A Ten Wheeler eBay score!

What a score this was! MEW (Model Engineering Works) H.O. brass 4-6-0s are very rare and hardly ever come up on eBay. And if they do, they auction off for quite the pretty penny (the last one I saw months ago sold for $700!!!).

So when this one came up, I bid my entire budget of $300 thinking I didn't have a snowballs chance of winning the bid. (Whenever I get cash as a Christmas or birthday gift, I stick it in my “mad money” fund for just such of an occasion).

Whats more amazing, I was literally under the knife on the operating table having surgery on my thyroid when I won this bid!!! My surgery lasted from 12:30 to about 4pm, the auction ended at 3:20pm! I was unconscious and victorious!

Isn't she a beauty? I'm in love...

Looking every bit the relative, this is San Diego & Arizona #11, an 1881 vintage Rogers locomotive. The 4-6-0s sure footedness were particularly well suited for southern California's hilly terrain. Often showing up in historical photos, I've been a fan of these ten wheelers since I was a teenager. So this is indeed a happy occasion for me.

Man! Only a few weeks in to 2008 and its already shaped up to be a fantastic year! Yessir! A fantastic year!

Clearstory Frame Assembly

Furniture grade plywood is nice stuff. Costing about twice as much as regular plywood, it has a nice smooth sanded finish to it. Since the layout is residing in our dining room at the moment, it should look really nice. So I sprung for the furniture grade plywood.

After sifting through their entire stack of 4’ x 8’ plywood, selecting their finest piece, I dragged it over to their saw for cutting. Before I even showed up to the lumberyard, I carefully planned out how to cut the 4’ x 8’ sheet most efficiently so that I ended up with two profile boards for the ends and two strips for the clearstory windows. The lumberyard only does rough cuts, the contouring I’ll do at home with my jigsaw.

If you look closely at the top piece of wood (as Thunder dog is doing) you can see how I drew out the final shape of the contour boards. Below it is the contour board cut out.

The kid at the lumberyard did a lousy job cutting the clearstory strips, they went from 3 ½” wide at one end to 4” wide at the other end, a mistake I didn’t catch until I got home. An unfixable mistake. But I can’t return the whole thing ‘cuz I already have the contour boards cut out. But, the plywood does seem a little too flimsy to me for this framing, so I decided instead to construct the clearstory windows from 1 ½” x ¾” “sustainably managed tree-farmed select pine”! This is some strong, beautiful wood. And it’s available at your local do-it-yourself lumberyard.

Hey! Things are shaping up. Look at that, its looking like it’s supposed to. The clearstory widows were attached to the profile boards, and then the profile boards were attached to the outside frame. All that’s left to do is to start nailing on the roof.

But first, I have bevel the outside frame so that the curved roof will conform to it. And then the whole thing needs to be sanded smooth. So... I better get to sanding. Yessir... better get to sanding.

The Adventure of Bending Wood

Well this is a first. My blog is falling behind my progress. You would think I was being productive or something! So in an attempt to get caught up...

I bent wood! I am man! Me bend wood. How many guys do you know that have bent wood? I am wood bender.

Okay, I actually found bending wood to be quite stressful. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

First of all, I had to build a jig to bend the wood on. I started by drawing the shape of the rounded roof end onto a piece of plywood.

Then I pounded in big 'ol nails (I forget what size) following that line so that most of the nail was sticking out of the plywood. The plywood is about 3/8ths inches thick, so thats how far I pounded in the nails. A good 2” or so of nail was left sticking out. These are whats going to take the brunt of the force needed to bend the wood.

The nails are going to leave dents in the wood so what I did was, take a length of scrap 1/8^th luan and bent that first. This will give the good lumber a smooth surface to be bent on. The luan will take the brunt of the nails. So actually, the very first wood I ever bent was used as a tool and will be scrap after I'm done.

I let the first 1/4” pine steam for about an hour. I sent a whole kettle of water through that steaming rig!

My idea is instead of trying to bend a 3/4” piece, I'm going to laminate 3 pieces of 1/4” together to make a 3/4” end, bending one over the other. And to help make it strong, I'm offsetting the joints so they all don't line up.

The first piece is a tough one since it curves over the left and right corners. So in other words, it requires two bends! The curve on the left side went perfectly, I was stoked! But I don't know if the wood cooled or what because the curve around the right side didn't go as well. It curved all right but the stress caused the wood to begin to splinter as you can see in the last photo.

Sequent bends had degrees of success, from bending just fine to an all out snap! in half. Thats disheartening to steam the wood for an hour just to have it snap. And then its off the lumber yard for a replacement and start all over again.

I think the trick is, take your time and bend the wood slowly, don't muscle it. Become one with the wood. Let the fibers stretch naturally around the curve at its own pace. Yes, thats the ticket. Feel the sensation of the wood giving way, it will let you know if its going too fast. Yes. Ahhh.

To tell you the truth, I'm glad thats over. Yes the wood bent, but it's less than perfect. The laminated pieces don't line up perfectly, but with a little filler in the spaces, I don't think anyone will notice. The front edge visible to everyone is a beautiful curve, and thats what matters, right?

Next, it's off to the lumber yard for some furniture grade plywood. Yessir! Furniture grade plywood!

Steaming Rig

The success of building a lighting valence in the configuration of a clerestory roof seems to be hinging on a big “if”. The roof curves from the front to the sides. And building this will require bending wood! The success of the valance hinges on if I can bend wood. Bend wood! Geez, that like goes against nature, bending wood.

I looked around the net and found some cool how-to videos on bending wood using steam. They're amazing. Oh I gotta bend wood. How cool would that be!

Roaming around a home improvement warehouse, I was able to MacGyver together an inexpensive steaming rig. I found some 3” flexible tubing that has a wide enough diameter to accept the 2” lumber that I'm going to need to bend.

Somehow, I need to attach that tubing to a big 'ol kettle that I will be using to boil water with on my stove. What I found was a roof jack. Roof jacks are used for rooftop vents. They have a flat base with a pipe coming off it. Because they are made for the pitched roof of a house, the pipe comes off the base at an angle. So when I lay the base over the kettle the pipe will angle away from the stove. That pipe has a 3”diameter, same as the tubing!

The tubing section had all sorts of attachments for these tubes, one of them being an insert to attach these tubes together. It fits perfectly in the roof jack pipe and the tubing, connecting them together.

Then I duct taped the heck out of the whole thing the keep it together and help keep the steam from leaking out.

Here you can see the kettle on the stove with the roof jack covering it. The black flexible tubing is attached to the roof jack with duct tape.

From the stove the tubing lays on a plank supported with a ladder.

Ah, look at it steam!

I went back to the store and got this cap that has a couple of holes drilled in it to try to keep more steam in the tube

In this shot you can see the 1/4” x 2” lumber inside getting steamed. The rule of thumb is about 20 minutes steaming per 1” thickness, but I ended up steaming them for a lot longer.

Next comes time to actually bend the wood, keep your fingers crossed! Yessir! Keep your fingers crossed!

Display case frame

Oh what I wouldn’t give for a good basement! But, alas, basements are next to nonexistent in California. So, my layout currently resides in our dining room at the moment. And in an effort to keep our home looking nice, enclosing the layout in an attractive display case would be a good thing. A very good thing I think, how many homes have you ever walked into that instead of having a nice cityscape painting hanging on the wall, had an actual three dimensional miniature city with its lights twinkling away into the night? Personally, I think that would be way cool. The frame is now built. I used 1 ½” x ¾” and 2 ½ x ¾” to construct the four corner posts. A 2 ½” x ¾” connect two of the posts at the top to create a side assembly. And another matching side assembly is built in the same manner for the opposite side. These two sides are connected together with two more 2 ½” x ¾” using lag bolts and wing nuts to allow the unit to be broken down for transport.

Next comes building the clearstory roof which will require something I have never done before; bending wood around the corners. Yessir! Bending wood!

Display Case Gone Wild!

It all started off innocently enough. I needed to solve a problem. I need to keep the dang cats off of the layout. They’ve caused irreparable damage to the delicate overhead which means tearing it all out and rebuilding it. But I’m not going to rebuild until I have some way of preventing it from getting damaged again.

Covering it would be nice. Not only would it prevent the cats from terrorizing the good citizens of the city, but it would also keep the dust off. Doubly good!! A safe and clean city. Real estate values would sky rocket!

My wife suggested something like an acrylic cube, you know, like a display case in a museum. I think that to be a great idea, but I’m afraid the cube would be unwieldy and could actually cause damage to the city it was designed to protect when removing and replacing it.

Lightweight would be key. How about four posts holding up a wooden roof and removable acrylic panels would fit in the sides? Then the wooden roof could also have the lighting attached to it. Like a lighting valence! How about that? A safe, clean, well light lit city! Triply good!!!

When three problems are solved with one project, that’s a good hat trick. The project must be a good idea. I’m moving forward with it. So I’m gonna design the valence/display case.

What if instead of a standard rectangular valence, I kinda contour it like the clearstory roof of an old fashioned trolley? And instead of acrylic panels in the sides, I build it like the windows of an old fashioned trolley? The whole layout itself would look like an old fashioned trolley car! How kewl would that be?! Way kewl!

Could I really be able to build such a thing? I have no idea. I never built anything like it before. Should I build such a thing? Probably not. I’m sure there are all kinds of reasons why I shouldn’t. Am I really going to try and attempt it anyway? Knowing my history; yep, I'm affraid so. I’ll just take it one step at a time. Design a little. Build a little. Design a little more. Build a little more. Become frustrated and tear it all apart and replace it with something more practical. Well I hope I don’t have to tear it apart. Hopefully I’ll end up with something both practical and whimsical. Yessir, practical and whimsical!

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.

Setting the bar too high?

Okay, last automobile post for a while, then onto railroading. This is Ricko Rickos 1930-1938 Mercedes-Benz Typ770W07. I posed it in front of one of my San Diego 400 cars (which I’ll blog about later). Seeing the photo enlarged on my computer (click photo above to enlarge), I was shocked to see how the auto has far finer detail than the trolley itself! Notice the Mercedes logo (hood ornament) on the radiator cap. I didn’t even see it until I saw it in the photo- it’s so tiny! These are some dang nicely detailed auto models. There is no way I can match these standards! Yessir – no way!

Motorcars on Parade

I really gotta get to work on the layout so I can get some progress photos for you! In the mean time, here is another auto for ya. This is Ricko Rickos 1934 Cadillac V16 Aerodynamic Coupe. Yessir- Aerodynamic!

Happy New Year!

Welp, reading my last blog entry I find it interesting that I was making a big deal of the car models being “up to my standards”, when in fact the car models are probably setting the standards for my layout. And I just might be hard pressed to live up to these standards! I wouldn’t be surprised. Anyhowdy, here is another for ya. It’s a 1931Lincoln Model K. “K” for Kewl! If I keep to these standards, the layout should turn out pretty darn nice. Yessir, darn nice!

Up To Standards!

Merry Christmas all! I hope Santa was good to you. I must have been a good boy because that jolly ol’ elf brought me some of these automobile models by Ricko Ricko. These 1/87th “accurate scale model for adult collector” are superb! I am just thrilled by these. They are finely crafted and detailed and are definitely up to my railroads standards. The one pictured above is the 1935 “Horsh 851 Pullman”. And the $15.98 price tag is worth it to me especially since they are ready to go right out of the box. No assembly required (It’s a Christmas miracle)! These autos sharing the road with the streetcars are going to make for some wonderful traffic. Yessir, wonderful traffic!

Inspiration

Here is a scene I would like to try to duplicate on the layout. It’s a historic photo of San Diego Electric #1 in front of the Backesto Block building on the opening day of the SDERy. The Backesto building still exists today and has been beautifully restored! So I’ll be able to take some measurements for the construction of the model. San Diego Electric #1 on the other hand....

Historical reenactment of this scene on the layout seems perfectly feasible to me. It could be built on the corner of 1890s and 1900s street. Notice how the trolley is rounding the corner instead of passing straight through the intersection, so that’s another plus. The stumbling block is the trolley itself. I would have to build that myself. But if I ever succeed at recreating this scene, oh what a happy day that will be, yessir, oh what a happy day!

Simulating Girder Rail.

The prototype street railways use what’s known as girder rail to create the flangeway through the pavement. Here are cross section illustrations of standard “T” rail on the left, and girder rail on the right.

My plan is to simulate girder rail simply by laying two rails side-by-side to create the flangeways.

Get Smart

Girder rail, tight curves and sharp turnouts are typical with city trackage but not at all with commercially available model track. So it looks like I’m going to have to learn how to handlay all this myself. Fortunately for me, my local hobbyshop offered classes on hand laying track and turnouts for 5 bucks, so I jumped at the chance! Here is my graduation project.

A Slice of Life

Big announcement: I don’t know what I’m doing! I’ve never built anything like this before. Do I build the streets first and then the sidewalks? Or vice versa? How do I create the flangeways in the pavement? Not to mention the nagging questions of whether the streets and sidewalks are wide enough. What’s a fellah to do?

So I built this little test piece. Took a scrap piece of wood, laid some rail, paved in the streets and sidewalks, experimented with sidewalk and concrete colors. Added a wooden pole with some piano wire for overhead then added city details (streetlamp and phone booth.). Cool.

This has been a helpful little exercise. Yessir, a helpful little exercise!

The Future Site of San Dollar, Ca.

That’s what I’m calling the city, San Dollar. Not quite San Diego, but close enough.

Well, I procured a piece of 3/8” real-estate. Cut it to 4’ x 4’, then drew the track plan, streets and sidewalks.

Now I’m getting an idea how big everything looks. I’m concerned that the remaining real estate for the buildings isn’t enough. The streets seem to be too narrow to accommodate automobile traffic as well. But if I widen the streets, the building real estate shrinks, and enlarging the real estate causes the streets to narrow! So, I’m trying to find the right balance. Further experimentation is required... Yessir, further experimintation!