The Reading and Squamish Light Railway Stock Thread

[Keith S]

I'm in Vancouver. You're more than welcome anytime you're in town. Gotta find some kind of silver lining to the change from Milan to Abbotsford!!

Not as bad as you might think. My training was in Malpensa, which is where the airport is; a particularly deserted and dusty little place, and Milano is not my favourite city, really. I actually found my first session in Abbotsford last month quite enjoyable. For one thing, it was a two-hour journey to get there rather than twenty. Also I spent some of my childhood in Coastal British Columbia, and later worked there, and in my opinion it's the most beautiful part of Canada. (Yes even Abbotsford).. I will miss stopping in England on the way home, but we still go there for work sometimes so hey-ho, not so bad.

Anyway, if I can convince the airport security to let me on with a live-steam locomotive, I'll bring mine next time and we can confound your club members with TWO maroon, apartment-built British locos!

[big-ted]

Anyway, if I can convince the airport security to let me on with a live-steam locomotive, I'll bring mine next time and we can confound your club members with TWO maroon, apartment-built British locos!

I think I mentioned elsewhere in the thread that I had my kit shipped to my Dad's place in the UK. I picked it up when I came to visit, the flew to my Mum's in Spain with it, then flew home to Canada. The boiler got scrutinised many times by airport security but, believe it or not, the only thing they actually stopped me from carrying in my hand luggage were the screwdriver tips for the Roundhouse multitool...

[big-ted]

Made a tank wagon out of a North Pilton Works flat car, a 3D printed tank, some bike spokes & some pieces of wood.

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Need to figure out some graphics for it but pretty pleased with how it came out!

[LNR]

pretty pleased with how it came out!

And you should be Ted, the 3D tank came out well and the bike spokes look good. Every modeller should have some, very handy things at times.
Grant.

[FWLR]

I would be very proud of that wagon myself Ted...Brilliant.

[ge_rik]

Great looking tank wagon. That 3D printed tank looks high quality. No sign (to me) or ridges or strata. Have you done a lot of filling and rubbing down or are 3D printers getting better?

Rik

[big-ted]

Great looking tank wagon. That 3D printed tank looks high quality. No sign (to me) or ridges or strata. Have you done a lot of filling and rubbing down or are 3D printers getting better?

Rik

There was quite a bit of filling & sanding, though it wasn't so much the "layering" of plastic that I worked to get rid of. If you look closely you can still see that the curvature of the tank isn't quite smooth. Rather than being a cylinder the tank is almost slightly polygon shaped. I don't know if one of the stepper motors was sticking to cause this or if it's sone kind of resolution limit.

The printer I used is, by modern standards, very cheap & basic. The pricier modern ones can produce parts that I'm pretty sure would only need light filling & sanding. We have one at the parent office of my work that prints with carbon fibre reinforcement that turns out super strong parts also.

3D printing definitely isn't the most efficient way to make something large & cylindrical like this, but my lathe skills are pretty rusty. Besides this allowed me to print the rivets on the tank rather than applying them separately after the fact.

[philipy]

If you look closely you can still see that the curvature of the tank isn't quite smooth. Rather than being a cylinder the tank is almost slightly polygon shaped. I don't know if one of the stepper motors was sticking to cause this or if it's sone kind of resolution limit.

I don't know what drawing software you use but I've had that problem with Sketchup, and recently found the answer.
Sketchup by definition doesn't draw true curves, it uses a series of straight lines joined together to approximate a curve.
I recently discovered that by default it draws a circle with 24 straight line segments. With a very small radius this isn't really noticeable but the bigger the circle the more obvious it becomes.It is possible to increase the number of segments to pretty much as many as you want, but only when a circle is first drawn on a new drawing and that new number then becomes the default FOR THAT DRAWING ONLY, it isn't possible to set it as a universal default, for some weird reason.

My Qidi printer then quite faithfully reproduces all the straight lines segments, not a curve!

This picture shows part of something I'm working on at the mo. The one on the right is the standard 24 segment circle ( part of) and on the left is increased to 64.
The angles are still visible but a lot less obvious (the O/A span of the arch is 140mm, for reference). I might try it again with say 120 or so segs, but this object takes about 6 hours 40min to print so I'm not too keen, it might be quicker to get the wet n' dry out!
I don't know, but it is quite possible that other software does something similar.

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[big-ted]

You could well be right. I'm modeling in SolidWorks, which I'm very sure models genuine circles, but I have to export to .STL in order to open in my printer software (Cura) & i suspect the triangles used by the STL export do what you describe.

In any case, it's only noticeable very up close now that I've primed & sanded it, so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

[FWLR]

In any case, it's only noticeable very up close now that I've primed & sanded it, so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

I wouldn't either Ted.
It's still a great build and has you say, " Who's going to see it at 6 feet away".

[big-ted]

Bit of a thread bump as I'm going to be working on a few bits with being more confined to the house...

Some pictures of the 'mixed goods' running with the new tanker in the consist:

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Since it ran the tanker has had some graphics added:

IMG_20200401_185548-1.jpg (63.41 KiB) Viewed 46868 times

And now I have a question. I have a rake of three tipper wagons I built from old tinplate cans:

IMG_20200401_184757.jpg (93.09 KiB) Viewed 46868 times

I've always been reluctant to paint them as I felt people enjoyed seeing that they were made from old tin cans, but I think I'm changing my mind. Thing is, they're covered in solder and flux, and the plastic coating that food-tin-cans get. I don't have much hope of cleaning all this off, so I wonder what my best hope is of getting paint to stick? I'm not looking for a nice smooth finish, just something that sticks. I'm tempted to try plasti-dip as that's sold in an aerosol here in a gunmetal grey colour. Any other suggestions for painting or cleaning? I don't really want to take the wheels off either since they're soldered on...

[FWLR]

The tanker looks great Ted..

Wow what a brilliant scratch build with the tippers...

Can't help with the painting I am afraid Ted. But the plasti-dip might work, then you can paint them any colour after I should think. There may be other more experienced members who would give you some better information though mate.

[tom_tom_go]

Chemically blacken the skips and then paint/weather over the solder joints.

[LNR]

That tanker is brilliant, the tie bars and end bolsters really set it apart.
Grant.

[Peter Butler]

I'm going to be working on a few bits with being more confined to the house...

Being confined to your 'house' looks OK to me!
You might just have to tidy up afterwards though?
I agree about the tanker, that is a great job.

[GTB]

Thing is, they're covered in solder and flux, and the plastic coating that food-tin-cans get. I don't have much hope of cleaning all this off, so I wonder what my best hope is of getting paint to stick? ............. I don't really want to take the wheels off either since they're soldered on...

Big Ted,

The skips look good, are they based on the design from the website run by Marc Horovitz (tinplate dad) and one of his daughters (tinplate girl)?

If you used normal tin cans as the material source, the inner lining will likely be an epoxy varnish and the outside printed label will be some sort of printing ink. A solvent based paint should work OK on those. I don't think water borne paints would work though.......

Enamel paint, or car duco, in a spraycan should stick to both, but I'd try the paint on a can first, as the solvents may attack the printing.

I don't always remove wheels for painting. Just spray them body colour and remove the paint off the wheel treads with a pipe cleaner dipped in paint thinner, while the paint is still soft.

Tom,

You've got chemical blackening on the brain.......

Tin cans are made from steel with a thin tin coating and a final varnish coating of some sort. No chance of chemically blackening that as it comes. Even if you manage to strip off the varnish, ordinary blackening solutions don't work on tin. Stripping off the tin to get down to the steel to blacken that isn't a trivial exercise either.

Regards,
Graeme

[big-ted]

Being confined to your 'house' looks OK to me!

I should point out that the running pics are definitely NOT in my home! The local garden center used to have a permanent layout available for public running, and a g-scale train shop on site. Sadly both have been disbanded for business reasons, but our club remains on good terms with the garden center. Every year during the late January-early February slow period they let the club setup the portable layout in one of the near-empty greenhouses, which is where those pics were taken.

The skips look good, are they based on the design from the website run by Marc Horovitz (tinplate dad) and one of his daughters (tinplate girl)?

Yep. That's the one!

Thanks for the painting tips. Do we think an enamel paint would stick to the solder joints where there's dried-on flux remaining? From what I'm reading this is going to be the biggest problem, and scrub as I might it's been on there so long I don't think it's coming off. I guess if whatever I use doesn't stick to the joints I can probably use something else in a rust colour at the joints...

[GTB]

Do we think an enamel paint would stick to the solder joints where there's dried-on flux remaining? From what I'm reading this is going to be the biggest problem, and scrub as I might it's been on there so long I don't think it's coming off.

What flux did you use?

I use an acid flux when soft soldering brass or steel and clean up the joints as I go with an old toothbrush and Ajax cream cleanser.

If you just used rosin cored solder, electronic stores sell flux remover for cleaning up circuit boards, which should remove it. rosin is very brittle and not very sticky when cold. I'd probably just scrape most of it off with a small screwdriver, then clean up the joint with a fibreglass burnishing brush.

I'm guessing you used rosin flux. If you'd used an acid flux like Baker's Fluid, the model would be heavily rusted by now if it wasn't cleaned at the time it was built.

Regards,
Graeme

[Puddlejumper]

I’d be tempted to give them a waft over with an etch primer first??

[big-ted]

Yep. Just rosin electrical flux. Just lots of it as it's tough to solder tinplate when it's coated with the aforementioned printing & epoxy layers. Even if I did try & sand down to metal at the joins.

I'll see if I can pick up a wire brush attachment for the Dremel tomorrow & some appropriate paint & primer. Cheers for the help folks!