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:

Greymouth 2 - Moduleing on

DB in another West Coast land grab. 

I don't remember where I left the Greymouth piece off, but some legs have been built with long 'bottoms' to be trimmed later...

...and the top was primed, and some basic track surface (thin basswood sheet from Mitre 10) added in a few key spots:

Next up from the Master Plan...

...we need the intermediate module that will host the Grey station and the yard tracks. This has been pondered for some time, but should be fairly quick to make. 

I have no idea where it came from, but I have a long piece of fairly thin ply about 39cm wide, so cut some fresh 18mm stuff into sections the same width wide to bolster that top sheet with:

And then some sides from Bunnings were added:

And there it is resting on the garage floor, as always, in the hope it will set flat. This only took about half an hour to make once the first cut was made, and this won't need any legs, because Elmer Lane and the Yard Throat/Riverside modules are plenty pedal.

Indeed, this has continued to come together super quickly. It was primed, and blacked up on top with some 99 cent shop paint.

It then came inside and was clamped onto Elmer Lane so holes for dowels and a bolt/wingnut could be made while the faces were mated together. Then today I decided to cut out some copper PCB strips for soldering the rails to at the ends.

The tracks started to reach out for the other end, so PCB was cut and attached there too. And before you know it, five of the six tracks are ready for soldering to the PCB and wiring up. 

Once I've used a Dremel to cut the rails strung between this module and Elmer Lane, the awkward 'new' turnout into Elmer Lane can be laid, along with the third road out from the platform. This is just sitting there at the moment. The platform will be located on the far side in the pic above, or on the right in the one below.

This is basically the access track for the loco depot, which is a bit silly, but that's the way things had to be, given that the extended south end of the station extends well beyond the Elmer Lane throat which has marched north.

I was going to put a small passing loop on that third track, perhaps for storing the Rewanui passenger train, but given the price of PECO points these days, I'll just make it a siding with the turnout at the Grey River end as shown here. A dead-end siding will be more capacious too, so it could also fit a 1990s TranzAlpine or a little work train.

As you might just be able to make out in the above pic, I've finally gotten a look at what a good-length train will look like on this. The coal train above is 32 wagons incl guards van, plus 2 locos, and over 2.2m long. The three rear yard tracks might fit 2.5m trains. 

But whether such trains can be dragged around the Roundhouse loop is another matter! Soon we shall see.

Elmer Lane 29 - Sanding tower and bits

DB returns to shoo away the tumbleweeds:

A few projects have been quietly ticking away in the background over the last few weeks, so here is an update on a few.

I've been threatening to add a sanding tower to Elmer Lane for some time now, and I was under the misapprehension this could be knocked off quite quickly.

There was a bit of pondering of course. This is a fiddly structure, and being in the thick of the action, would be prone to being knocked. Styrene is my go to, so a top was assembled quickly, but this wouldn't be ideal for the legs.  I considered brass, and then finally settled on the steel wire I'd been using as point rodding. I was going to face this with some styrene H sections, but that made the legs look too chunky. 

The legs are splayed in both dimensions:

The real thing serves three through tracks off the turntable, but as I figured there would be all sorts of clearance issues around it, I decided to minimise the impact of this and make the third road a new dummy stub out of some ancient Micro Engineering code 40 track.

Installed. While there is plenty of clearance for a DM and SpaceRacer next door, not much will fit underneath it because of the legs on a curve. This may prove to be a pain. But then again, I'm not sure how much the turntable will be used in the real world, and besides, there are still the 'original' three roads that can be used, and steam locos can be sanded from one of them if they want to be. I could have moved it further from the table onto a straighter bit of track, but that would encroach on the 'diesels' end of the module. 

I need a sand cooking shed next.

In other news, as you can see from the two photo above, the crew quarters now has some crew chatting out the front. They seem to have shiny polyester suits from the 80s on here, so they might expect a rain of dullcote soon.

And some recycled (about 4 times) Atlas N scale poles have been planted beside the Hoki line.

Greymouth 1 - a start, and plans for Galactic Domination™

DB thinks:

Despite life and other bruises preventing me from generating massive dollops of progress, a few wee projects have made small steps forward. 

Most interestingly, I'm making some moves on the trek towards Greymouth station now that work on Elmer Lane has slowed down. I'll probably build a steam-era sanding tower there, add some power poles and people, and have yet to decide whether to include a water vat or not, but most of the key bits that I wanted at the depot are more or less done.

So it is high time to start progressing in a northeastererly direction, as has been threatened for some time. This 'planning' (I really need a much looser word here) started in March, and since then, I've been daydreaming about where this might lead. A Greymouth Empire Module Set could easily include:

• 'a main line connection' to other people's modules (with Omoto bridge and loco dump)
• The wharf, with its hydraulic cranes serving colliers tied up for loading
• The wooden Cobden 'S' bridge across the Grey river
• (and on to Rewanui).
• (in hindsight, a turnout by the roundhouse could have given a Hokitika branch too!

Greymouth modules concept (not all tracks shown)

It would seem logical to advance this in the following order: 

1. design the yard throat module, 
2. at around the same time, link those yard tracks with Elmer lane using 'Greymouth station'
3. build Omoto to provide a mainline module that can transition to other people's modules
4. add the wharf for more operational fun
5. Build the Cobden S bridge, because that would be really cool,
6. and at the same time, build the Rewanui station/state coal mine terminus.
7. build at least one Rewanui 'branch' connecting module between the bridge and Rewanui Station to provide a little more branchline running time and interest. The branch/bridge/incline etc wouldn't technically be 'mainline', so could have tighter curves and points than the usual, much steeper grades, and even a (low) centre rail for looks, which could be interesting. I doubt I would make Dunollie Junction (and the Rapahoe Branch) to slot in between the S bridge and the Rewanui branch, but someone else might!

So geographically, the module next to Elmer Lane will be a fairly plain 1.2 metres of straight tracks, but this will house the Greymouth station building (and between one and three turnouts to join the depot into the yard). 

The more 'interesting' module (from a Darryl perspective) is the next one - the yard throat, the tracks across Mawhera quay, the signal box, Riverside station, and the connections to the other future modules. 

The design of this throat should obviously enable trains to come off the 'mainline' and go into the yard/staging tracks (perhaps reversing using the Elmer Lane roundhouse loop first). 

It should allow 'Rewanui to Riverside' passenger or coal trains to operate without interfering with the core layout (the 'mainline'). This includes a runaround at Riverside station so it can be used even if the wharf or Rewanui modules never get built. Freight from Rewanui can be moved straight to the wharf yard, or into the Greymouth Yard. Passenger cars used on Rewanui trains might be stored in the Greymouth Station yard when not in use. 

The wharf should also be operable fairly independently, without upsetting other operators. Its layout should allow trains to come to and from both Rewanui and from the mainline.

So this is the current thinking, which is fairly fluid, but it hasn't changed too much since it was first laid out in March onto a triangley bit of ply. 

That ply baseboard is an offcut from Elmer Lane, and it has been braced with some bits of secondhand wood that live in the garage.

Pain in the Nethers - Chassis Frustrations 2 - Steamers

DB makes a few poorly researched observations:

We NZ120 diesel modellers are pretty lucky, having a host of N scale chassis offerings that are a good-enough fit for most of our diesel locos. After a few months of pondering this Wb, I'm thinking steam is another matter!

Issues include:

• Driver size and spacing 
• Wheel arrangement 
• Cylinder location/connecting rods.
• Motion
• N scale vs our 1:120
• Power pickups and decoders

Driver size and spacing was well covered by Premier Duff in several posts. 

wheel diameter real equivalent loco classes

7.5mm 3 F
8mm 3'2" W, Wa, Wb, Wd
9mm 3'6" B, Ba, Bb
9.5mm 3'9" Wf, X
10mm 4' Ww, Aa, Q, U, Ub, Uc
11mm 4'4" A, Ab, Wab, K, Ka, Kb, J, Ja, Jb 

12mm 4'9" G

More here  Put the Kettle on , Steam pt 2 , Steam Part 3

I've noticed that many overseas steam prototypes, and thus models, have a larger gap between the two rearmost drivers (presumably to fit the firebox) whereas most of ours have consistently spaced drivers. Even my Alco Wb chassis has this 'feature' although its not too noticeable.

Because of N's 1:160 to 1:148 scale, the large drivers of racehorse overseas locos become reasonable for us to use in 1:120 on NZ's plodders.

While in theory, leading and trailing pony trucks can be subtly altered, this is easier said than done. 

At the front this is hampered by the cylinder location, which can't really be moved because of the valve gear.  This is an obvious fact that I hadn't even considered, so you usually can't replace a pony truck with a leading bogie, because there isn't enough space between the cylinders and the drivers (and the rods aren't long enough). Many of the models I've looked at online don't have the sort of room between the cylinders and the drivers we need - most of our locos have quite long connecting rods. This is partially exacerbated because they are in N rather than 1:120.

My Wb needs the leading pony truck moved forward, and a trailing one added. The pony truck that came with the model is a larger diameter than it should be but I have another smaller one off a Japanese steamer I may use, or I might just keep this one.

As for motion, other than our early inside framed locos and some later appearances of Baker valve gear, we were primarily in the Walschaerts camp for the bulk of our designs. My Wb should have inside valve gear, which means removing everything other than the main connecting rod and the distinctive Baldwin bowtie crosshead that my chassis does not have. A risky and painful operation given it is reasonably nicely modelled. I could leave the motion there, as I wouldn't have noticed before I started staring at Wb pics recently. 

Ebb-Fettler has a 3d printed Ba loco top, needing a fairly narrow chassis, which made me dig out a pair of Japanese 2-8-0s that I was once going to turn into 2-foot six narrow gauge Chinese C2s with much larger scale tops. But these 'chassi' happen to have their connecting rods joined to the third rather than second driver! I'd never noticed this before last week. looking at the C2, that's how they are attached. So a fail for the Ba, but a win for the C2.

My Wb donor engine was a tender loco (a Bachman Alco consolidation). The tender has plenty of room for the supplied chunky hard-wired decoder, but that won't fit it into my little tank engine, so will have to be replaced with an ancient Digitrax Z scale decoder. The Pacific that I hope to turn into an Ab also has a big roomy tender which houses a long decoder board and a matching long speaker enclosure. Both of which will have to be shortened, as our tenders tend to be much, much shorter than American ones as our axle loadings restricted how much water/coal/oil we could carry. Shortening the tender without breaking too much will be a problem for another day. An A's square tender might be a better bet than the Vanderbilt one of the Ab.

The other issue with the need to remove the tender for the Wb... is that I'll be ditching 2/3rds of my power pickups, with the badly-laid-track-conforming tender bogies being sacrificed for a rigid six-coupled loco with traction tires on the front axle. Those rubber bands may have to be be removed. As for the possibility of picking up power from pony trucks. That would require engineering well above my pay grade.

So summing up the biggest challenge with steam in NZ120 for one without a CNC milling station and scanning electron microscope: With the 'modular' design of diesel models in the past, it was possible to swap out bogies from other loco types for different wheel arrangements, axle spacings and wheelbases, and even lengthening a chassis is possible. People have made custom chassis for NZ120 railcars for example. See also my DI with its reversed SD40-2 bogies in a GP30 frame. With steam, there seem fewer 'natural fits' for NZ prototypes, and modifying a loco chassis seems much harder, especially as they are 'advancing' with sound, miniaturised components and less user-serviceable designs.  Or maybe its just a mental block plus my lack of experience with tiny wheeled kettles and micro-engineering.

So what chassis have other modellers used for NZ steamers, and what is your critical assessment of these in terms of fit, modifications needed, and performance? As with diesels, the limited runs that are produced these days probably make some of these old hens-teeth models real gems now. We could do with a steam loco chassis compendia like the diesel one referenced at the top of this...

Wb 2 - Bodywork and a pipe band

Db continues his Wibbledeebee:

Scalpel please, Nurse.

This might look a bit brutal, but was done for two reasons. Firstly, I didn't have much luck straightening out the warped side tanks. And second, I needed to make some space for a DCC decoder.

Below you might be able to see where I removed a fair bit of material on the underside of where the boiler and top of the side tanks join. There is also a lot more space inside the side tanks now.

Getting the band back together after a fall off the bench onto concrete separated the front end into four pieces (one still missing but replaced with styrene):

Part way through applying filler:

The body was then spray primed (nice) and brushpainted (yuck) with weathered black, which is a bit green for my liking. This was to ensure that there would be some paint on the parts that would be hard to get to after the pipes and things went on:

The distinctive Baldwin Wb 'curved gusset' between the top of the bunker and the cab was added, the air reservoirs under the cab, steps on the side of the rear bunker, and a toolbox. This 3D print has one on the front buffer beam, which I've only seen in one of these on a very old pic, but I quite like it. 

A mess of air pipes (the more the merrier!) handrails and some stays behind the cowcatchers completed things. The piping detail was done using this pic from the NZ Railway Observer as a guide, and a few other Wb pics stolen from the web.

And to close, a pic that illustrates my frustration with putting way too small coupler pockets into tough and brittle 3d prints. Its going to be a squeeze: