The Home Machinist!

Great build! I can understand not wanting to put ice in it, wood is seemingly never waterproof no matter how much finish you put over it, unless you were to glass it with epoxy resin. Now, some of the epoxy systems will adhere to polyurethane(one boat builder filleted his woodwork with polyurethane ...

I've opted to do some rivet counting on my build admittedly because I have time. I am building my setup with a purpose in mind however, and have even gone out on my own with scale and gage as to what I feel will suit my needs best. My S-12's body is wider than the prototype is because I worked my di...

Making good progress! Keep the pics coming.

Agreed, it's nasty stuff. My dad uses it for removing piston deposits from cylinders and it basically eats the aluminum out of them. Handle it with hazmat gear!

I've seen a few like that, always catch my eye because they are painted wrong. I've never seen the upper part of the mast painted black, only the target(s). No idea where it is.

That's great, I was wondering what happened to your pictures. I am probably going to supersize the same truck setup, and use some 3/4" flanged pillow blocks for the bolster pivots and bronze bearings on 1/2" bolts with angle brackets on both sides of the bearing for my locomotive and my heavy haulin...

I like the 0-6-0 idea myself, will be my first if I ever go for a steam build. I'm not a yellow plague fan myself though, but there is plenty of other RR's to choose from.
What's your budget?

That appears to be a threaded insert welded to the bolster and the head of a bolt, he opted to mount the pillow block on his chassis instead of the bolster. If you've got the side bearings figured out, I would just mount the pillow block/self aligning bearing to the bolster and then put a bolt throu...

I never had the luck of seeing an F7 in person sadly, so I don't have much desire to build one for whatever reason. The stuff occupying the tracks when I was a kid was GP's and SD's, SW's, and the rare Baldwin Switcher(I saw an SP S-12 when I was young, in tow in another train going north). I barely...

Lets try this.

The self-aligning bearing does everything you need, it rotates and swivels. No bronze bushing needed. Using only that however, the train would be free to flop side to side. BDD mounted additional bearings on angle tabs on the bolsters at each side, so that the truck can still swivel but doesn't allo...

Best way to explain it, have a look a BDD's post here: http://www.chaski.org/homemachinist/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=102327&start=36 About halfway down the page, you can see the pictures of his truck setup with the bearings on angle brackets near the groups of 4 silver bolts, and the self aligning pillow...