of the time was spent digging out a few locos. With an upcoming show in Chch, I wouldn't mind taking a few models up to run if that is possible. There are two issues here. Some of the locos look a bit daggy. And I'm not sure if many of them actually run.

The first part is easiest to deal with. So a few handrails and other bits were glued back on and a few paint touchups were done.  The blue DFT's front coupler was reattached and it got some MV lens headlights. My blue DC has never had a rear shunters step, so one was made up and some brake hoses were added at the back end. 

As they were to one of my DXCs. The DXCs also had some handrails added to the rear of the long hood to make the 'in between' look better.  

Some of my locos are probably beyond saving. One of the old DFs built in the early 1990s isn't completely terrible, one is a little less pleasant. The DBR, DA and some of the DCs aren't too scruffy. One of the recabbed DGs is OK but could do with some better numbers. One is really ugly. I need to reassemble one of my DJs that has been in bits for the past 12 years....

There are other items of rolling stock that could be looked at too.For example, I need to put some under-rods below my TranzAlpine big window cars to finish them. There are quite a lot of broken couplers on my container fleet, and I should add some weight to some of the wagons too. My 30 foot van needs to be be rebogied. I should also do a cull of some of my really old ugly cast wagons.

In the next week I'll try to fire up the Digitrax and see what locos I can encourage to move. 

Balls of Cement - URC Sputnik Wagon

 DB says:

I received a care package from 3 Foot 6 models yesterday. 

There are some impressive items within it, and I'm pleased to say that the quality is superb. Lewis mentioned a few months back that he has changed up his processes and the results really show here. No strata! Flat surfaces! Straight edges! No sags! Even the resin seems slightly less brittle and a little more forgiving, unless you drop something onto concrete from a height that is...

But more on that in a moment.

Its been a while since I have 'made something' with wheels, so why not let 3'-6 do most of the work and I'll finish things off. 

A prototype that I've always wanted is a cement wagon or two. There were two main bogie tank styles - these spherical Sputnik URCs, and the UBCs that came with either spherical or flat sided tanks with more conical tops. These are appropriate from the late steam era through until the mid 1990s. 

Here is a URC laid up at Taita in the early 90s.

The 3-6 one, which I believe was designed up by Simon Lister, is a Sputnik type. So that's what I'm making, and handily I have the picture above. There are a few wagons preserved too:  https://www.nzrsr.co.nz - search for URC in class. One has a picture showing the piping on the other side. There is also one UBC of the other shape preserved. David Mac's rolling stock register is a great resource for remembering what older wagons looked like without having to go and see them.

The 3D print quality here is great. Despite these being spherical surfaces, there is no strata at all on this print, the tubs are smooth and completely free of facets, the flat surface of the wagon top is completely perfect. There is not even any warp in the sides or the truss rods, or in the width of the trusses. The only slight blemish is in one of the corners, but its so minor I'm not going to touch it. There is a slight ring around each of the four cement balls (in the top half). I'm not sure if this is intentional from the design or a slight printing defect but I gave them a quick ineffective rub with some fine sandpaper that must have last been used on something yellow.

The four lids were glued on top, as these are printed as separate parts. I needed to open up the holes for these slightly in two of the balls. 

Then I did my usual removal of coupling pockets and shortening the bogie mounting points so the wagon will sit lower.

About this stage I managed to drop the whole thing onto the concrete floor. I can never manage to hit the little carpet mat under me and am finding such fumbles are one of many perils of getting older. 

The terminus of the dropping motion all but snapped the frame in half and removed two of the balls. Bugger. Some glue had it back together in short order. I put some steel wire (my point rodding) under the wagon floor to keep things together and flat.

I then had the clever idea of enlarging the two central holes in the bottom to fit some chunky short steel screws into. This would add some much needed weight to the wagon. I very slowly and carefully drilled these out to the required size, being careful not to damage the truss rod cross braces. This took a while at very slow RPMs. After all that care, I realised I'd need to remove the cross pieces anyway to fit the screw heads. D'oh.

The cross pieces were replaced with some thin styrene strip. The above pic shows the underframe with its removals, additions and repairs.

Then the action moved topside. After a 'first coat' of painting, I added the two platforms between the sets of tanks out of some scribed wood that was lying on my desk, and some ladders which are Marks Model Works CB ladders, some of the most useful things you can buy. I've can used these on many models. If they were a little longer and I was a little smarter, I might have tried shaping them better and making the nice hoopy bits on the top. I could have used some brass wire here. Maybe I will. Nah, that's never going to happen. 

But some .020 Evergreen styrene rod made some pipes on the deck, and along the side that doesn't have the ladders. 

And then it was time for paint and weathering. The base wagon is flat black, and the tops Tamiya Royal Light Grey. Weathering was a little brown wash on the truss rods, and on the top some pale grey Vallejo Game Wash and white Jacquard Pinata Alcohol Ink wash, running from the top down, and concentrating on the top half of the spheres. A little rust was dabbed on in places too. I may go back with the white ink at some stage, but then again its a subtle effect and I will use these on trains at their 'early to mid-life'  - either 1960s steam or behind 1980s DJs. So before they got really scungy.

The wagon was shod with some Kato Japanese 'Taki' tank wagon bogies that were reviewed here a decade or more ago. I used these rather the usual than MicroTrains ones because I will be running this among four-wheeled wagons which have Rapido couplers, as do these bogies. These also have a longer wheelbase and slightly larger wheels than the MT ones.

Sometimes the manufacturers, Kato especially, make spare parts available when they rerun certain models, but usually in limited numbers. I put these bogies on my Hobbysearch Japan wish list quite a while ago, and also some bogies that might suit a 30 foot guards van. When they all briefly showed up as orderable recently, I snagged a few sets and they arrived a couple of days ago. As this is typed, I'm not sure how much they cost.

The final touch, done after these pictures were taken, was to spray a little Dullcote on. The mysterious 'rings' on the top quarter of the tanks show up a bit in the photos, but aren't that noticeable when you're staring at the wagon going by. The Dullcote may help too. The bendiness in the second to last pic is due to the phone wide angle/close up, not any printing problems! 

Other than waiting for things to set this was a pretty quick project, taking about two hours up until the weathering.  

The most tricky job with all these resin bogie wagon prints is getting the bogie mounting points to take screws. I'm not sure what the perfect answer is here as different bogie manufacturers require different sized screws or mounting techniques. Every screw I've tried on a 3D print has trouble biting into the tough resin, even if you enlarge the hole very generously. And sometimes the mounting piece will crack or break off while you are doing this, or you end up damaging your nicely detailed wagon. 

What worked with this URC, on the third attempt at enlarging the holes, was discovering that I own a small 'tap' which scours out a thread inside a drilled hole nicely. Its not quite the same thread pitch/type/size as the small bag of metal bogie holding screws that I've used forever (seriously, they need a straight screwdriver bit if anyone can remember those). But the tap will gently and efficiently remove enough material that the screws seem to find a home reasonably well. I must find a handle for it rather than using pliers. Perhaps it would fit into the handheld pin vice thing I use for small drills. So if you have this issue too, you might consider going to one of the local engineering firms with one of your screws and get the right sized tap. They aren't terribly expensive and will last a lifetime of making 3D bogie wagons up.

Its a cute wagon. Something quite different in a train that's for sure. Highly recommended.

The southern branch of MD will be away over the hills for the next week doing research in the field.  

Greymouth 3 - Rapido Progresso.

 DB speaking fluent Italian there:

Its been a belissimo week here, but the dungeon has been visited on a few cloudy days such as today. These visits have produced surprising progress. 

As the old saying goes, "If you spent as much time doing it, as you do thinking about it..." Well for once I've just gotten stuck in.

The first task involved getting that third road out from the platform and its attendant siding installed. This required modifying two old points to be fed at the frogs by a switch using methods described earlier. This didn't take as long as I remember, and the points went in quickly, with their point throw rods under the layout. This meant I could fix down the '4th access road' at Elmer Lane to the PCB at the edge of that module. 

Rails was quickly painted brown with a rail pen, and the sleepers weathered with a light grey wash. The 'modern' coal train was also tried on for size:

I then went mad and soldered up all the jumper wires to the tracks on top. 

Then I went madder and ballasted the whole thing in about 90 minutes, after adding a painted wooden 'platform', which looks a bit skinny. Its 25mm across, and it should be 30, but Greymouth's south end is cut away for car parking anyway. I'll probably double up the width of the north end when the station and attendant buildings go in.

I let that all set overnight. I'll not ballast the PCBs until its all been tested. Which I should have done by now, but that would have distracted me from the roll I was on.

This afternoon, I thought the platform colour was a bit dark (and quite bluey-grey) and was just about to repaint it, when I looked at some pics of the real thing, to see that it is even darker on top (asphalted I guess). So I taped off the edges using Tamiya masking tape guided by my eye, and then painted a darker 'German Grey" on top for the asphalt and leaving the sides and top edges 'concrete'. This came out OK, although probably a bit fancy.

Well. I couldn't stop there, so started building some platform verandahs. Greymouth has quite long ones at both ends of its station. I took an educated guess based on the space available and some other station and verandah plans as a guide to sizes and shapes.

The verandah poles were hastily added from H section styrene. These will not meet any textbook definition of 'vertical' so were painted dark grey to hide them. Two poles on each 30cm 'end' have steel spikes, which plug into holes on the platform.

The station has worn many paint schemes over the years. In the 1950s or 60s it looked almost orangey/bricky with white trim. The wood was repainted in a lightish green with white trim and a red roof in the mid 1960s for the very end of steam. The red roof was a patchwork of red and new silver corrugated roofing in the mid-70s and the station was light grey.

In the AC cars era, it was a fairly bright yellow, with white trim and a green roof. This yellow faded a bit over the years. In the dark blue TranzAlpine days and for the 1988 flood, the station was a light grey with dark red trim. 

The last train to use the wharf trackage left Riverside behind three blue DJs at the end of July 1989, although the station building was removed before the 88 flood (probably removed when the Rewanui passenger trains ended in October 1984). Only three tracks remained by the station by 1992, and the Warehouse was in place in the yard when the footbridge was removed in 2002 or 2003 

The station today is a cream colour with red trim.

Mine will be the light grey with bricky trim grey roof for something vague and subtle. 

Station to go in between: