Garden Railway Forum

When I have some kind of a railway I'll need some kind of a locomotive, so I have started this vertical boiler speeder. Originally the plan was to put the batteries in the boiler and the motor under the floor. Then I found the pictured 2 AA battery box with a switch and decided to put that under the floor for access to the switch. The plan now is to mount the motor vertically under the seat and the battery box in the boiler, where the switch can be accessed through the firebox door. The boiler is an old caulk tube with the tip cut off, flipped upside down and stuck back in the hole for a chimney. The boiler/firebox will be cut down to 4 scale feet tall minus chimney.

Part description is as follows: 1: Motor; 2: seat; 3: worm and follower gears; 4: battery box; 5: firebox door; 6: boiler/firebox; 7: steam motor; 8: slightly overscale dude; 9: imaginary smoke; 10: standard BM&LO link and pin couplers. I made a 7/8 scale ruler:

An intriguing build; I'll be watching this, please provide updates of your progress and of course lots of pictures.

GAP wrote: ↑Thu Jan 18, 2024 4:11 am An intriguing build; I'll be watching this, please provide updates of your progress and of course lots of pictures.

I will!

Me too. I've always fancied building a vertical boiler loco. Hopefully, I'll learn from your experiences.

Rik

It took me a minute to recognize the tube of caulk. Looks good as a boiler!

drewzero1 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 18, 2024 5:07 pm It took me a minute to recognize the tube of caulk. Looks good as a boiler!

Added benefit: it comes with a perfectly centered bit of pipe to fit the chimney on.

The story so far. I used a utility knife, it's very soft plastic. Cladding also crappily cut to sizeish.

Edit: If it's upside down, sorry, it wasn't upside down on the iPad and when I downloaded the picture it was right side up.

Hand for scale.

I made these balsa blocks to glue the battery pack inside the boiler. The back slides off without any screws holding it on so changing the batteries won't be a problem.

Great use of material just lying around the house.
You will start to look at things differently from now on eg a butter container can be a hopper body.
An example the bogies in here are scratchbuilt with styrene sheet for the side frames, clothes pegs springs and piece of mint tin for the suspension and plastic molding for the bolster (a piece of scrap wood would work just as well) template attached.
https://ringbalin-light-railway.blogspo ... built.html

Update.

I made the firedoor out of a coffee can lid and a little hinge, the handle is a very small tubular bead. Looking at this picture I realized I put the hinge on backwards, but it looks fine so we'll leave it. I used the forbidden eyeball method to measure and drill out holes here for rivets, I made the rivets out of a plastic lollipop stick (which can be seen to the right of the battery pack in the above post). There are 12 of them. Delilah Kitty supervising. I plan to paint it in the BM&LO's signature color, matte dark brown.

Nothing wrong with using the Mark1 eyeball.
Like the cat.

Modelling with "found" materials. Can't beat it for ingenuity and satisfaction.

Rik

Here's the boiler all glued together, before paint... And after being painted in Plasti-Kote Gray Rebuilder's Cast Finish. I couldn't find any brown spray paint, but I'm glad I went with this, it actually looks pretty convincing. This final picture shows the true color.

Not the same can, because I don't feel like getting it from the barn, but same paint inside. I'm going to weather the boiler to give it a slightly rusty look, and I'm thinking about distressing the wood cladding, does anyone have any ideas on how I could do that?

dudeface wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 11:18 pm Not the same can, because I don't feel like getting it from the barn, but same paint inside. 00CBD0A9-1A9A-44DE-8E8A-5ED9B2CCB904.jpeg
I'm going to weather the boiler to give it a slightly rusty look, and I'm thinking about distressing the wood cladding, does anyone have any ideas on how I could do that?

Looking good, making real progress.
I like the idea of putting a light inside the boiler and leaving the firebox door open a fraction.
For distressing the wood try using a small hammer or some small screws wrapped in a rag, putting on the wood and tapping lightly with a hammer.

Just a thought on the light, I generally stick one of these in fireboxes that I leave ajar. A flickering orange LED

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/301446989737 ... 68AAAAAAAA

Yes, the light was an RGB LED I had lying around. If I can keep the light from coming through the boiler I might stick it in there somewhere.

I've been using an electric tea light for my firebox. Eventually I plan to deconstruct it and plumb it into the loco's main electrical supply.

drewzero1 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 10:09 pm I've been using an electric tea light for my firebox. Eventually I plan to deconstruct it and plumb it into the loco's main electrical supply.

That also uses a flickering LED as I suggested.