Office of Steam Forum for Model & Toy Steam Gas & Hot Air Engines
Builds, Repairs, Show Your Machines! => Live Steam Locomotives => Topic started by: Hero on March 29, 2019, 08:14:48 pm
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Love that doorknob brake handle, looks amazing on there.
Great job on the entire build, well done Bob (https://emoji.tapatalk-cdn.com/emoji482.png)
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Now all done. Doesn't look any different than it did in the last pictures, really, but I made some adjustments--and found a neat old porcelain doorknob that is now my brake lever knob.
Off to the track in May!
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Better pictures here....
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Hope you like it.
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Almost done now.
Painted over the last few days, assembled today.
Would like to apply decals, but don't quite know what's out there.
Oh, well....
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Thanks for the details of this build Bob.
I am following with great interest.
Looking forward to seeing it on your rails.
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Almost there!
My complex braking system is done. I used a neoprene composite gasket material for the brake shoes, and the car will stop on a dime and give you 9¢ change.
Now to disassemble it all, paint it, and figure out how to put it back together again. The deck will come then, too.
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Still working on this. Here are pictures showing milling of a side frame. Milling of a clevis for the brake, and a trial assembly of part of the braking system.
I'm a slow worker and not either an engineer or a machinist, so when it comes to making something for which there are no drawings, like this braking system, I build piece by piece sequentially, fitting as I go. Slow, but certain.
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Don't know much about 3.5" gauge steam items (or anything else for that matter) but like your work so far. I was surprised by the square shoulder and small depth of the flanges - thought they would have needed to be deeper and/or tapered to track correctly but apparently not. And impressed by the truck sideframes which must have taken quite a bit of time to cut - they look good!
Thanks for your observations. I thought about these same topics when I was planning the wheel, especially since I have had no training whatever in machining.
Shoulder, flanges, and everything else follow a 1945 flat car plan I found on the web. I, too, wondered about the shoulder, but the general opinion seems to be that coning the wheels is more significant for tracking. The design I used did not call for coned wheels, but I cut a 3 degree taper there, though it's hard to see over a 3/8" tread. Moreover, the track on which this is to be run is not one of those snazzy factory-made rail things, but 3/8" x 1" mild steel bar set on edge, and I think that the square shoulder will work better with it (there is a teensy little radius there to preserve strength). Flange depth may be a consideration if the car is to travel over frogs, points, etc., but my track is a simple oval, and I just don't see a wheel hopping up and down.
As you can see, I arrived at the wheel profile after a lot of mulling and reading, and I like to think that I've done the right thing here. Of course, if I haven't, I'll find out in May when I run this car. Even then, though, it won't be all that hard to re-shape the wheels if I have to (I hope).
As for the side frames, they will do the job, but I messed up on the symmetry of the outlines. It's not too easy to see when the frames are under the car, but trust me, they could be a lot better. I didn't re-do them both because they're hard to see and because they really did take a lot of time to make.
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Looking very nice, I would have thought steel would be better to keep the weight low down. But as you say your using materials to hand, are they sprung from the center stretcher?
Nice work and look forward to seeing progress 😊
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Don't know much about 3.5" gauge steam items (or anything else for that matter) but like your work so far. I was surprised by the square shoulder and small depth of the flanges - thought they would have needed to be deeper and/or tapered to track correctly but apparently not. And impressed by the truck sideframes which must have taken quite a bit of time to cut - they look good!
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Wow! (<- insert popcorn munching emoji here)
Thanks. Dave. I'm playing around with this when not playing with the steam engines you sent me.
The Mamod loco was meant to be spares for a disassembled one I already have, but yours is better than mine, so it'll work the other way around, I think.
Did you notice that the MM1 seems to have a non-standard piston? I have another of these, and the piston is considerably different. It doesn't really matter, though, because both of them just scream along.
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Wow! (<- insert popcorn munching emoji here)
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Here's a better look at the trucks:
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The local live steam club sold its riding car (or driving car, if you prefer), and I was left without something to tow around behind my Rob Roy. Accordingly, I decided to roll my own, so to speak.
I decided that I should be able to build the car with materials that I had on hand; I have therefore used bed rails found in the barn, a 2 1/8" round bar of steel left behind in my little garage by someone, a scrap piece of 3/8" aluminum plate, and numerous other odds and ends, including a punctured inner tube to make rubber vibration dampers between the trucks and the frame. I calculate that I have spent around $15.00 on it so far (had to buy wheel bearings and a bit of 1" x 1/2" steel bar), and shouldn't have to spend more, as all remaing materials are at hand and I have lots of leftover paint.
Here some pictures showing my progress to date. I'll post more as progress dictates, and should have it done by May when I'll need it.
Hope you enjoy it.
I had hoped to post the pictures showing the sequence of operations, but the forum software has a mind of its own....
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