January11, 2003
Yea, trailing behind in more ways than one. I had intendedto be a lot farther along by this time, but the real world has this habitof butting in all the time. I have managed to find the time to cobbleup a trailing truck, so the conversion to a 2-8-2 (Connie to Mickey) isofficial.
Fer those interested, remeber that I removed the ash pan and all the electronicsleaving the firebox an open square. I secured a piece of woodcross ways in the the firebox to serve as an anchor for a trailng truck. Remeber, in addtion to improving tracking while moving in back motion,the purpose of a traing truck is to support a larger, wider firebox. In instances like this the ashes dropped though the frame of the truckinto the ashpit.
I took a piece of .040 styrene and cut it to a rough outside dimension. Then I cut an opening in it big enough to accomodate the wheelset, yetclose enough that the axle ends won’t let the wheelset fall through. Once this was established, the styrene card was futher cut and formed.
Once I was this far along, I thought I 'd check the dimensions to see howit looked. Looks good so far!!!
With that much done, it was time for journals. I cut a coupleof wooden blocks, and then eyballed an appropriate angle in them. I then drilled a hole in the back and fit a brass tube into it. Theaxle ends slip right in and then the bottom of the blocks were gluedto the styrene frame.
Once the glue was dry, I started building up the rest of the truck. Bfeore I did this, I traced the basic outline onto a second piece of styreneto use for the top. I then took some thicker styrene and builtup the edges. Not the wood shim glues to the styrene cars. This will be the anchor point for the screw to go through to holdthe truck in place.
After all this came the easy part. I glued the top on and thenadded som journal cover castings that I made in house. A fewbits of styrene made up mounting plates then I added some nifty springcastings that I resurrected from a previous project. Once those werein place, the trailing truck was basically done.
A little eyeballing to check for clearances, hey it all looks good! Lets see what it all looks like so far!
Looks pretty darn goodIf ya ask me! Stay tuned train fans!