Western Maryland J-1 build

[glakedylan]

this is one of those things that when you see it
your brain goes WOW!


great work


sincerely
Gary

[Bill H]

Eric:
Is the headlight and bracket from your Shapeways shop? I can't find it there.

Kind regards,
Bill

[PiperguyUMD]

@mmagliaro - Thanks for the advice. I've put the decoder away and have been tinkering for the last two days trying to smooth out operation. So far the best I've been able to do is smooth running in one direction. The minute I flip it in reverse, its as if one of the drivers is square. I 3d printed a quartering jig, and have quartered and gauged all drivers. Not really sure where to look now.

@Bill H I 3d printed those as well. Sorry this is a terrible picture, but I did these at home on the photon. They have a recess inside the headlight for a 0603 SMD LED. If you're interested in some, send me a PM and let me know how many you need.

[Bill H]

Thanks Eric. Will send you a PM

[Bruce Bird]

That front-on view is a dead ringer for a J-1.  Can't wait to see it in paint!

[PiperguyUMD]

So many things happened since the last post! Paint was pretty straight forward, but wow did I have a hard time with decals. Several years ago I sniped a few sets of WM Steam decals from North East Decals, but a similar set has since been released from Tichy. Fearing that the Northeast decals would crumble away, I order a set from Tichy as a backup. I began using the Tichy decals but frankly they were a disappointment. Perhaps I got a bad run, but the resolution of the printer is not up to par for N scale. The "Safety First" stencils on the pump shields are from the Tichy set. I felt like this was part of the trademark appearance of the Potomacs, so I felt  having them fuzzy but present was better than leaving them off altogether. Additionally the film would not adhere to the surface, despite following their instructions. To get the tender stripes to the point that they are, took DAYS of keeping a strip of paper towel soaked in solvoset. I tried the same approach with the cab numbers, but gave up after about 24 hours. What hadn't adhered flaked off effortlessly, but the bits that had stuck almost ruined the cab. I ended up piecing together numbers from the North East Decals set for the numbers - which did disintegrate despite using liquid decal film 

So, that said, here's were we stand: Light weathering using pastels and dullcoat. I will do a little more on the engine. I like the look of light dust on the drivers of an engine that has been fighting grades. The tender will get a coal load and if I'm feeling it, safety chains to the trucks. I have some tweaks to do performance wise - for some reason the lead pilot truck is now contacting the screw that the pilot is mounted on, and shorts out on left handed curves. Tsunami 2 is in and functional. Electronics are not my forte, but this one was fairly simple. I still need a soldering coach though 

@wm3798 make sure safesearch is turned off before you scroll down 

[peteski]

So many things happened since the last post! Paint was pretty straight forward, but wow did I have a hard time with decals. Several years ago I sniped a few sets of WM Steam decals from North East Decals, but a similar set has since been released from Tichy. Fearing that the Northeast decals would crumble away, I order a set from Tichy as a backup. I began using the Tichy decals but frankly they were a disappointment. Perhaps I got a bad run, but the resolution of the printer is not up to par for N scale. The "Safety First" stencils on the pump shields are from the Tichy set. I felt like this was part of the trademark appearance of the Potomacs, so I felt  having them fuzzy but present was better than leaving them off altogether. Additionally the film would not adhere to the surface, despite following their instructions. To get the tender stripes to the point that they are, took DAYS of keeping a strip of paper towel soaked in solvoset. I tried the same approach with the cab numbers, but gave up after about 24 hours. What hadn't adhered flaked off effortlessly, but the bits that had stuck almost ruined the cab. I ended up piecing together numbers from the North East Decals set for the numbers - which did disintegrate despite using liquid decal film 
:

Then there is the ink thickens on Tichy decals - it is so thick you can feel it running your fingers over the decal surface.

I had a good luck reviving Northeast Decals by airbrushing a wet coat of lacquer thinner over the decal film. Just spray the entire sheet until it is shiny wet (but not runny).  That seems ot remelt all the fragments together. Since those have the clear film applied over the entire sheet, that is not a problem - just cut out the images you need and apply them to the model.  It has been a while since I used that trick, but it worked well for me back  then.

Speaking of Northeast Decal, who was doing those and what happened to them?  Maybe  we could get a hold of the artwork, and get those decals back in production?  I'm pretty sure they were silk-screened, like Microscale decals.

[mmagliaro]

On your motion problem, if you are really really sure you have the drivers all quartered the same, and your jig was designed to set them at 90-degree offsets (or at least reasonably close to that), my next suspicion would be something with that crankpin you replaced when you put the Kato eccentric in there.  When you enlarged that hole in the driver to accept the Kato pin, you must have had to enlarge the hole in the siderod to let that pin go through it.  If that new hole isn't perfectly centered where smaller hole used to be, you can have a motion problem even though you've got the drivers themselves quartered.  Remember, quartering all the drivers the same is important, but it assumes that the spacing between the siderod holes is also the same and perfectly matched between the two rods on either side of the engine.

If you want to continue poking at this problem, can you show some close-up photos of the side rods, and especially that hole where the Kato crank goes?

Oh, and dumb and obvious question but... did you try running the engine with no rods (just one, or maybe two drivers if they are geared, that will actually turn) and then put the rods on, but only pin them to the two geared drivers, and then pin them to 2 geared drivers + one un-geared driver, etc, to see if the problem "appears" at one of these progressive stages?

[PiperguyUMD]

@peteski - I've done that before too, it left a pretty noticeable lip on the edge of the decal. I'm sure it was user error, but I didn't want to risk it on this model. Fortunately, only a few of the numbers broke up, and it wasn't in such a way that I couldn't salvage them on the model.

@mmagliaro - Thanks for the insight! Yes. I spent a lot of time in the various stages. I discovered I'm not a tinkerer in the machinist sense - there were several times when I had to walk away for a few hours. It turns out there were some drivers out of quarter. I'll have to post some pictures of my jig, I know there are a few around here that might be interested in it. I have a simple micro mark drill press that I used to drill out the openings for the Kato crankpins. I used several passes while gradually increasing the diameter of the hole so it should be pretty close. I also opened up the holes in the side rods for the crank pins. If something is off, it's forgiving it enough to run smoothly. I also discovered that even though there appears to be a lot of slop in various points of the mechanism, it is amazingly sensitive to the orientation of parts. For example, if I turned a quartered driver around in the frame it could make all the difference in the world in how the motion functions.

[mmagliaro]

Okay, I'm going to suggest some more things to check, and then I'll shut up unless you want to keep plugging
at this.  I'll leave it up to you.  If it runs good enough to make you happy, just tell me and I'll buzz off.   

Are you able to pull the motor and worm out, and just free-roll the chassis by hand with all the rods on it?  You ought to be able to clearly feel where the tight spot is, hold the engine still on the track, and then poke the side rod gently up and down at each crankpin on the 4 drivers.  You should be able to wiggle it just a little.  But you'll probably find that it's tight on one pin.  That's where your problem child is.

Next thing to check...  The orientation of the gears on the geared axles with respect to the driver hole quartering. 
With all 4 drivers in the frame, are you absolutely sure you can get all 4 crank holes to the dead bottom at the same time?
You might not be able to, and it might not be obvious until you look for this.
Remember, you have the wheels pressed on either end of the axle, and they are offset by 90 degrees.  But if you put two geared axles into the frame, they mesh together through an idler.  And you might find that the gear mesh itself PREVENTS the driver holes from perfectly lining up.  Picture it this way: You get two drivers in there, the way you think they should be, and you rotate them so the crank holes are at the dead  bottom of their rotation.  Except you look at it and you might see that you can't actually get them both to the dead bottom at the same time.  One of them is rotated a little left or right, and you can't "fix" it because the gears prevent that driver from turning without moving the other driver.  If this happens, you need to choose one geared wheelset and turn BOTH of those drivers on that axle a little so that they stay in quarter with each other, but they are rotated a little with respect to the gear.  Now, hopefully, when you put it back in the frame, you can get all the crank holes to bottom dead center at the same time.  You would do this with all the rods off, of course.

This phenomenon, where it runs good in one direction but not in the other, just reeks of a quartering issue, either in the drivers themselves, the rod holes, the gear/hole relative location.  And it doesn't take much error.  If you are off by even 1/4 of the diameter of the crank hole (which ain't much!), it will cause problems.

[peteski]

@peteski - I've done that before too, it left a pretty noticeable lip on the edge of the decal. I'm sure it was user error, but I didn't want to risk it on this model. Fortunately, only a few of the numbers broke up, and it wasn't in such a way that I couldn't salvage them on the model.

The procedure has to be done to the entire sheet (not to individually cut out decals). Then the lip will be around the edges of the sheet, not individual images.

[wm3798]

Regarding the old Northeast Decals, they can be salvaged.  You just have to give them an overspray of clear finish to seal up the original film before you use them.
They're still going to be fragile, but you can at least position them and get them settled pretty securely.

You can also find the "safety first", better striping and other odds and ends on Microscale's diesel sets.

Lee

[PiperguyUMD]

Okay, I'm going to suggest some more things to check, and then I'll shut up unless you want to keep plugging
at this.  I'll leave it up to you.  If it runs good enough to make you happy, just tell me and I'll buzz off.   

Are you kidding! I'm here to learn, and you're threads are an inspiration!

The way the Bachmann works is that the 2nd and 3rd drivers are geared, and only the 1st, 2nd, and 4th are attached to the rods. I did pull the motor and worm. Nice smooth motion with the 2nd and 3rd drivers turning through the idler gear, same with the 1st, 2nd, and 4th drivers only, and all 4 with and without the idler.

I did discover that one of the gears had an extra tooth. Fortunately I had a set of gears from the Bachmann J that fit in the drive. This was when I discovered your point about the gears being off from the quartering! After straightening that out, problem solved.

On another note - I was looking through your SP&S thread the other day. What is the diameter of the drivers on the Kato C55 pacific? I know you changed the axle spacing, but do you remember roughly what the driver wheelbase was? I'm starting to think about the next project 

http://www.northeast.railfan.net/images/wm202sa.jpg

Thanks for sharing your knowledge Max!

[basementcalling]

Are you kidding! I'm here to learn, and you're threads are an inspiration!

The way the Bachmann works is that the 2nd and 3rd drivers are geared, and only the 1st, 2nd, and 4th are attached to the rods. I did pull the motor and worm. Nice smooth motion with the 2nd and 3rd drivers turning through the idler gear, same with the 1st, 2nd, and 4th drivers only, and all 4 with and without the idler.

I did discover that one of the gears had an extra tooth. Fortunately I had a set of gears from the Bachmann J that fit in the drive. This was when I discovered your point about the gears being off from the quartering! After straightening that out, problem solved.

On another note - I was looking through your SP&S thread the other day. What is the diameter of the drivers on the Kato C55 pacific? I know you changed the axle spacing, but do you remember roughly what the driver wheelbase was? I'm starting to think about the next project 

http://www.northeast.railfan.net/images/wm202sa.jpg

Thanks for sharing your knowledge Max!

You have completely deBachmanized this loco. Without knowing your starting point, I would never guess it started out as one of their Northerns.

I am in awe.

[reinhardtjh]

On another note - I was looking through your SP&S thread the other day. What is the diameter of the drivers on the Kato C55 pacific? I know you changed the axle spacing, but do you remember roughly what the driver wheelbase was? I'm starting to think about the next project 

The Kato C55 Pacific has drivers of 0.468" at the tire and 0.518" when you include the flange.  The wheelbase is 1.101" (From the 1st axle to the 3rd).  This is an N scale equivalent of 74.8" at the tire, 82.88" with flanges and the driver wheelbase is 176.16" or 14' 8.16"

I was going to to use them for a PRR K4 kitbash before Bachmann released theirs.