Plastic fantastic IA wagons

DB still needed some 'modern' flat wagons to go under his fancy new containers. 

Yes, I do need to get back to those brass IAs, but before I overcome that mental hurdle, maybe there is an easier way for now.  Three-foot-six models have some decent looking IAs that are 3d-printed in metal, but are $50 a pop and I usually have to do a fair bit of dremelling to them to make my chosen bogies and couplers fit.

The nicely detailed 3D printed ones, along with the MMW IAs, and the 3D printed 'open' UKs, also look at their skeletal best when empty, or carrying something see-through like a pair of tanktainers. 

To carry my long (prototype 7600mm) long GSH containers, it almost seems a waste to hide all that fancy etched or printed underframe detail and open decking under containers.

So maybe some cheap and nasty IAs could be made up from styrene, modelled off the MMW one?

.080x.080 rodding looked right for the chunky side sills that the HK/IA wagons have, with 14mm wide sections of thin sheet to hold them apart. My builds here are slightly skeletonised in their construction to give plenty of room for swivelling couplers and wheels. The bits that are open will be covered by the containers anyway.

I'm using Japanese 'Taki' bogies that are occasionally produced by Kato. I found these available as 'spare parts' several years ago on HobbySearch, but they are a short run item that was out of stock. I clicked on 'notify me when available' and forgot about them. Last year, I received an email saying they were suddenly orderable again, so I signed up for ten pairs. 

They are a bit larger than Microtrains (Japan usually models in 1:150 rather than the Americans with their 1:160), with larger metal wheels. If you get your monocle out, you'll see they have leaf springs  rather than coils, but the main downside is they have old school Rapido couplers on shortish shanks. 

As the IA has a handbrake platform at one end that protrudes out a way from the bogie mounting point, I decided to cut a coupler off the bogie and mount it onto this extension. As such, the coupler 'sticks out' from the wagon end like dog's roundels.

At the other end, an as-delivered bogie plus coupler would be mounted at the prototypical bogie pivot location, so its shorty coupler would be almost entirely under the wagon. But coupling two wagons with this arrangement (one short coupler and one protruding) would provide a good coupling distance between them. Obviously this means these wagons, plus any more that I make with these bogies, will be operated as a fairly fixed modern intermodal consist, with a microtrains coupler at each end of the rake.

Twistlocks were 'inferred' from .040x.040 rod. 

Underneath the wagon is a 4x4mm piece of 'key stock steel' from the local engineering shop as a spine to provide stiffness and a little weight. 

An ornate coupler box has also been constructed for the sticky-out handbrake end, and the wagon was then crudely painted, and holed for a M3 bolt and nut.

And with containers placed on top, these will look the part from the mandated viewing distance.

A final touch was adding some underframe detail, although this is barely visible beneath the deep IA side sills. 

There seem to be two versions of the IA, the ones modelled in the MMW kit (and in the prototype pic at the top of this) have a zillion smaller holes in the underframe beams, and the other style has 11 larger holes. As I happened to have a plan of the latter, I made this up after 'painting in the holes' black in photoshop and printed it out on the laser printer. Then a wash of brown was applied so the black 'holes' still show through. Hard to see on the finished picture. 

I believe the prototype only has an air tank on one side, but I ended up putting one on each side. 

Overall, these two styrene IAs were not difficult to build other than the coupler boxes. They probably took two hours to do each (four for the pair), but on the plus side, a wagon costs less than $5 in styrene and steel. 

Bolts/bogies and couplers are extra, but would also have to be provided if I'd purchased a 3D printed wagon frame. And had I bought one of those, I'd still have spent more than half an hour modifying it to take my bogies and couplers anyway.

And they were fun to make. It was a good idea to build two wagons at once, as the time to cut out another set of bits once the pondering was done was minimal. I probably should have made three!

Still needs some decals, some paint detailing, and handbrake stands applied. Fortunately some of the IAs have 'plain' lever handbrakes mounted above the deck (see the prototype pic at the top here). 

Fancy curtainside GSH containers

As DB noted, that now the UK container wagons have left revenue service, he lacks anything 'prototypical' to tow behind the DM. 

He had wanted to build a few of these striking modern curtainsiders for the Christchurch show last year, but couldn't get around to making them in time.  

Read on, dear listeners, for in this exciting episode, all those dreams will come true (dramatic chord)...

Righto, firstly the hard bit. In Photoshop I made up a grid of rectangular masks the right size, and then scaled and perspective-corrected a bunch of photos on layers underneath each 'hole' to fit. Thanks to Southern Rails' Mike H, David O, myself, KiwiRail, the container manufacturers and a few others I may have not mentioned here.

Regardless of the process, his resulted in the following fairly reasonable sheet, which I had printed out on some glossy sticky stuff at the local printers: 

This picture above has probably been resized by the blog software, but you can contact me if you want a full sized TIF file to print out. 

And now the easy bit. The real containers taper very (very) slightly towards the top when viewed end on, but this is so subtle I wouldn't be able to replicate it with any degree of accuracy or consistency, so mine are 'intended' to be vertical.

The basic faces of the containers were made from Evergreen styrene. 

• The sides are thick-ish 1mm (.040") plain sheet cut into rectangles 24mm tall x 61mm long. 
• The ribbed roof is 61mm long x 19mm wide, nestled between the sides to give a container 21mm wide.
• The ends are 24mm tall x 21mm (over-)wide. These were made from chunkier corrugated stuff.

One side and roof were stuck together, and then an end was capped on to keep things square. Then the other side, and finally the other end cap. 

Despite measuring carefully, using a magnifying visor and marking out with a fine blade, I have close to zero ability to produce multiple pieces of exactly the same size, no matter how hard I try. Nor to make a 90-degree line. In reality, some of these turned out slightly trapezoidal when viewed end-on, and a couple almost rhomboid in nature. The worst were re-glued into something bordering on rectangles with 90 degree corners.

Fortunately, this construction approach provides multiple ways of 'covering' the inaccuracies, especially making the ends slightly over-width for later trimming. Cutting out multiple 'end', 'side' and 'roof' pieces in bulk allows you to trim or discard any outliers, and once assembled, any bits that are a bit too large can be trimmed up to suit.

For added fanciness,  I applied .010x.080 strip to the ends of the roof, which provided a little detail and covered any gaps that remained from my assembly of the basic box. Again, these were initially chopped into slightly-over-long-lengths and trimmed to match once they were glued down.

Some little .020x.020x.010 squares faked up the twistlock pocket castings on top for a little added detail. More .010x.080 strip was added to the ends. These GSHs are considerably larger than the 'standard' (non hi-cube) 20-foot boxes I'm used to working with in NZ120!

And then there were five. Painted dark grey and stickered up:

Oooo. Cute. 

And since its quite quick to cut out and assemble the pieces in bulk, why not make a few more:

Ten up:

Searching for some Mojo via some brass IA wagons

DB returns.

It's been a while since I last allowed my poor typing skills to wander over these increasingly fallow blogfields, and although I am occasionally accused of bouncing between scales and prototypes, I haven't really done any modelling for six months or more. Every attempt to do something in NZ120 until recently has run into a demoralising buffer stop.

Case in point:

It occurred to me that I didn't have anything 'prototypical' to tow behind the Stadler DM at the Christchurch show last October, so it was fortunate indeed that Aaron Wall had a hicube container on one of his lovely wagons, because the DM is a lot taller than the 'normal' containers on my (now all withdrawn!) UK wagons.

A very long time ago, I purchased a pair of Mark's Model Works IA etches. So why not build these up to give me a pair of modern wagons?

Well, one of the reasons they have sat untouched for a dozen years or more include my aversion to soldering. The etches themselves are also quite complex-looking. The instructions are similarly scary at first, although are relatively straightforward after reading them a dozen times and finally getting my head round the basic processes.

OK, the IAs might be a quick win, so why not give them a crack?!

It turns out that when you cut the IA kit off the 'sprue', all that visible complexity is distilled into only two pieces: a straightforward deck, and the underframe. At first glance the latter looks like a squashed 20-legged brass tarantula, but, as long as you read the instructions properly, it all folds up very neatly within a few minutes to the accompaniment of a few "well, that's incredibly well designed" mutterings. 

The two pieces then clamp together very nicely under their own steam but it is suggested that you drop a little solder between the deck and underframe in the middle of the wagon to hold everything in place permanently. 

Of course that's when things went off the rails. 

I got my first bit of solder to stick almost immediately, but over the next fifteen minutes, I couldn't get any more solder to attach itself to the underside of the deck, despite pouring flux all over everything (including my jeans) and nearly melting the now-discoloured etches under a sustained carpet bombing of intense heat delivered by my soldering cannon. 

The solder stuck as expected to the folded underframe piece but blobbed up when meeting the under-deck and wouldn't stick to it with any consistency.

I was then left with a real mess. The over-heated deck warped away from the underframe, the solder blobbed between these growing gaps and cooled, making things worse. 

The deck and frame are now stuck 'apart' rather than 'together' and I didn't know whether to go back and risk applying more heat and compression to squeeze the two parts together, or just hide the mess under a container.

I headed upstairs, once again disillusioned by failing to complete what should have been a quick and easy task. Modelling seemed so much easier 40 years ago when it was just plastic, balsawood, a knife and some glue. All of which were easy to understand and control back when I had functioning close-up eyesight and I didn't drink far-too-much-coffee. 

A few months later I returned downstairs, to attempt the second wagon. 

Some lessons that had been learned: 

• The semi-industrial bottle of flux I have been using for some time lists a few metals that it is formulated for on the bottle.... but not brass. 
• I should have lightly sanded the mating surfaces first and would try tinning the deck first next time before mating the deck and frame. 
• I held the deck to the frame with wooden pegs, but could have used stronger clamps or pliers (it is indeed a recurring design deficiency that modellers are not born with three hands)
• The etch (or my folding process) results in some inevitable gapping between the side sills and the deck. This could be mitigated somewhat with a file.

That all happened a few months ago, and I have since resolved these (my) issues and built the two wagons, but for now, let us make a slight detour, as I want to construct some containers to go on them.

Hold this thought though, as we will return to the two brass IAs in a week or three. 

A decision

 

 

Today, I have brought down the curtain on Paekakariki. The track has been lifted and I'm planning to palm the baseboards off to another local modeler so that we can start building him a layout.

So what lead me to this point in time?

The first one is that I have not done any serious work on the layout since we moved into this house 12 years ago. I even set it up to see if that would spark anything. The only thing that achieved was to take up more space in the garage. 

And I'm comfortable with my decision. When I started the layout in 2009, I was in a different headspace. The layouts I was designing back then revolved around engine swaps with the trains remaining unchanged. Hence plans for Authurs Pass, Cross Creek and Paekakariki. In the intervening period I've developed an interest in shunting, bush trams and smaller layouts. Paekakariki was 12' long without reversing loops at each end. This is much larger than my current thinking. 

The clincher was my podcast listening over the last few months. American modelers not only build large layouts, but also seem to accept moving to a new prototype or layout. Hearing Lance Mindheim talk about getting rid of his Brooklyn Terminal layout "I saved the buildings and the rest went in the dumpster" gave me some clarity.

Sometimes I think we regard a layout as the endpoint of modeling where I am now of the opinion that we should regard it as a waypoint moving forward as part of a learning exerience.

Lifting the track today I have learned a few things. Double sided tape lasts an awful long time. My dropper soldering was awsomely good. I learned how to make track formations to the point that I can now do it on the fly.

So, it looks like is now time for the bush tramway I have always wanted to make....

More history.

 A few months ago I took a day trip over to the annual train show in Whanganui (and a look to see what was left of the castlecliff branch). Again a typical small show, with slim pickings layouts wise. I did get to watch the age old battle at the second hand stalls ie"I know whats thats worth but I don't want to look too keen or you will know too...".

The one thing of interest was an NZ120 layout with some of my old models from the early 1990's. Unlike Mr Bond, I had a sale which cleared almost everything out to fund a wargaming addiction (which still continues to this day). I havn't seen any of these in almost 30 years.

Yc wagons. I cast everything on these models, only using Peco wheelsets and couplers.

Cast Lc's (I think these were a mk2 version) on the good old Peco underframes.

Dc's 4778 and 4790 (sans handrails). I can't believe that the real thing ever got that dirty and wonder what I was thinking at the time. I think these were my final versions of the Dc's with multiple castings.

Wb 3 - A splash of paint and grot

DB comes out of stasis:

And just to let you know where the Wb got to. This post was actually drafted in July but I don't think this was posted .. I've added the last picture and a few paragraphs at the end.

I decided to spray a top coat. Mainly flat black but a drop or two of that weathered black included to take the edge off. 

Looks better from the mandated viewing distance and under less-yellow lights. There is still a bit of faceting on the domes, but the black hides it a little. Z scale couplers were also added fore and aft after the coupler slots were somehow opened out with files, without either breaking something or dropping the top onto the floor.

The chassis remains a stumbling block. I tested it today (December) and it runs fairly well - even in this state without the additional tender pickups, without the original cast boiler (for weight) and with rubber traction tires on the front wheels (these could be removed). 

I can probably cut off the fancy valve gear (the Wb had internal valve gear). And I'd extend the cylinders in a forward direction.

The stock attached decoder, which used to be in the tender, is too big unfortunately.  My original plan was to have it up above the loco (inside the top of the side tanks) but there isn't enough vertical room. 

There is room to put a Digitrax DZ143 or similar into one of the side tanks. The rest of the tank and bunker space could be filled with weight. Or maybe a 'stay alive' chip/capacitor depending on how big those are. 

I wonder if its feasible to put pickup wipers on the truck wheels? 

So overall, not much progress on this in the past few months. And there may not be for a while as I'm embarking on some improvements to the train room. 

An Ab. Or not. - 1

DB has had a busy lately, but has recently been down to the trainroom for the first time since the Christchurch Show...  

You may recall that I purchased a sound equipped Broadway Limited Light Pacific 4-6-2 earlier in the year, thinking that it 'looked about right' for an Ab.

So a week ago I decided to look more seriously for the first time at the Ab shell that 3-6 models delivered several months back.  

The Ab itself is a decent print. Things look in proportion. The boiler bands are a bit prominent and the diameters of the smokebox and boiler cladding look quite different, but that might be authentic, and anyway, it will all fade away when everything is painted black and a few bits of piping are put on top.

As can be seen, when I pulled apart the Broadway Limited tender, and there was a far bit of stuff in it. All wheels pickup power (as do the drivers on the loco). This is good. There is a multi-wire connector between the loco and tender. The sound decoder and a speaker also live in the tender. All nicely plugged-and-socketed for disassembly.

On seeing this. I decided that an A class might be a better choice, as I might be able to to fit all this back into a scratchbuilt 'box' A tender, but it won't go into a 3D printed Vanderbilt Ab one. The Ab tender print can be turned into a dummy, and hang around inside the Elmer Lane roundhouse.

A few visits to the Dremel in the garage had the underside of the boiler widened out to fit over the motor. It didn't take much effort actually. 

The problem was that even with that done, the whole body sits very high (of course!). A few more visits outside had me thinning out the inside roof of the boiler. 

Now that is minimalism. The main problem was that the chassis has a tiny white square socket above the middle driver (a socket for the headlight wiring) and a cast 'tray' that carries wires above the brass flywheel. I didn't want to risk disaster by removing these. So I thinned the shell further. 

All was going swimmingly until I decided to cut out out a small section of the top of the boiler roof completely, fore and aft of the steam dome, to let the white box and tray sit up into these holes. I'd cover the small holes with paper. 

Of course something snapped when I was reshaping the headstock and then the whole thing ended up on the concrete floor! The dome came off, as did the headstock, and the boiler cracked a bit. Bah. At least the little white socket and cast tray can sit up into all those holes in the boiler now, lowering the body onto the chassis to an acceptable height!

The holes have since been patched up. But not that well, mind you. 

The A doesn't have the Ab's prominent curvy steam pipes to the cylinders, so these were removed, plus the other details (makers plate etc) on the smokebox beside these. 

I think I'll leave the loco here for me to calm my nerves!

 --------------

Instead, lets take a serious look at the tender. Maybe that will be easier. And its really important because of all its guts. Being an American prototype, it's a lot longer than ours. With our much lighter axle loads, we couldn't carry nearly as much water and coal around.

The cast floor has bogie mounts and a coupler, plus the attachment clip for the loco drawbar, so I thought I'd preserve these features by simply shortening the floor. After unpluging the speaker and decoder, a few semi-careful slashes with a Dremel cut-off wheel had the black chassis ready to be snapped into three, with the centre bit then discarded.   

There are three 'levels' of stuff inside the tender. On the bottom are wires from the bogie pickups and the attachment for the loco drawbar. I've had to add some supporting steel rods as well, to hold my two chassis halves together. 

In the middle is the DCC/Sound chip. 

The speaker is on top. All these pieces are nicely plugged-and-socketed for easy detachment. The speaker is nicely shaped to fit inside the tender, creating a snug soundbox.

I wanted to preserve this clever design work, as well as the idea of a removable tender-top so that everything can be easily disassembled if there are any issues in future. 

After more pondering, I figured that the supplied tender top isn't a million miles off the shape of an A tender anyway, so I'm adapting it by lopping a bit off the back to shorten it, and building the coal box on top. Yes, the 'curved top wings' are a little high and should extend further back, but nothing a galloping horse would notice.

So the challenge is now, how to fit the guts back into the shortened tender (I subsequently decided to  extend the tender chassis by about 2mm from what I had cut it down to). It's going to be a very tight squeeze.

Top fits on the shortened chassis. Speaker to be shortened:

The speaker was relatively easy. I prised off the PCB with the socket, cut the PCB down, and relocated it on a shortened base. In doing this, it wouldn't fit easily, and I eventually broke the solder join between one wire and the PCB, so attempted to solder the tiny wires to the back of the tiny socket, then glue the remainder of the PCB onto the shortened speaker tray.

I then thought I'd better see if all this work has damaged anything by plugging things back together and giving them a run:

Good heavens. Its still runs and makes noises.