Garden Railway Forum

Oily Rag wrote: ↑Sun Mar 24, 2019 3:37 pm Like most other things on our railway it is all scratch built. It is twin motored, has a wooden "coach built" body and a metal chassis of brass and steel. Even the wheels were made in house. The bits box provided enough plastic gears suitably modified with two 50pence Mabuchi can motors to knock a couple of transmission units.

I have a complete build history from cutting the first bit of ply (plus the works drawings of course) but I won't bore you with that. es sanded from laminated balsa, and the bonnet cover is O.5MM (20thou) plasticard heat moulded to shape at the second attempt to get something close.

Hope someone finds it of interest.

regards
Ian

Oily Rag wrote: ↑Thu Apr 11, 2019 6:03 pm Hi Steve,
Well Ahem! Those dummy "springs" were turned from brass rod. I used a tipped tool with a triangular insert which is straight on and usually used for cutting threads. Cut in concentric rings to a common depth moving the saddle along the bed quite simply by measurement with a steel rule. I should n't say this as the health and safety are not happy with it but some careful jusicious dressing with a needle file finished the tops. Part them off to length ( I did fractionally over) and then file the back off to a full diameter, that means when assembled the pattern will come out of the mould with no undercut. A bit over length means you can adjust the fit. I did cheat and milled the back off.
The worst part of that job was getting the thing to solder up without previous bits falling off again. You can see quite clearly the flood of solder towards the back of the recesses. I should have used differing temperature solders or solder paste and warmed the whole lot through. There might have been less expletives.