New York Central Streamlined Hudson

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JBodenmann
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Location: Tehachapi, California

Re: New York Central Streamlined Hudson

Post by JBodenmann »

Hello My Friends
Thank you very much for the compliments. Here is another photo.
Jack
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Steam Engine Dan
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Re: New York Central Streamlined Hudson

Post by Steam Engine Dan »

beautiful
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JBodenmann
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Re: New York Central Streamlined Hudson

Post by JBodenmann »

Hello My Friends
Here is a bit about half round, making it and fitting it up. The top photo shows a set up for making half round from round stock. A hardwood block is set up in the mill vise with a hole parallel with the table. The round stock to be split should slide through the hole with little slop. An infeed table should be rigged up to guide the round stock. Here the infeed table is a length of plywood. The round stock should be gripped with vise grip pliers and pulled through the block as it is split with a slitting saw. A three inch slitting saw should be spun at about two or three hundred RPM. The slitting saw should be new or almost new. Pull the rod gently, if you rush it it will chatter. It should only take four or five minutes to split a six foot brass rod. The critical thing is that the hole in the wood block be parallel with the table. In the following photos the half round is being fitted up to the skirts that hang down from the running boards. It will be held in place with #00-90 x 3/16" brass machine screws for soldering. Then the screw heads will be filed off.
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Half Round 2.jpg
Half Round 3.jpg
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JBodenmann
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Re: New York Central Streamlined Hudson

Post by JBodenmann »

Here we have flux and solder. Stay brite flux and rosin core electronic solder. I like liquid flux for this operation as it will flow into the joint and around the screws. Electronic solder is used because it has a fairly low melting point and great flow characteristics. It's surprising how little solder is needed. The second photo down shows little pieces of solder placed at the joint between the half round and steel sheet. Tip up one edge so that gravity will help hold the bits of solder in place and evenly apply heat from the back side. If you heat up the half round too much, it will expand more than the steel and buckle. Give each screw head a little shot of solder. This last photo shows things after soldering. Give everything a good scrub with soap and water to remove the remaining flux or the steel will rust badly. Now it's time to file off the screw heads and clean things up.
More to come.
Jack
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Half Round 4.jpg
Half Round 5.jpg
Half Roud 6.jpg
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Greg_Lewis
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Re: New York Central Streamlined Hudson

Post by Greg_Lewis »

Looks great Jack.

Have you thought about just buying the half-round brass? It's available in a number of sizes from On Line Metals:
http://www.onlinemetals.com/merchant.cf ... top_cat=79

You can also get other sizes from jewelers' supply companies. That's where I got mine and it was cheaper than On Line Metals. They use it for bracelets.
Greg Lewis, Prop.
Eyeball Engineering — Home of the dull toolbit.
Our motto: "That looks about right."
Celebrating 35 years of turning perfectly good metal into bits of useless scrap.
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JBodenmann
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Re: New York Central Streamlined Hudson

Post by JBodenmann »

Hello My Friends
Haven't posted anything for a while. To answer Greg's question I'll tell you a little story. A couple years ago I needed some 1/4" T section brass for the edges of running boards. I had bought this stuff before. My usual supplier didn't have it anymore. So after several phone calls another well known supplier to the hobby said they could get some. After several weeks and several more phone calls, the supplier finally admitted they couldn't get it either. So in about an hour some 1/4" square brass was converted into 1/4" T section brass, all that I needed for an entire locomotive. Now I really appreciate Greg giving me the heads up as to where to buy half round, and If I needed 100 feet of it I certainly wouldn't make it, I would buy it. But I only needed 12 feet, that's one six footer split in half, in fifteen minutes I had what I needed. There have been too many times when some supplier had me tearing my hair out. Now there are some most excellent suppliers out there, like American Model Engineering where I get my model bolts and pipe unions. They have never disappointed me. I'm sure there are others.
So now I'll shut my yap and get to what I came here for. Here are some photos of a Franklin power reverse. The very fine castings came from my friend Brad. And then after a bit of fiddling about we have a finished power reverse (dummy), along with the hand wheel and indicator that reside in the cab. The rotating parts all spin on ball bearings and it works very smoothly. Inside the power reverse is a bit of 1/4" 16 left hand acme threaded rod and a nut that I bought from Mcmaster. Quick and easy, you know, get er' done. The same threaded rod and nut fits in the cab indicator. And then we have the reverse indicator and wheel mounted up in the cab. I had to fudge a bit and mount the hand wheel and indicator angled towards the center of the cab as there just wasn't enough room to mount it alongside the boiler as on the full size engine. We do as we must! There are some cool little stainless steel U joints between the indicator and the reverser (Mcmaster again). And then there is the throttle lever assembly made up from some castings from our friend Jim Kreider. He also provides the laser cut quadrants, which is really cool as I used to have to bash the teeth out shaper style using the lathe carriage. There should be a description of how to do that here on the board somewhere. And then we have a couple photos of the throttle linkage. The lever and support bearing down at the smoke box, and the combination lever midway down the boiler. The control rod is 5/32" turned down to .134 at the ends and threaded #6-40 with 1/4" hex lock nuts. The castellated nuts will get .020" cotter pins which you all should know how to make by now. Little baloney like this is just too much fun to make. These engines didn't have a really cool combination lever support casting with it's outside support bearing like the Nickel Plate Berkshires just a simple plate and boss casting with steel pin and nut. The pin was made, case hardened and threaded into the casting. The combination lever and front end throttle lever have phosphor bronze bushings and case hardened pins. I hate a sloppy throttle linkage.
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Pow Rev2.jpg
Throttle1.jpg
Throttle2.jpg
Throttle3.jpg
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JBodenmann
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Re: New York Central Streamlined Hudson

Post by JBodenmann »

Hello My Friends
Here are a few photos you might like. Jim Kreider recently sent me an ultra cool new book, all about the New York Central Hudsons. The book is called "Know Thy Hudsons". Lots of great photos and info. But there were four photos in particular. Photos of the top of the skyline casing and cab. I had never seen them before. Photos of all them little hatches and hinges that decorate the top of the casing. Also a really good shot of the casing over the steam turret and its doors, three hinges on each door. Most of this stuff was on the drawings, but having the photo really helps.` There was one photo in particular that was most useful, it showed how the outlet of the smoke lifter was set up. Its obvious that air went in the ribbed air scoop at the front of the skyline casing but how did it get out. When looking at the photos you could see the curved slot in the skyline casing behind the stack. You can see this in the bottom photo. All there was on the drawing concerning this outlet was a vague dotted line. Didn't mean anything till I saw the photo...
Happy Model Building
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LWA Casing.jpg
Cab&Casing.jpg
Smoke Lifter.jpg
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Greg_Lewis
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Re: New York Central Streamlined Hudson

Post by Greg_Lewis »

You were lucky to get those high angle shots. It seems that 98 percent of all loco pix are 3/4 front views.
Last edited by Greg_Lewis on Mon Jul 11, 2016 10:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
Greg Lewis, Prop.
Eyeball Engineering — Home of the dull toolbit.
Our motto: "That looks about right."
Celebrating 35 years of turning perfectly good metal into bits of useless scrap.
Andy R
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Location: So. Calif.

Re: New York Central Streamlined Hudson

Post by Andy R »

WOW, Jack, WOW.
Steam Engine Dan
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Re: New York Central Streamlined Hudson

Post by Steam Engine Dan »

yea my dad has a copy of Know Thy Hudsons too. and he loves it.
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JBodenmann
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Re: New York Central Streamlined Hudson

Post by JBodenmann »

Hello My Friends
Thanks Andy, and Greg you are most correct. It was a stoke of luck to get that book, and it was worth the price of the book just for them four photos. The whole book was real cool and I must thank my friend Jim Kreider. I know quite a bit more about these engines now. One of the things that I discovered was that there was a small casing on each side of the smoke box just behind the stack. I had never noticed it before. I don't know what it was for, it may have had something to do with the front end throttle and superheaters. Just a guess. So here are a few snappies on how to go about making this little puzzle. The top photo shows a little wood form tool that was made up. I used maple, nice hard wood, and it's also what was laying around. Next photo down, a piece of #26 Ga. cold rolled, clamped in the fixture and whomped over the edge with, you guessed it, our old friend the rawhide mallet. Nothing fancy, and we have made a cool compound curved edge. Third photo down is the flange for the sides and bottom edge. Some strips were sheared up and the corners were welded with the TIG welder. What a handy little trinket. In the bottom photo we have the whole mess stuck down to a bit of .062 aluminum in preparation for soldering. The main part that we formed in the fixture was trimmed with tin snips and then finessed on the round end of the belt sander to match the curve of the boiler. The aluminum sheet was squirted through the slip roll to duplicate the curvature of the boiler, it then makes the ideal surface to solder all our bits together on. Things were held in place with frogs and C clamps.
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Small casing1.jpg
SmallCasing2.jpg
SmallCasing3.jpg
SmallCasing4.jpg
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JBodenmann
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Re: New York Central Streamlined Hudson

Post by JBodenmann »

Here is some more. It's surprising how little solder is often needed. Everything was cleaned up nice and bright, and fluxed. Acid core solder was used. It was hammered out thin as seen in the top photo. Then tiny bits were snipped off and set in place with tweezers as in the second photo. It was evenly heated with a propane torch and the solder slurped right into the joint. There is one of these casings on each side. The casing on the engineers side doesn't proceed down as far as the fireman's side as it must clear the throttle shaft. The casings are held in place with #00-90 round head brass screws. They used slotted round head screws on the prototype.
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SmallCasing5.jpg
SmallCasing6.jpg
SmallCasing8.jpg
SmallCasing7.jpg
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