First four tyres

The photo above presents the first four Proto:87 tyres to be found among the chips around my lathe. These are the 30″ pilot wheels, and their brass centres need to have spokes cut in before getting soldered into the tyres. They’re not perfect, but every wheel is better than the last, and I think these […]

Wheel Progress

Parts for the first wheel rolled off the lathe this week. The engine truck wheels are only 8 mm in diameter, and have eight spokes. The spokes themselves are only a couple of millimetres long, and so, I have elected to make these wheels in two parts – a tyre and a centre. I actually […]

Momentum

I didn’t realize it at the time, but the worst thing about the great flood of 2018 was that it completely destroyed my momentum. At the end of January, I had finally arrived at a place where I thought I might be able to cut Proto:87 wheels for #622. I had even cleaned the lathe […]

Treasure at the Winnipeg Railway Museum

The day after our trip on the Prairie Dog Central, I carved half an hour out of the family vacation to visit the Countess of Dufferin at the Winnipeg Railway Museum. This venerable old engine is the one that I could find that has a mud drum, and she was going to help me with […]

Frame pattern for 622

Working fifteen minutes at a go, I’ve finally finished putting together the pattern for the thicker Nickel Silver sheet. I think if I’d been more cunning, I almost could have fit two whole models on there. As it is, there will be plenty of leftover etch and there are doubles of all the riskiest parts. […]

Virtual dry fit for 622

In typical Panglossian fashion today, I uploaded the STL file for 622’s plastic parts to Shapeways. I might have hit the big “Print” button, if the bounding box hadn’t precluded the use of their highest resolution machine. It’s a good thing I didn’t because the pause gave me an opportunity to assemble all the parts […]

Just about finished drawing #622

Tonight as I was drawing the step that the fireman would use to light the headlight (imagine that at night at -30 Celsius!), I thought I must be just about finished with the drawing. So, I dropped all the parts into an OnShape assembly to see what is yet to be drawn. I discovered the […]

Lance Mindheim on Time

A great post on Lance Mindheim’s site caught my attention at lunch today. Here is the critical idea, but you should read the whole post: The hallmark of a good design? It’s pretty basic when you step back and think about it. A “successful design” is one that results in a model railroad that produces […]

Equalization POC

We’re just two weeks away from the Railway Modellers’ Meet. As I’ve said before, I always like to bring something to display, and I think everyone else should too. What’s more, we committee members agreed to bring something to get the display rolling: I have a commitment to bring a display! So, I’m working to […]

Semi-believable coupler pocket

From a review of the 1906 Locomotive Builders Dictionary¹ it seems like the pilot, and also likely the tender couplers on 622 should not have draft gear per se, but would have been mounted in cast coupler pockets, without any springing at all. These were very narrow affairs, barely wider than the 6-inch shank of […]