The Home Machinist!

I'm kind of jumping around right now unfortunately. I've got all the turnout ties laid out on the bench with one rail temporarily installed, but have to wait until I can have a router fixture laser cut from thin plate for the diverging route grooves. I could bend something custom and spend hours on it, but the plate guide will be accurate, simple, and able to be screwed onto the row of ties to quickly make turnouts RH or LH so it's worth it waiting for it to be made.
I have two 10' lengths of track pre-made in the garage, thought I posted up pictures here?
I think I'm going to weld short lengths of pipe at the joiners and use bolts instead of drilling all the little holes in the rail.
I've been getting 20' lengths, last order was $55 for 80', I got another rusty 80' for free from the un-controlled material pile.
I have all the parts for my riding car trucks except wheels....
Locomotive frame weld out is just waiting on more shop time with the TIG, I need to deal with a few more details before the bulkheads frame rails and x-members become one.

Its alot like herding cats. A little this way, and a move over there. Just dont lose sight of your goal, and keep your work days within reach. There will always be things to putter on. It will depend on how determined you are. Or is obsessed a better word.

I’m interested in your thoughts for your “light duty wheel sets”?
I’ve been considering using 8” cast iron casters with 1/4” circular plates bolted to the backs for flanges. Of course they will not have tapered treads, and will be running them on groovy track also. Gonna have to build a set and see how well it tracks.

Wheels are a tough sell for me. I have a lathe and collect heavy round stock when I can. That means a monthly trip to the local supply house to see what drops they have. Most often they have a foot or two of various rounds, and they are happy to get them out the door, if they dont have to play with them. Otherwise they can accumulate and they go into the scrap dumper for a loss. I have made discs of aluminum from auto wheels and such like, and cast them in sand for non-riding cars and cabeese. The aluminum tends to wear a bit, and being cast they wont hold up like iron or steel in derailments losing pieces of flange, but they can be very cheep and easy.

Before I spent a nickle on any washer/pipe/slug/ rube goldberg, I would consider the cost of that path against some wheels already machined and offered on flea bay, trains is Us or other sites. Admitted a set of trucks gets salty, but so does the rest of any hobby. Throwing good money at a bad answer is not for me, so I have my project jar (usually MT ) that keeps hobby monies in the hobby.

Making a set of fox style or arch bar trucks is not all that hard, just look at a pic and scale it off. From twenty feet off nobody will notice much, just that your car, speeder, engine runs out fairly well. One thing to meter your efforts is if you take any equipment to foreign tracks, they have the final say on what will run for flangeways switches and all that. Be a guest and dont argue. Be prepared to meet demands, for chains and safty and all the customs of their house.

Again a model, LOOKS LIKE, or is a paradee of real life. A plastic model airplane doesnt really fly, but looks like it could. We just do one better and make things that roll and move and looks like a real train. We just capture the image, or produce a miniature for the purist.

My thoughts for the "light duty" wheels is to use slices of extra heavy pipe as the tire and weld them to a plate flange, then turn them on the lathe.
Remember I'm 12" gage, so not much to buy out there and I'm ok with that.

Interesting article on ILBS where someone used barbell weights as wheels.
http://ibls.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Wayne_Davis


My plan is also to run 12" gauge track but build in 3" scale. So I'm in the same predicament. I need 8-1/4" wheels but, I don't want to spend $150 per wheel for my X-1 build. Gets pricey fast.

8" pipe would get you an 8-5/8" O.D. and .322" wall thickness. Jump up to extra heavy 8" pipe and you get 1/2" wall thickness, which would leave you enough meat to turn down to your 8-1/4" finish dimension. What machines/tooling do you have access to?

We just made a bunch of bollards from some 5" extra heavy pipe, this will work great for the tire portion for my light-duty rolling stock wheels so I've claimed a remnant:)

There is nothing wrong with 'other' uses of materials that crop up. like a frying pan for a smoke box front. Bravo! Many a dome on locos are used catering pans and whatnot. If it feels right, do it. Make it 'look' right.

One large caviat on cast iron anything, especially bar bell wights. I bought a set to make flywheels for a putt engine, and found them to be junk , almost white iron.. I had to settle for grinding them around the edges while in the lathe and making a bored sleave for the center. Still many things can be viable unless making patterns and castings are the path for the purist. Pipe slices are commonly used for making tires in our hobby. Finding the right sizes are the challenge and not so easy. So one must substitute money or time in the persuit, either of which is precious little.

Ryan, do you have the contact info for the company that sells pipe segments on demand? I lost the info that was discussed months back.

Thanks
Glenn

In your neck of the woods, try PDM Steel. My work has rems too if you happen to be up here again. We're negotiable...prices are in donuts for the office not dollars:)

Steamin, I work for a fab shop and was a fabricator before I disabled myself into management. Previously to that, 10 years of machinist experience.
Based on that, this is going to be a fabricators/machinists railroad. I won't be purchasing or making any castings, not at least for some time.

I have more pictures to upload but the home computers hard drive gave up the ghost, new one arrived and I found my windows disk and key so I have to repair and reload everything, hope to be back up in a day or two. Might get them posted via phone I'll see how things go.

I was able to upload these to imageshack on my phone then copy them here.

Riding car tacked up, some welds done.
Center cross member added and tacked in.
Most of the welding done.

Still need to add the coupler pocket tubes, and the plates that support the back of the pockets and have holes in them for the safety chain and air hose.

The shop cut the end plates on our Arclight CNC plasma table, only took a couple minutes.
This frame is 5'-8" long, will eventually replicate a 34' 7-rib open hopper. Thankfully, it will fit in the roto-blaster, so not worried about the rusty 3" channel.

This frame has 4" channel to pick up the trucks, a 3" channel spine and center x-member, the ends are 3/8" plate, sides are 1-1/2x1/4 angle.

I sense defense in the last post. My intent was to encourage not discourage, if I am singing to the choir. I cannot truly judge and know your level of prowess or expertise. i cannot post pics myself as the computer changed as did the programs, and I have not pursued dong so. At any rate, I do not wish to raise your ire.

As a picture is worth many words, your car frame looks well proportioned for the loads it may be stressed to. I assume this will be a working car for building the road, and not just ornamental. In the larger scales things get real very quickly, and to my eye you are on track with the heavy channel and structure. In use we have turned over a gravel car with a full load, and it survived with only paint scrapes. Stresses from several tons of gravel can easily destroy a lightly built model. So that should be your watermark. I like it. The crusher run limestone we use around here weighs in at 2200 lbs per yard, and bank sand as high as 2600.