The Home Machinist!

I am now ten months from retirement with the dream of completing the a 2.5 inch scale (7.5 Gauge) Forney. Kombrink's Engine is complete with cars now and I hope to run it this next few years while I work on the Forney.

Today the Forney boiler material is being ordered and the engine pulled back to the center of the shop.

Two years ago I decided I would also need a train of cars to pull in the larger scale to pull. Engines by themselves look somewhat lonely out on the track. Although I could simply buy them using the money tree in the backyard, like everything else around here they will have to be built on the budget and machines I have access to. I think this puts me in the main stream of this hobby.

Two year ago, with support from what I call the Fellowship of the Trucks, I started the process of making the Trucks I would need for the project.

So this thread will be on the building of cars in 2.5 inch scale. Looking for input from anyone that has done it and knows the suppliers that support it.

Tom Artzberger has the parts from the wheels up !!!!

John B

Very true about Tom's parts, But the crazy part of me likes to design and build more than right checks. Actually it is not any cheaper. Just more of a challenge.

The major thing on this project was to acknowledge my inability to stick with one project for a while. For this reason I asked four other people to stay on top of me to see this thru. They become the "Fellowship of the Trucks" as this was the first hurdle.

The truck/car project was greatly inspired by the books available from Branch Line Products. I cannot recommend these enough. I say inspired as I am not building the same car or trucks but once you see his drawings you will see why they are inspiring for modelers.

The Trucks

For the rivet counters out there. You might want to skip this entire thread. I have a "TLAR" personality. Meaning "That Looks About Right".

The idea for the trucks is based on Drawings and Photos available in books and the internet. But there was a lot of artistic license taken with a mind on my capabilities as a newbie at this and the shop capability I have.

Journal Boxes are based on the drawings in the Branch Line Books. For the Legal Beagles out there, I did contact Jerry and tell him what I was doing. He was proud the books inspired me and only ask that I give him credit. He does get a little perturbed if you copy the book and resale it though.

While working on the drawings for the trucks, I also worked up the patterns. Pattern drawings were sent to Shapeways. These took a couple of weeks to come back to the shop where they were reproduced in Kwik Kast II. Match plates were made up with six journal boxes and they were sent off to Cattail Foundry in Pennsylvania. Total time from drawing to Iron was a little over three months.
I had gained a little experience making journal boxes when working the year before doing the Allen Models JB, so I understood the need for a core box.
This photo really shows the difference in Narrow gauge 2.5 inch when compared with an Allen 1.5 inch truck.

Machining the JB.

The steps in machining the JB was:

Bottom:
Back:

Top:

I would note that the placement of the holes for the thru bolts are critical in their placement as you will use them as a reference in how deep you bore the bearing hole. I made a fixture using a 90 degree plate to bolt each JB to when doing the bearing hole. I did not use a boring head but ordered a cheep 1.125 end mill to do the cut. Once the fixture was set up, it was simply drill each one and bolt the next one in.
the finish work on the lid opening was done using a plywood fixture that held the JB at the right angle to clean up the opening.

Not quite in order, but one of the side projects was the lid doors for the JB.

I ended up using various drawing and photos to draw up a Lid Door using Solidworks. This ran $70.00. The drawing was sent to Shapeways to be printed in Stainless steel. This was sent to Despatch Railroad Supplies where they used it to make White Metal reproes for me at around $4.50.

Columns. (Not sure what these are really called)
Thinking of adding brakes into the design, I chose to draw the columns based on the photo above.

What I came up with was TLAR quality.

Although I drew them as a left and a right. I would end up joining them on the match plate. They are cast as a pair and have to be sawed apart to machine.
Machining them is pretty straight forward.

Next I needed bars. I also needed to be able to bend them consistently. This required a jig to bend the bars to that would allow me to drill the bolt holes consistently so the bars would not have to be hammered into place for each set of trucks. I want them to be consistent enough to simply be a bolt together item.

This led to me making a copy of Greg Glos's bender and coming up with a fixture. This was covered in the live Steam section at

http://www.chaski.org/homemachinist/vie ... 42#p384042

I made the design around 5/8 X 1/4 inch cold rolled steel. Some of the Fellowship wanted to use 3/4 Hot Rolled steel as it is easer to find and also less expensive. They are interchangeable in the design.

First Prototype showed a ton of issues.

Wheels,

Wanting to make wheels from scratch but not wanting to delay the project the Fellowship decided to use castings provided by Fender.

In the mean time I developed drawings to do 26 inch narrow gauge wheels. These patterns were printed by Shapeways and I made two copies with Kwik Kast II. As my time was used up, I sent these to Steve, who worked them into four pattern on the match plates to reduce the cost per casting at Cattail.

As the patterns were being developed, I continued to machine the wheels provided by Fender. I machined out three sets at one time to speed up the prototype process.

First prototypes. No brakes or springs yet.