Discuss park gauge trains and large scale miniature railways having track gauges from 8" to 24" gauge and designed at scales of 2" to the foot or greater - whether modeled for personal use, or purpose built for amusement park operation or private railroading.
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Topics may include: antique park gauge train restoration, preservation, and history; building new grand scale equipment from scratch; large scale miniature railway construction, maintenance, and safe operation; fallen flags; track, gauge, and equipment standards; grand scale vendor offerings; and, compiling an on-line motive power roster.
Glenn Brooks wrote: ↑Sat Mar 30, 2019 1:17 am
Last year I priced out 4x4 cedar ties, in lieu of treated fir. Hoped to achieve rot resistance with cedar. Isaquah Cedar said they would be old growth- so tight grain and rot resistant. However, Ended up buying a stack of cedar 4x4 seconds -mill rejects, from an after market lumber dealer up in Vancouver BC. The load was cheap, but at least half the stack soon split into two or more pieces over winter and many, 50% maybe, got eaten end to end by bugs. Partially my fault as I didn’t stack them with cleats for air circulation. So ended up only being able to use about half the stack. The rest all went into firewood, and the better pieces became a retaining wall, around one curve. They are second growth, so no idea how durable they will be. Like popcorn for The little carpenter ants colonies, apparently. Such is railroading in the modern age....
It's crazy, my grandparents prior home had cedar siding on it and it was bug paradise. It got so bad that a wood pecker was pecking holes in the siding to get to the bugs and they had to put these fake plastic owls up to scare it away.
This stuff is supposed to work pretty well in treating the wood and making it non-tasty to insects:
Came across some good photos of a loosely based S4 locomotive using takeup bearings for journal and fake equalize bars.
Looks very nice! Although I would definitely paint the take bearings to match the sideframes.
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I was doing a google image search and saw that one, I didn't notice it had take-up bearings in the trucks though. Yours is going to look much better:)
I've began work on my muffler, not much to look at as it's just a pile of material but I'll post more pictures when I start welding it up.
Here's the muffler coming together. It's two pieces of 6x6x1/4 square tube. The perforated plate is some 3/16" with 1/2" holes in it. I'm going to stuff the "cores" with rockwool and then weld them into each tube, drill a crossover hole in the sides on one end, and then weld them together. The piece of 6x12 I found was too "bloated" on the 12" side to use. This is going to be installed as the "fuel tank".
I like the way it allows the trucks to articulate yet not allow leaning, so that the trucks will align themselves to the track independent of the spring movement.
I'm waiting for some parts to arrive for the muffler/air tanks, so I hopped over to the riding car and started fitting up the sides of the hopper to the frame and working on the ribs. I'm using 1/2" square aluminum bar for the ribs that will be drilled and tapped with screws from the inside, sorry rivet counters.
I have been watching this build for a while and it is such a fun build to watch, major props for the work that you have done! I like rivet counters, I think they offer good challenges. But at the end of the day, this is a hobby. The only thing that counts is having fun, which it clearly looks like you are having. I really like seeing the CAD work too and then going out and building it. Makes me want to get my computer models made into working models.
I'm excited to see the finished product. Keep it up!
Thanks SPSTEAM, this has been a fun build using and re-purposing the parts and scrap I can get my hands on for the most part. We had plenty of scrap sheet metal strip laying around, but there was just no way to form it into the hat channels for the ribs anywhere close to the right size. The square bar ribs actually look pretty good, I got one side worth of ribs mounted tonight before both my cordless drill batteries died on me. I don't want any corrosion in the lap seams so I haven't permanently assembled anything yet. I think I'm going to use an automotive seam sealer when I do final assembly on the hopper car, Loctite all the fasteners, and then paint the whole thing.
