Wheel masters

A rather large box of air arrived from Shapeways today. Safely suspended inside were the masters for 622’s wheels. Seriously, the box is over 4000 cubic centimetres of air, and contained perhaps 2 cubic centimetres of plastic! The castings were well protected! No box from Shapeways has ever lasted more than a few minutes after […]

Vaguely like wheels

I’m a little over ten hours of practice into learning to use my lathe. To tell the truth, I don’t think I will need the full twenty hours I’d planned. Already I can do most of what I need to be able to do to cut wheels. Wrecking my only Proto:87 form tool would make […]

30 inch wheels are small!

Last night’s lathe practice was about making my own tools. All 622’s wheels need a ridge at the edge of the tyre, and so, I made a little boring tool to create that. Once done, I tried it out and made the test wheel shown here. The wheel is the size of 622’s engine truck […]

The year ahead

I realized over Christmas that it’s coming on two years since I decided the best course of action for number 10 was to park it until I have the skills to repair it. As that is my only locomotive, no wheels have turned on Pembroke since then, which is a sad state of affairs for any […]

Sweet anticipation

It doesn’t matter how many times I order printed parts from Shapeways, it still feels like magic. The patterns for 622’s wheels existed only in my mind until I drew them in OnShape. Now in a few days, I will open a package, and they will spill out into my hand – no longer mere […]

Pilot wheel drawing

I’m planning a two millimetre axle for the 30-inch pilot wheels. The wheel hub comes out pretty heavy with 3/4 mm walls, but I daren’t go finer. Indeed, I will have to test to see if I can even turn such a fine wall.

Driver drawing

As I’m planning to print patterns for the wheels, I could no longer be satisfied with blank discs representing the wheels, even in OnShape. They’re a bit of a challenging part to draw, but I think I’ve captured the look of this photo from the Parry Sound Public Library. Possibly the hub is too small – […]

Towards loco wheels

As the workshop project rounds up, I will soon have no reason to hold off on starting work on 622. The first major stumbling block is of course wheels. If I can’t make those, then I may as well abandon the project; and by that, I don’t just mean the engine, I mean Pembroke itself. […]

The courage to start on 622’s tender

Okay, so I didn’t spend the eighties and nineties blithely hacking apart diesel shells to turn GP35s into GP38s. It seemed, from reading Model Railroader back in those days, that this was the way to enjoy the hobby. Model Railroading is Fun when you approach it with a razor saw! Well, I never had the […]

Weights and wires for 622

There are two things that I didn’t design well when I built #10 (okay, there are more than two, but I’m going to write about two tonight) — weights and wires. Weight, even on the first iteration, was largely composed of scraps of lead that I squeezed into nooks and crannies wherever I could. On […]