BC Rail (ex-CPR) 2-8-0 3716 build

[craigolio1]

Ok so this was a big week!!  I was super impressed by @Slim Rail Mike ’s Santa Fe 0-6-0 build where in he replicated factory style bronze pick up strips in the tender. Shown here:

https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=59973.0

I have a lot of wiring in my tender, including wired pickups, and so I thought I could clean it up by doing the same but once I got into it I realized how much stuff I had glued in there, like styrene blocks, weights, etc and it would have been destructive to reverse the process. So I’ll do that on the next build. I’m going to build another, older, version of 3716 as seen in BC Museum service (you’ve seen @BCR 570 building that train) so I’ll use the technique there. That loco has a smaller tender so it will really help there.

Anyway while I was in there I changed the rear light wiring to match proper DCC colours. I had used random scraps before, brown and purple.



I also added magnet wires to Aux 1 and Aux 2 as I’ve decided I want a full lighting package in this loco. So now I have 8 connections to the loco: track power through the draw bar, motor through simulated water lines on each side, function common through a simulated air line, head light on another simulated line on the opposite side, and now a magnet wire for the number board light and two cab step lights, and a magnet wire for the two class lights.

The magnet wires got the same plugs from the header block and will be attached beside the others. They are so flexible I can’t see them affecting turning but we’ll see. If this all works then after testing I’ll likely wrap them around one of the other wires to make it look like ribs.





And finally….. I got the courage to hook this thing up to power. After double checking all the wiring, and adding some additional tape in a couple of places, this happened…..

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It all works!!  There’s a bit of a limp and a grind synced with that limp, but it works. I have a DC tender I can connect to this so that nothing that I’ve painted needs to be handled while tuning. So I guess that’s the next step.

Honestly I’m a little scared. I have little experience with steam and there’s a lot going on that has to be perfect. If anyone has experience with this loco and could advise on any best practice I’d sure appreciate it.

Thanks.

Craig

[craigolio1]

This week I worked more on the drivetrain. I tried to quarter the drivers on the loco with a pair of pliers but they kept slipping and now those wheels have burrs. Not all is lost though! I have a parts loco and its drivers looked pretty close to quartered. So I embarked on my first ever steam loco driver swap. You know what? It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

Once that was done I put the loco in a bath of camp fuel, which I understand is mostly Naptha. I left it there for about ten minutes. This was long enough for a piece of tape holding a wire down to come lose so I figured any oil would be gone too.



After this I lubed it with one tiny drop of sewing machine oil on the two different gear trains. Then I hooked it up to power and ran it in for about 20 min. I noticed that it was slowing down as the wheels on one side reached the same place in each revolution. Loosening the bottom cover fixed this. And so back to quartering. I narrowed it down to the geared wheel that the main drive rod attaches to. This is the second from the back with the traction tire. I tried it first by removing the wheel set but had no luck. I went back to doing it on the loco but this time with a nice pair of wide flat jaw pliers. This worked great. Two little adjustments and I had it running quite well with the cover plate screwed on tight.

Here is a video of it running. It’s much quieter and has very good slow speed movement. It will be even better when not dragging alligator clips.

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Next I moved onto some lighting enhancements. Or at least connectors for them.

I swapped out the two back connectors from pairs to triples to allow two more functions to be brought into the loco.

I wanted to have wiring harnesses for each part of the loco. This would be:

- a headlight and number board light on the smoke box front.
- a pair of class lights on the boiler.
- lights on the steps in the cab.

Function 1 will be the headlight, function 3 will be the cab steps and number board, and function 2 will be the class lights.

Here is what I ended up with:







The blue jumper is a wire that goes from the blue plug on the right over to an exposed pin I installed so that I could solder a wire to it and provide blue common on the left side.

The smoke box front harness will have magnet wires wrapped around the bases of the pins and soldered so that I can still stack the cab harness on top of it.

When they are all stacked it’s quite compact and will allow me to install/remove the three parts of the loco shell independently of each other for maintenance or repairs. 

Inside the cab I plan to put a weight. The wires will go up the back of the cab, along the roof and into the boiler. My hope is that I can still have a view through the doors of the cab as I plan to model it with the doors open.  I’ll put two people there but I’d like to see a bit of daylight through the doors.

That’s all for now.

Craig

[peteski]

Yes, Naphtha (Camp Fuel or in other forms) is an excellent grease/oil solvent. Better than alcohol. That's what I use when servicing/cleaning loco mechanisms.  As  as you found out, it also dissolves the pressure-sensitive adhesives on stickers or masking tape.

[craigolio1]

This week I painted the tires on the drivers and lead truck.





And I also started work on some experimenting on how I’ll do the class lights. A year or so ago @CNR5529 printed some class lights for me and I made molds with the intent of putting epoxy in them and then inserting a fibre optic. The idea worked but the light came out the top corner of the class light instead of the front and side.

So I’m back at it, this time with 0201 LEDs cast inside.



The purpose of this attempt is to see what the orientation of the LED is in the class light. What if ultimately like to have is the “front” of the LED, the brightest part, facing down. In the final attempt I’ll paint the fronts silver and then black. The ide being that I’ll orient the fronts silver down ward in the casting and the visible light will be emitted from the sides of the LED, hopefully yielding the same intensity when viewed from the front and side. These will need massive resistors. Likely 20k+.

Let’s see what happens.

Craig

[peteski]

More impressive modeling Craig.  The resistor's resistance might have to be massive but the resistor itself can be very tiny (since it will dissipate very small amount of power). You could likely use resistors as small as SMD 0402. 

[craigolio1]

More impressive modeling Craig.  The resistor's resistance might have to be massive but the resistor itself can be very tiny (since it will dissipate very small amount of power). You could likely use resistors as small as SMD 0402. 

That’s the plan. I’ve used large resistance SMD resistors in many installs.

Craig

[craigolio1]

I didn’t like how the cast class lights came out. They had lots of flash and the LED was too large so after a few attempts I always had a corner sticking out or some kind of anomaly's. Hahhaa. 0201 LED is too large. Anyway I decided to do little blobs hand applied to the LEDs. After two applications I’m satisfied with the look. They won’t pass the magnification test but that’s ok as the detail is the fact that they’ll be working. No pics as they are too small.

Next I moved onto the smoke box. The prototype has a number plate below the head light, and a vanity plate of sorts above the walkway.



For the vanity plate, I cut a piece of left over photo etch sprue to fit the decal.



And for the number plate I found another piece that had a leg I could bend to make a secure mount below the head light.



The vanity plate will be soldered to the brass legs I made earlier, but I’ll do it once they are on the model so I can get it perfectly located.

The number board was installed, and then I moved onto to fixing some chips in the smoke box front. These were sustained on a trip to the floor.  (As he silently stews over how brittle this resin is. How can something with so little mass hit the ground THAT hard?!).

I dressed the chips the give flatish them edges and then epoxied in some .010” styrene.



After that dried I trimmed them and put the cover on a spare boiler (I must have a spare smoke box front but its location is a mystery). Then I used the boiler as a guide to file the edge to a curve.



That’s it for today. Next I will fit a lit number board (I made a casting of that a while back) onto the top edge of the smoke box front, but the patch will need to be drilled and filed and I’d like the epoxy to be plenty cured before I do that. Same goes for the class lights.

I probably won’t have time to get to back to this until Wednesday and they’ll be cured by then.

Craig

[craigolio1]

Alright so I lied. I worked on it some more.

I started by installing the lit number board. This part was made about a year ago by making a mold of the printed number board part, putting two 0201 LEDs in on the outside edges facing into the middle, and then filling mold with clear epoxy. Once dry I painted the back and edges silver and the front white. The idea is that I will have an edge lit number board with uniform light across the front instead of a Sun or two facing out. To install it I carved out two notches for the wires at each end.

Then I proceeded to drop it again and chipped it in a third place…



I finished installing the number board part and then repaired the chip…





And then proceeded to test the lights. The number board worked fine. When it fell, the headlamp broke off too and that LED stopped working, so I drilled out the old LED, glued the head light back on and threaded a new 0201 LED into the head light.

Then I masked it all shot a fresh coat of black.





I’m quite pleased with this. But, I’ll likely do another one with a fresh print once I can get another printed. For now I can move on.

While I had the black out I finished painted the boiler handrail. It was all white on the front and needed the standoffs painted black.



NOW I’m done for the night.

Craig

[craigolio1]

Today was a wiring day. I started by selecting resistors for each of the various lighting circuits. I settled on 8.2k for the headlight light, 15k for the number board, and 75k! Maybe even 90-100k for the class lights- I ran out of 15k resistors. So I’ve ordered both of those sizes. I haven’t done the cab lights yet.

The lights were wired and the resistors glued to the back of the smoke box front. Then it was test fit to the boiler. I had to file a notch in the top of the boiler to accommodate the number board wiring.



Next the wiring was taped to the inside of the boiler.



And now the boiler could be installed on the mech.



I soldered the motor wires to the outside pins and started on the light harness. First the positives were combined



Then each of the two functions went on





Finally I confirmed the next plug would still fit on top.



After this I disassembled it again.

I twisted the final version of the smoke box harness I a nice organized package.



The next step will be to install the class lights on the boiler and wire its harness. To that top plug on the left.

Craig