Holding on to the Axle

We’ve now seen that even reliable old Percy can lose the grip between axles and wheels when things get rough. I’m driven to ask what exactly is the best way to connect the wheels to the axles so they don’t slip? There are plenty of scale locomotives running around with an interference fit between wheel […]

Breaking Inertia

Ever since the birth of The Girl, the month of November has been swamped with domestic activity. I’ve kept a journal since The Boy was born (something I recommend to every parent, by the way), but when The Girl joined our family, I started transcribing my journal into a photo book, which I print using […]

Percy’s wide chassis

For Daylight Savings Hour —- that magical extra hour of modelling time you get once a year when all the clocks go back — I designed and printed frame spacers for Percy that give the chassis dimensions similar to #622. For the first time I also tried pushing the chassis on glass, which turns out […]

Percy’s new rods

Percy received a new set of connecting rods to match his new split frame. For those keeping score, this is Percy’s third set of connecting rods. I decided to try out the new style of crank pin to see how it behaved and how easy or difficult it is to manufacture. Over all, this pattern […]

Crawl space nighthawks

While I enjoy the occasional model railway magazine, unlike most other modellers, I’ve never had space to keep them. For years, I have captured significant articles in binders, and this enabled me to save many feet of shelf space in ads alone. However, my idea of significance has grown narrower with each passing year. The […]

Percy gets a split chassis

I eventually did dig my way out of the Bad Night of Modelling. The computer had decided to fit the drawing to the page, rather than printing it 1:1 as I had thought. Once corrected, it was a simple matter to start over again. This time, I made two smoking stacks of metal, and drilled […]

A bad night of modelling

Some nights you’d really be better off to just plunk yourself in front of Netflix with a glass of something you can’t pronounce without channeling your inner Highlander1. After a week of meetings and work, all I wanted was to make some progress against the next flight of experiments. These require investment in a new […]

The wisdom of Kiff Holland

As I’ve finished the remaining bookshelves in the train room, I’ve been going through the boxes of books that first moved out to the garage when I started renovating the basement in 2012. What a treat to find so many old friends waiting patiently for me after all these years! Sadly there isn’t room for […]

Another Crank pin proof of concept

The next round of experiments with Percy will require yet another new set of connecting rods. I’ve been wanting to experiment with a new style of connecting rod and crank pin for years and this seems like a good time to do it. North American eight-wheelers seemed to have had two styles of crank pins. […]

Percy’s New Frame

The one place where Percy admits surprisingly tight tolerance is in the relationship between axles and frame. Dropping the original axles into the slots, I find they have a nice running fit with very little discernable fore-and-aft movement. Both #622 and #10 have bearings running in guides, soldered à-la English etched kit to the insides […]