Ew time

Well, about time I got back to this. I have been looking at this sorry pile of bits for a while now, but trying to sort out just how I was going to put it all together was a bit of a struggle.

When I last thought about this, the plan was to use the 2 end frames as the gear towers, and attach them to some sort of frame. Just what sort was evading my brain cell as it wandered round its vast prison.

A couple of nights ago while burning my fingers (well, making track, but they tend to go hand in hand) I suddenly thought that I could build a frame out of plasticard. So, a few measurements and out with the knife.
I cut the plastic to size, then made a cutout for the bogie to fit through, with the plan of attaching the gear tower to the plastic somehow.


I had to trim down the bogie sideframes to get everything to fit, and then cut out a bit more to clear the pickups . Still, it wasn't doing it for me.

Then , I remembered that back in the dark ages when I had been looking at drive systems all the drawings had been with an overhead frame. Duhhhh said my brain cell.
This seemed like a far easier set up. First up I checked to see if I could solder onto the split frame. With Phosphoric acid as the flux the answer is yes, but man does the frame metal get hot fast, and stay hot for a while. A quick search of the bits box revealed that I didn't have any brass bar, so I soldered 2 bits of 1.5mm square brass together and then cut them to length. I then set them up in a couple of clamps in the correct orientation, and then applied heat. To my pleasant surprise it all worked. Putting everything back together I got something looking like this.


How will it all hold together? Well, I'll just ask Mr Woods nicely for some bits of thick PCB board (A long 15mm wide strip will do nicely please; the check is in the mail), and use this as the spacers between the 2 brass bars. All the pivots will be on this, and the motor will sit on the center bogie, as I had originally planned. This project now looks more promising, and will definitely go back onto the front burner (or into the pile of projects that can be looked at).