12" working railroad

[rkcarguy]

I started clearing and dropping trees in the area near the driveway where I'm widening it, and where the ROW will be, tonight. Excavator is rented for the weekend to remove parts of a berm and grade/prep the home site. Any extra machine time left I'm going to use to start grading from the house up towards the road. Planning on using a string on some posts set to a 3% grade so I have something to follow and get my grading fairly close. I'll post more pictures as I hit meaningful "milestones".

[rkcarguy]

90K views, wow!
Not much to post in the way of pictures. The cabin met it's demise with about 15 minutes of excavator work, it was funny because it was just sitting on cinder blocks and when I grabbed the corner of the roof with the bucket/claw and then pushed down the whole thing stood up on one corner about 2' in the air and then folded inward. I've been picking through the remains and scavenging whatever I can, a lot of it I'll be able to re-use for my RR. About 14 cinder blocks I can use for abutments and sub-grade signal bases, the plastic water lines (will use for low voltage conduit for the signals), some of the usable lumber will go to make more ties, and I also pulled the 100amp sub panel and most of the wiring which I can use in my future "train shed".
I did set the body back on the locomotive after making the cutout across the inside of the cab face, and it doesn't look like the factory gas tank is going to clear the cab roof. So the next step is going to be modifying the existing one or making a slightly smaller one. I want more fuel capacity anyway, so the plan is to plumb in a pulse fuel pump to a secondary tank, and then have a larger return line with a high port off of the engine mounted tank. It will maintain a constant fuel level yet not build any pressure beyond the gravity fuel feed which messes with the jetting in these engines. Should the pump fail, I'll still have reserve fuel in the engine mounted tank.

[rkcarguy]

I actually got some work done on the Locomotive Monday night. I removed the upper portion of the airbox, loosened up the engine in its slotted mount and slid it right about 3/8", and also removed the fuel tank. The body now slides back over the engine. It looks like I am going to need to mount a 90* elbow on top of the lower ABS plastic airbox and intake portion, because the OEM air filter still hits the cab. I drained the fuel tank and will be cutting it apart to utilize the lower portion with the strange bolt pattern/arrangement on it, and I will "cope" it to accept a new "pipe" fuel tank. Mikuni pulse pump and brass fittings are on the way for the tank project including a fuel level gage(2 each 90* fittings and a chunk of clear 3/8" fuel line).

The next order of work though, is going to be match drilling the frame to the body so I can pin the two together. Then I'm going to work on my exhaust stack. I have questions about that. I have never had good luck running any exhaust frame-mounted when it penetrates a body panel, as it always winds up out of position when the exhaust gets hot and expands. Furthermore I don't want my stack to get rained in and fill the muffler and potentially the engine with water. I'm leaning towards something different, actually making an insulated pipe stack that mounts to the body, reduces down to the rectangle stack tube at the top, that slips over the protruding exhaust stack inside the locomotive with some considerable slop. The exhaust flow will pull a vacuum through this slop, and if I cover the actual exhaust pipe inside the stack with a "chimney cap" type thing, any rain that goes down the stack will run harmlessly out the open bottom of the pipe onto the ground below. Thoughts?

[rkcarguy]

I sourced a little K&N air filter from a motorcycle parts store that looks like it's going to fit nicely, and am going to pickup a 1-1/2" ABS pipe 90* elbow and use it to adapt the filter to the airbox. It looks like I'll be able to slip the filter over the expanded end of the elbow, and then the other end looks like it will be a decent fit over the lower portion of the OEM GX390 airbox.

[rkcarguy]

Here's the air filter modification, the 90* ABS elbow was a nice slip fit onto the sleeve protruding from the factory air box.

[Glenn Brooks]

Ryan,

The remote air filter looks like it’s going to work real well, there at the back. Is that a GX 160? 5.5 hp?? We ran 14 of those on our go kart track up in Alaska. Very long lasting engine. The 6:1 gear reduction with a belt drive was a perfect match, although better at higher speeds than lower.

[rkcarguy]

Glenn, this is a GX390, it's the "big block" single cylinder it's rated at 11.8hp and 19ft/lbs of torque. I don't think a 160 or even 270 would be enough power with the grades and weight I want to move.

[Glenn Brooks]

Ryan, Oops, Iam a bit off- tried to read the designation in the photo, couldn’t make it out. Makes sense you went with the bigger engine. bTW, I came across a formula for determining foot pounds of torque, using the coefficient of friction of free turning wheels on steel. Your motor HP is right in the middle of the torque range for a 3000- 5000# load.

BTW, Ever find out if any of your welders are S stamp rates for code fire boilers?

Glenn

[rkcarguy]

Glenn, I did some calcs based on the hydraulic reduction and efficiency and came up with about 4000#, which will leave me my 2ea 20" x 80" bulkhead flats to load up with about 2000# of passengers or firewood. I did look around the yard and only found some 14" sch 80, and some 14" that was 1/4" wall. There is a second yard that was gated/closed though with more pipe in it and I'll check that out. Our QC guy is at one of the refinery right now, supposed to return tomorrow so I'll ask him about the welder certs.

[Glenn Brooks]

Hey great, thanks Ryan.

Schedule 80 likely is more than fine. The other thing to know for sure is the type of steel formulation that comprises the pipe. I will need paper certifications of the type of steel for the Wa code approval process.

BTW, you could easily go up to 32” wide on your freight cars. Mine are 30” and 32” respectively- looks proportional and balances real well with 12” ga trucks and 6” wheels.

Glenn

[rkcarguy]

I will see if we have certs for the pipe. I was concerned that 14" schedule 80 gets awful heavy...I mean the standard wall is 3/8" thick in this size. I want to say it's .700" wall but I don't have the pipe chart in front of me right now. Do you have a length for your pipe? What do you plan to use for flues?
I may push the width out on some future MOW stock, but plan on keeping the 20" width on regular rolling stock to stay in my scale. I am surprised how prototypical it looks even though my gauge is wide for my scale. The thinner truck sides make up for the wider gauge and the trucks are very close to their correct width.

[Glenn Brooks]

I’ve been doing some calcs according to Washington boiler inspector boiler specifications. Apparently, schedule 40 meets the 150 psi low-pressure saturated steam standard, with appropriate ASME steam related steel classification. We have some club standards that say what that is. I don’t remember offhand what types of steel are acceptable. But I can look it up if you need. Generally 14 inch diameter, sch 40 with the appropriate steel works out to half inch pipe, as I recall.

Still taking dims and making as built drawings, however the overall length of the boiler is 144 inches. 14 inch boiler tube and smoke box, with wagon style flaring half way back, where it flairs out to 19 1/2 x 15 1/2 at the back head. FYI it’s a keyhole style fire box, with the bottom four inches narrowing down to 12 inch width where it sits on the frame.

The replacement boiler might need to be about 1.5” wider at the rear, due to spreading the frame to 15” gauge.