2nd Dandyversary

Today is the second anniversary of this Dandy little blog. So I would like to take this opportunity to thank my regular readers (there seems to be about 10 of you!) and would like to encourage you to post comments and maybe even take part in discussions. I also want to welcome new readers and I hope that you find some sort of entertainment value in this blog.

As always, constructive comments and suggestions are welcome!

I strive to have the photos on this site dominate rather than text. Text gets to be rather "blah blah blah" where as a photo is worth 1000 words. So I dug around on my work computer and found a photo I don't think that I have posted before. This is a test shot I did with my brass horsecar model to mess around with in Photoshop to see if I could make the photo look historic:

Like I said, its a test shot, never meant to be seen. The horses still need their harnesses, the car needs a driver, and the car needs to be posed so that the faces of the passengers can be seen, as well as details on the streets and sidewalks, and the buildings in the middle need to be painted!, etc.

Sorry about the lull in posting as of late. I've been using a computer regularly for over 12 years now and for the first time ever, my computer caught a nasty virus and has stopped working all together. All my modeling photos are on there so I'm in the process of retrieving them. Pain-in-the-A! Once I retrieve them, posting will resume. So hang tight. (You know, people who program viruses should try model railroading, I think they would find it much more rewarding!)


To update you on whats going on: with the birney project on hold, work has resumed on the trolley valence, I also have a new project in the works I think you will find fun, but your going to have to tune in from time to time to find out what it is!

So check back later to find out whats going on! Another year of fun stuff in store, yessir! Fun stuff in store!

Dandy

Smoke jack

Here you can see how I used the Dremel tool as a lathe to turn the smoke jack. I then drilled a hole in the roof and inserted the smoke jack.

It's built!

Finally! It's built! Cartoon by my good friends at Project Firefly!

Welp, here it is. Entirely scratch built from brass stock.

Here you can see how I built up the roof end with 3 pieces of brass. Then I took the Dremel tool to it and ground it to the proper shape. One of the smoke jacks fell off. I’ll have to replace that.

The under carriage was fun one to build. The springs are brass spring wire that i wrapped around another wire. The wheels are built up tube stock while the spokes are cut from a single solid piece and then fit into the tires.

All that remains is to fashion some sort of harness apparatus for the horses.

So now it's off to the paint shop for a colorful eye catching paint scheme. Yessir! Colorful eye catching paint scheme!

Horsecar front views

Horsecar plans

As always- click the pic to enlarge!

Here is a page out of my sketchbook. I'm actually drawing these plans as I go along, thats why the page is so messy.

I'm taking measurements from the photos by assuming that the average size of a man at the turn of the 20th century was about 5” 8”. The drivers of the cars in both pictures are standing, so I can guesstimate the measurements of the whole car by using this assumption.

For the most part the car is boxy, which is easy enough to build. But there are a couple of places that will require a little modeling:

The sides curving in at the bottom will be a little tricky. But I think that if I use a thin gage brass here, and shape it to conform with the car ends, it ought to work out okay.

The wheels are unique with those spokes. Nothing is available commercially. But since this will be a static model, there is no need for them to have that “RP-25 contouring” to them. So I will just build them up using brass tube stock.

Roof ends- now here is the real stumbling block! They are a very organic shape- curving down to the front and the sides! I can't figure out how to do this. The only thing I can come up with is to take my Dremel Tool to a block of brass and grind away.

So there you have it. I'll post some pix of the car next time. In the meantime, I will keep grinding away. Yessir! Keep grinding away!

Ancestry: Horsecars!

As if this layout isn’t historical enough, I have decided to add a little more history. For my next project I would like to model this San Diego horsecar. I know I should wait to finish the layout first before diving into such a project, but by building it now, I can pose it on the streets before the overhead goes in. That way I’ll have “before” and “after” pictures of the streets. This would give the impression of a successful horsecar line making the transition to that new fangled electrisical stuff. Pretty neat, huh? Yes-sir! Pretty neat indeed!
Other than the clearstory roof on the bottom car, these two cars are nearly identical. The top car has the window panels removed to take advantage of the nice weather, or at least to prevent it from becoming too stuffy inside form the heat. I will model it in this open configuration.