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Showing posts with label Loctite Weld. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Loctite Weld. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 19, 2022

Truck Repair

No, not that kind of truck repair, unless you were thinking of the assemblies that sit beneath train cars, in which case, yes, that kind of truck repair.  Maybe rebuild is a better term.  Anyway, look at this:

The donor truck is a Selley passenger truck intended for their old time open platform shorty cars.  I have a few kits waiting to be built and have set aside some free-rolling MDC/Roundhouse old-time passenger trucks with metal wheels for those kits.  The Roundhouse trucks, to my eye, look better under the Selley cars.  Still, I don't want the Selley trucks to go to waste, even though the plastic wheels that came with would them qualify as pizza cutters, if they rolled well enough.

SO, I unsoldered the Selley trucks as best I could and though I lost a few I was able to get enough parts to make a pair.  I used the truck-tuner tool to ream a conical bearing in each side frame until Kadee ribbed-back wheel sets would fit and turn easily.  Then I "welded" the trucks back together using two-part Loctite Weld.

These trucks will run beneath the former-NP Fruit Car, intended to be run in the Morning Milk & Mail train on the Ocali Creek's Pine Branch.  I chose these Selley trucks for this car despite their difficulties in rebuilding them because they fit.  It really is a practical matter more than an aesthetic choice, though I like the look much more than the arch bar trucks intended for the car and used by the prototype.  In my fictional history, the OCRy got this car second hand and, as part of the rebuild, used some second-hand passenger trucks.  Such is the way on short lines with meager budgets.

Wednesday, October 6, 2021

Kit-Mingled 2-8-0 - Frame Work

This update is really Part 2 of the last post on screws.  I finally finished the frame extension and mounting plate for the boiler screw.  I've been working steadily on each, but the marvelous gray goo I'm using to weld the parts together takes time to cure.  Still, I'm very pleased with the progress at this point and looking forward to the next step; creating a boiler extension inside the cab and mounting the backhead casting.  After that it's just a matter of adding details to the boiler until I'm happy before painting, lettering and weathering.  This isn't a firm date, but I'm shooting for finishing this engine before Halloween.





There's a nut "welded" up above the brass plate in the last image.  I didn't get a shot of that before I put it in place in the boiler, but I used liberal amounts of the Loctite Weld to secure it to the brass bar.  Getting the headlight LED fed through the smokebox up into the headlight housing might be tricky.  I bought two nuts so that I could have a spare if something didn't work, but also I can use one to hold the cylinder saddle in place when the boiler isn't attached.  This has turned out to be a challenging project, but very satisfying working steadily, step by step.