The Home Machinist!

Finished Milling some 1200 year old fir, for the deck planking for the flat car. (Note:Just realized how old it was when I was cutting it.) It’s awe inspiring, and humbling, to work with wood that old. The grain in the wood are just a hair over 1/16” wide each, with a few planks up to 1/8”wide - must be the oldest part of the tree- when it was growing fastest- maybe 1000 years ago. Fine grain and absolutely knot free. Just Imagine, with this decking, the little flat car pretty much spans the history of the Western world. When these trees started growing as seedlings around 800 A.D. Charlemagne had just been proclaimed Holy Roman Emperor for all of Europe and Arab scholars had just discovered Algebra. When the trees were cut and milled locally, in 1904, Seattle had electrified only a hand few street lamps in the downtown area, and the Alaska Gold rush was still sending regular shipments of bullion from the Yukon, Fairbanks, and Nome, down to Seattle banks. Now we have the internet to send digital pictures and words around the world from little hand held iPads - all in the space of a few planks of wood.

Last year I salvaged a bunch of this tongue and groove flooring out of an old house in South Seattle, originally built in 1905. I’ve tried to do as much building of the RR as I can with recycled materials. So found a contractor remodeling the house and learned he was going to cart it all off to the dump, if no one wanted the flooring. So I offered to pack it off and brought it home for future RR building projects. The flooring was original 3/4” tongue and groove old growth planking. Probably cut here locally from virgin forest near my house, and milled to shape up in the Everett lumber mill, or perhaps the old industrial district at what is now Boeing field. It has been air curing now for around 114 years.

I Decided to mill the floor timbers as they were originally installed on 1880 era 32’ flat cars. The original timbers were 2x6 near as I can determine from drawings. I was most interested in reproducing the original shiplap planking style, with square cut, rabbeted edges. The 3/4” plank thickness is a bit oversized for 3” scale, but in practical terms for an 8’ MOW flatcar will support pretty much any weight load I might use it for. Pretty sure it will hold 200-300 psi. The rabbit on opposite sides comes out to just over 3/8” Horizontal by .395” deep. Thus, each plank locks together with an overlapping edge. Next step is to clean up the ends with fresh cross cuts, and fastened the planking to the two firing strips in the photo with 1/4” galvanized carriage bolts.

Still debating about leaving the surfaces distressed with the authentic old wear, or sanding clean and smooth and giving it several coats of varnish.

Looking good Glenn. I like the weathered look, maybe hit it with a coat of linseed oil to prevent water intrusion and leave it at that?
I did a bunch of online "eyeball scaling" on an "newer" flat car, the Algona Central pulp wood bulkhead flats, and it looks like the deck was made from 8x4. The machinery crate I scavenged was Italian and made of this tongue and groove pine about 5/8" thick which in my scale is super close. I'd say in 3" scale the 3/4" thickness could be a little light actually, but being you will actually put your train to work the extra thickness can't hurt. I know often if I step "heavily" on a pallet I go right through the slats.

Thanks Ryan, interesting. 4x8 makes sense for the heavier bulk carriers. Also, I assume your Algona Central flats were probably standard gauge? They would certainly be made stout.

You could potentially reinforce your pallet planking with a bit of plywood sub flooring if you decide it might be subject to breaking. Or feel free to come get some of the old growth stuff I’ve got stored. Plenty left over.

Here’s a pic of the Oahu RR box car flooring that I used as a guide. These are 1880-1900 era builds. I’ll bet these floors are thicker than 2” also! Looks like I underestimated size. Oh well. Keep moving forward:)

Glenn

Those look like a strange size, maybe a true 2" thick or 2-1/2"?
The Algona flats were standard gauge regular flats that the RR fabricated custom bulkheads onto, they are unique in that they don't have the fish-belly sides on them and they used them specifically for pulpwood loaded cross-ways. They are perfect for firewood for me and the fact that I really don't want to cut fish-belly sides and fabricate custom angles. I will probably have to laminate the pine with some plywood on the underside between the braces so the deck holds up....good idea. I even have some good quality plywood from the same crate. The plywood was on top of the pallet frame and lid, and then the tongue and groove made up the sides of the crate.
I think your prototype there is thicker and at 3" scale you're within an 1/8", close enough!

Ryan, Indeed... I vaguely remember estimating 2” true measure, but just looking at them again in the photo, Iam almost certain you are correct that they are thicker than that- wouldn’t be surprised to find 3”whenever I get back there next. Plus I’ll bet there is a fair bit of standard variation between dims for each plank. Which one is the “correct” measurement when you have three or four different sizes of the same thing? Makes it interesting when trying to replicate to scale...

BTW, related to dims, just realized my stockpile of old growth fir flooring has at least two different thicknesses of boards. Quite a few are easily .800” thick or better. Many others around .750” . Doesn’t sound like much, but it’s enuf to create a tripping hazard when laying them out as decking. Also the planks don’t fit flush to the frames timbers of the flat car, when fitting the rabbited edges edge to edge. So re-milled about half the planks again today - to get everything to fit flush.

Iam guessing the high traffic areas in the old,house, such as hallways, kitchens, etc, saw considerable wear, hence the .050” variation in height.

There wasn't much in the pics to scale to and those boxcars are NG aren't they? If so, it makes it hard to get an idea of the actual thickness of the planks. One thing that is neat is one can import pictures into Bluebeam, scale a known entity (wheel diameter in the case of the Algoma flat cars), and then scale other dimensions. The downside is that often the correct scale wood deck would never support a decent load, so compromise has to be made there especially in 1.5" scale and smaller.
That's a bummer about the variation in thickness, could be from wear of just plain variation from the beginning. As a machinist I find the tolerances in wood to be poor as well as it's annoying tendency to contract or expand and/or warp from variances in moisture and temperature. I know for my tie grooving router fixture I have to adjust the vice grip often that holds the tie in the fixture because the 2x4's vary some.

Last step before moving the flat out of the shop- prepping the couplers for installation. Simple job. Took all afternoon.

3 Hr 45 m to figure out proper work holding to drill a 3/8” hole for the draft gear shaft and springs into the back end of the coupler casting. 3 minutes to drill the hole.

Nothing would secure the coupler parallel to the drill bit. Drill press- vise slipped out of the clamps. Lathe, couldn’t hold the coupler head in place with 3, 4, or 2 jaw chuck. Finally used an old, antique bemouth angle plate on my big mill to bolt up the coupler and vise. Then zip, all done.

Typical. Welcome to machining. Again.

RussN

Finally! Out of the shop. Set the frame down on the trucks, out on the rail. All OK except the couplers didn’t line Up.

DRATS.

Last week, I measured and double checked the existing Ottaway coupler height, even set the same height to the new trucks. Everything matched up! Except I measured wrong when I welded the draft gear to the frame.

Anyway, easy fix. Just welded a second draft gear assembly under the first, and presto - all is good. So now I have 2 1/2” and 3” scale coupler heights- should they ever be needed. I think someone has done a similar double height coupler arrangement in 7.x gauge.

Finally started laying on the decking. Should finish up tomorrow afternoon.

Huuzah! Huzzah! Huzzahh! The beast has left the barn.

A small punch list of things to do tomorrow and then a steam up and take it for a test run down the main line.

It looks good Glenn. I'm glad to see the furring strips you installed so you don't have bolts/screws inside your tubes exposing them to water infiltration. Was it a little interesting getting the frame to swing over onto the trucks there?

Ryan,

I was able to swivel the frame 90* and drop one end onto one of the trucks nicely. Fortunately the frame is just light enuf where I could man handle the other end up on the rear truck. A bit tricky, but doable.

Yes, happy with the firing strips. Although I did cut drainage holes in the bottoms of the tubing. Sometimes water infiltrates through the welds...and there are the odd holes that I had to drill thru a couple of cross frames.

Glenn