Coal Car Trucks Ready to Paint

After redesigning the trucks with inside brakes, I printed a test copy. It worked fine the first time, but I noticed the axles could be a little tighter in the bearings. This should assist with getting the ride height of the cars correct. A pair of .005″ shims inserted after the wheels seems to keep […]

An Unusual View

While working on a derailment at the Lee Manufacturing spur, I grabbed this photo to see what was going on with the alignment. There is no way to get your eyeballs in to see this view, but I must say, I really like the way this scene is coming together over the past two or […]

The Wrong Coal Cars?

Have I been drawing the wrong coal cars? This is a question that has been bothering me for some time. Basically, ever since I couldn’t get the side stakes to match the varying spacing on the lone photo I have of Canada Atlantic coal cars. This spacing could indicate the presence of slope sheets, meaning […]

Coal Car Brakes Revisited

“Oh Bother,” Said Pooh, as he examined once again the lone photo of Canada Atlantic coal cars. The photo is barely worth looking at, they’re so distant, but comparing to other cars nearby, Pooh was pretty sure they had brake beams slung from the truck transoms, rather than slung from the underframe outside the trucks. […]

Refining the Coal Car Trucks

When I visited Gary Hinshaw after Christmas, we were commiserating about our 3D printing woes. I’ve been feeling that my printing has gone downhill since I got new resin last year, and hearing that Gary felt the same, I decided to look into it. Well, it turns out that printer calibration is a thing, and […]

N-Possible Couplers

I got my first look at N-Possible couplers, a new scale-size N-scale coupler, at Tim Horton’s place just before Christmas. He had a pair of box cars on a test track, and I was immediately impressed by how well they coupled, and then easily uncoupled with a pick. While I could barely see them without […]

So Long mark

From my perspective, Mark Dance burst onto the Vancouver model railway scene fully-formed. There were no years of showing up at meets and sitting at the back of clinics, no decades of collecting whatever struck his fancy at train shows, no screeds explaining the superiority of his one-day layout. No, my introduction to Mark was […]

Coal Car Test Truck

I refined the truck design a little over the holidays, and assembled a couple of test prints. The mechanical aspects are fairly good now, and as you can see it equalizes quite nicely. I just have to improve the supports a little so I don’t lose any more brake beams!

Coal Car Trucks

I’m taking a little break from Percy as I wait for some slightly larger, more powerful motors that I ordered earlier this week. I cast about for another project to pick up for a week or two and alighted on the coal cars. They’ve been waiting for a resolution to the weight problem, and they […]

Percy’s Programming Problems

Next time I’ll know. Next time I won’t trust that setting the max and min output voltage CVs will properly govern the max and min output voltages. Next time, I’ll take my meter and check. Yes, another motor has been turned into a molten mess, or maybe a tangle. I don’t know, I’m not going […]