More Watheroo 2013 Exhibition

Here is a few more pictures of Stuart Mackay's Watheroo layout at the 2013 Exhibition.

S Scale at the AMRA Exhibition - Claremont

Some photo's from the AMRA Model Railway Exhibition held at Claremont Showgrounds over the June long weekend, enjoy.

KARRAGULLEN

G46 Shunting at Karragullen

G46 Ready to depart Karragullen



Karragullen Station and Yard

WATHEROO 

Home Signal and Watheroo Yard

 

A24 Waiting to Depart Watheroo

 

Watheroo Station

 

 

Watheroo Loco Shed and Locomotive Servicing Facilities

 

F Class and its train departing Watheroo bound for Walkaway.

WAGR etched brass numberplates.

I haven't visited this site for quite a long time and it now seems very active so I feel a bit guilty about not having made a contribution recently.  

The photo shows some custom numberplates done recently for me by Narrow Planet.  They are to S scale size and have the correct WAGR typeface.  Cost was 9.00 GBP for the two sets.  D6 will now finally get its plates after about 20 years so it can go on Graham's list of completed locos!  Steve Fulljames, who runs Narrow Planet, is very helpful, prompt and a pleasure to deal with.

CXB Sheep Wagon

Here is my latest 3D printing project just arrived from i.Materialise, after detailing and painting:

The photos below show the CXB ready for painting.  I have added a few details from brass wire including the wire rods along the sides, the hand rails at the ends, and the angled pull rod which is part of the brake rigging.  All of the parts which are grey are part of the 3D print.

For more information, see http://marbelupmodels.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/cxb-4-wheel-sheep-wagon.html

How to Make a Styrene Roof for Carriages

One of the best ways to put a roof on any model carriage is to make a styrene roof curved to shape, to suit the carriage being built. This ensures that there is very little or no stresses from the roof material to “spring” the Urethane cast sides.

This is easily done by taking a sheet of .20”/ .5mm styrene sheet and cut to length and width to suit the carriage being roofed. It is good practice to add/allow an extra 5mm of material all round to ensure coverage is achieved – the excess material can be trimmed off in the final fitting.

Find a suitable length of steel tubing – if possible to the correct diameter required to suit the carriage kit end walls. I use a piece of steel tube I saved from a piece of exercise equipment (foot section), which had been discarded by a neighbor during a local shire, kerbside rubbish collection, but any metal tube can be used including vacuum cleaner pipe, pedestal fan etc.

Take the cut section of styrene sheet and tape the ends to the steel pipe using electrical tape ensuring that the styrene is square along the pipe. Then simply wind the tape tightly along the length of the pipe ensuring the styrene sheet is pulled tight onto the pipe

Take the pipe section and stand it in the kitchen sink ( I usually have the plastic side down) and prepare 2 full kettles of boiling water - I keep an old kettle spare for this purpose so that you have the water ready to go. With the water at boiling, carefully pour the boiled water down the inside of the tube – slowly I find is best, allowing more time for good heat transfer to the steel pipe.

 

 

Allow the pipe to cool and then remove the electrical tape to reveal a nicely shaped section of curved roof material.

Take the roof section and test fit it to carriage – carefully trim the long edge to achieve a neat fit to the carriage body – this might mean making several small cuts/trims till correct size is achieved - allow excess overhang on the ends to enable addition of bargeboards and carriage end trimmings.

Glue roof into place by firstly gluing (squarely) on the end walls then using a scalpel blade laden with glue on its top surface, gently lift the sides with the pointy end and push a little glue onto roof underside and then allow the roof to return to its position – hold in place until set and then tack a few more places. Once the roof is tacked into place, run a bead of glue down the inside of the body to seal along the length. Fit end detail and trim to length.

R Class Loco - 3D Printed

I had another delivery today from i.Materialise with the remaining major parts for the R class, these being the chassis and fuel tank.  I have now transferred the bogies, motor, DCC decoder and speaker from the temporary chassis to the 3D printed chassis, and the loco is running again!

The new parts are in grey in the photos below. (As always, click on the photo for a larger view.)

I haven't finished removing the small pieces of plastic from the support structure used in the 3D printing process, hence the numerous small bumps on the underneath of the chassis.  I have just cleaned up the parts enough to assemble and test the loco at this stage. I will have to dismantle it again for final cleanup, detailing and painting.

I designed the chassis with slots to accommodate two brass I-beams to give it some rigidity.  The real chassis is also based on two large I-beams.  The brass I-beams are a standard item from Special Shapes.

The fuel tank is hollow inside and can be filled with lead for weight.

 The headstocks have some detail included, including cowcatchers, and holes for brake and air hoses. The headstocks accommodate a Kadee long-shank whisker coupler.

Previous posts on the R Class:

• Bogies
• Body

Z Class

My Z Class

In December last year I brought along two items for my first show and tell, one of which was a WAGR Z Class and had some requests to follow up with an article so here it is.

The Z class, an 0-6-0 shunting locomotive, entered service at the beginning of dieselisation in November 1953. Three of these locomotives were ordered numbered 1151, 1152 and 1153, to work the jetties of Albany, Bunbury and Esperance. Further information is available here. I was quick to register my interest in a WAGR Z Class following the announcement in June last year that Railwest was seeking interest in doing a rerun, which would consist of the mould and detailing parts and would require a Bachmann BR Class 03. The mould which had originally been developed for an earlier Bachmann BR Class 04? As I’ve always liked these BR shunters I ended up buying both a new Bachmann Class 03 and an older Class 04 in new condition from Ebay, however I decided to go with the new BR 03 after reading an article on fitting DCC to the loco in the July Edition of the Hornby Magazine. The project by Paul Chetter detailed adding a small sugar cube speaker and a Zimo MX 648R decoder loaded with a custom sound project (ZS03) developed from recordings taken from an actual BR Class 03. All of these items were listed as available for purchase from UK based digitrains.

Here is a link to what it sounds like in operation in the BR 03

After doing some research I found both locomotives had Gardner 8 cylinder engines with the BR Classes 03 having the larger 24L 8L3 and the Z class having the smaller 11.2L 8LW. Whilst a little different I really couldn’t hope for more than being able to get a sound project recorded from an actual shunter with the same make of engine and same number of pistons so I went ahead and purchased the speaker and decoder with the installed sound project from digitrains though if you’d prefer to buy locally Richard from DCC Concepts now stocks these speakers.

BR Class 03 Engine: Gardner 8L3 Cylinders: 8 Bore: 5 ½” Stroke: 7 ¾” Size: 24L

Z Class WAGR Engine: Gardner 8LW Cylinders: 8 Bore: 4 ¼” Stroke: 6” Size: 11.2L

Anyhow next step was to modify the chassis to fit in the Z class mould. First, I removed the all the extra electronics including capacitors, LED pickups and 6 pin socket and circuit board. Having no need for the threaded plastic shanks which held the circuit boards down, I cut all of them off.

I continued by trimming up the plastic part of the chassis as shown below in red with a pair of side cutters.

I investigated a number of options for locating the chassis within the body and wanted to get the alignment close to the original as pictured below but in the end opted for a spacing which pushed the chassis slightly further towards the cab end, in order to accommodate the speaker at the front of the chassis.

Actual

My model

To achieve this fit I used a number 115 high speed Dremel cutter to mill down the chassis as shown below. In order to accommodate the kadee couplers I also had to mill between the chassis rails at the rear to increase the width and tidied up the corners with a smaller cutter.

After milling the chassis I glued in a piece of 2mm thick styrene to the front end to close the chassis and provide a tight fit of the chassis between the buffer beams. Initially I found the body sat to high so I milled more off the top side of the ends of the chassis to lower it down.

Extensions were then added to the chassis using 0.02mm thick brass sheet. For the front end chassis extensions a coating of black nail varnish was added to the outside near the pickups to ensure they would be well insulated as they were to be soldered together later. All extensions were fixed with super glue. Later I added some 1mm strips and a t girder which was a piece of rail with the head cut off.

To complete the chassis I added a set of 2 small 2 pin plugs mounted on a PCB, I got from DCC Concepts to connect the decoder to the motor and power pickup whilst allowing the chassis to be easily separated from the body.

With the chassis completed I turned my attention to the body, first gluing in two 2mm strips of styrene to provide more room to screw the chassis to.

I then added all the electronics including the Zimo decoder, sugar cub speaker, a stay alive capacitor, headlights and marker lights. The headlights used proto white Nano LEDs and signal red for the markers from DCC Concepts as was the stay alive.

Now I wanted to be able to potential remove the decoder and used blue tack as I didn’t have double sided tape and that was a mistake as once the small varnished wires for the LEDs got stuck in the blue tack there was no safe way of removing it.

Testing the loco I found that the operation using this decoder which was setup specifically setup for this mechanism was excellent.

I painted the loco and added transfers I made to match what the class looked like new as per photo P0631 from the Rail Heritage WA photo gallery.

http://www.railheritagewa.org.au/archive_scans/displayimage.php?album=search&cat=0&pid=4341#top_display_media

or at least as best as I could from a black and white photo.

My Loco, still have to improve my technique with that Krystal clear

Z 1152 as it appears new in photo P0631 from the Rail Heritage WA photo gallery

My Loco again

Cassidy