Read the Free Trolleyville Times Monthly for the Latest News on Prototype and Model Traction!

Friday, June 13, 2008

Birney Project - Opening up the destination signs.

One of the modifications I want to make to the Birney car is to open up the solid brass destination signs so that I can have it light up.

The destination sign is over the short window on the left. Ken Kidder has the shape of it stamped in there, so that simplifies things some.


Start by drilling small holes large enough to accommodate a miniature ream.


A ream is basically a cylindrical file.


Ream out the holes into a roughly square shape so that it can accommodate square file.


I highly recommend using some sort of magnification while working with such tiny models. That’s Dave wearing his Optivisor®.

Hack away at the brass now that the square file fits in there, roughing out the shape of the opening.


Easy does it now with the flat file, carefully leveling out the edges into straight lines out to the final size of the openings.

Corners are the toughest. Your file with the sharpest edge will determine how sharp the corners of the opening will be. I find that a three sided file has the sharpest edges.


And there you go. An opening where once there were none. Took about an hour to do, and I still have the one on the other end to do.

Then I'll have to figure a way to light it, but I’ll worry about that when I get to it. Yessir, worry about it when I get to it.

1 comment:

  1. Holy Cow! I had no idea that the trolley was so small. Did you save the shavings? I bet it is worth a small fortune!

    ReplyDelete