Eric,
Have a look at this for manufacture of journals and small wagons about halfway down, Sep 2010.
This bloke scratch-builds a large amount of his stuff mostly due to lack of large scale outlets in Aust I have visited a number of times and the wagons look great.
Gap,
Fantastic. With the unexpected free time I anticipate, I will take this on for the “second flight” of cane cars. Getting better with styrene is something I need to do, and, with a rolling prototype under my belt, why not? In the interim, I will finish the first flight as is. It seems to work OK, and it is a design I can have the “crew” copy as we try to figure out home school activities over the coming weeks.
Oh, and I just (re)learned the hard way…Drill a tap hole for the coupler mounting screws. The center beam has a nice crack emanating from the coupler screw. I poured a little Titebond III into the crack. Hopefully, that’ll hold.
Eric
Eric,
I made some "springs"similar to what was on the site.
I rolled some styrene around different sized tin cans and held it in place with rubber bands.
I then filled the cans with boiling water and let it soften the styrene, then let them cool down with the styrene still held in place.
Checked the curve and repeated till I was satisfied with the curves
I then glued the pieces of styrene together to form layers and when dry cut the “springs” of the end.
GAP,
The second flight will definitely use the technique outlined above. I think that styrene will, in the end, give me more uniform parts. Even using my very simple journals, getting them to the same size and then boring out a whole for the axel has been a bit of a challenge. On the other hand, I got all the timbers cut today:
On the left is the sum total of my waster material. Given the timbers were a gift, I am proud of who little waste material I generated! The leftmost pile of parts required a bit of imagination. I had originally cut all my beams too short. I trimmed one back, sanded the ends, glued it, braced it, and here we go. Waste not, want not. For the record, I cut most of the parts with my saber saw. I found the little hand saw was more accurate and only a trifle slower, but I really am trying to master the powered saw I bought a year or so ago. This project, which has a lot of tolerance for error, has been a good one in that regard.
I’ll close where I began, the journals. For reasons that defy explanation, I had a devil of a time managing the art of getting a vertical hole smack dab in the center. I am going to have to see if YouTube has a means to jury rig a “bench dress” with my power drill. To add insult to injury, the wood decided to splinter as the drill broke through. Not enough to be structurally significant, and I can mount everything so that the most egregious splintering faces inward, but, geez! I also made things a bit easier on myself, using grommets on both the inboard and outboard sides. The exception were for the splintered blocks, where, for want of surface area near the surface, I cut a small bit of tubing a I did for the first on the series.
Couplers, wheels, track tests, then we’ll plank the lot!
Aloha!
Eric
Mate,
The thing to remember is that the cane cars were only in pristine condition once and that was from workshop to the first farm.
Once the reached the farms they were given a very hard time by people who mostly did not care whether they bashed them or not.
So the end result is that no 2 were ever alike, so any variations can be explained away as farm damage or repaired after damage.
They were warped and out of alignment most of the time because of being hit by equipment out in the fields where they spent most of their time, they were also not treated kindly while in the mill yards.
You have the biggest scope to do what ever you like and can just get away with it, that is the beauty of modelling cane railways there is no prototype.
I am MOST glad for the note above. True to the proportions of the local prototype, true to the spirit of the industry, and true to my skills! Bulkheads and chains, by the way, will have to wait until they lift the lockdown. We should have a nice string of custom flats by the end of the week, though. Then I’ll pick your mind for other detail parts that might be appropriate, like the journal box covers.
Eric,
Some pictures of some of my journals for inspiration or confusion take you pick.
One using the method from the Sandstone and Termite
This one is the end of a plastic clothes peg, the whole chassis is cut from aluminium angle covered with timber.
The rod between the journals is a bamboo skewer. I did not make this model it came from a person who had passed away, it was originally gauged to 32mm and I re-gauged it to 45mm.
Eric Mueller said:
… Bulkheads and chains, by the way, will have to wait until they lift the lockdown. …
go, ask your wife, if she has stowed away one of these plastic chains for baby-pacifiers.
they make nice couplings.
GAP said:
You have the biggest scope to do what ever you like and can just get away with it, that is the beauty of modelling cane railways there is no prototype.
I’ve heard that said about Boxcabs too! (https://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-cool.gif)(https://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)
…bulkheads and chains, by the way, will have to wait until they lift the lockdown…
if your ‘eldest daughter’ is anything like mine at that age, she probably has quite the pile of junk jewelry, some of which may be re-purposed…
Gents,
Thanks for all the tips. GAP, I especially liked the kebob skewer trick. I had been puzzling about how to make something similar, as that sort of bracing seems to have been rather ubiquitous out here. The answer was quite literally laying next to my popsicle stick collection. Korm, we are out of the pacifier stage of life after a buys 13 years, but CINCHOUSE (Commander-in-Chief-House) makes jewelry, and, yes, Tim, the girls’ dresser is awash with stuff. We shall see what we can turn up. The only other question is more of a “how to.” To make the bulkheads, I had planned to get smaller strips of wood, drill out a hole in the end beams, and stick in the strips. Then I realized…how the heck do I bore out a “square hole?” I may go the simpler rout of make a circular hole a bit smaller than the end-posts, jamming them in there, and filling the gap, if required, with wood filler, but I am wondering if there is a more elegant solution.
We will mount all but one of the remaining frames to their journals this week as part of our home school course in “industrial railroad field engineering.” The last frame will have to wait until I can get washers to weight down the wheel sets. We should have the whole string out on the track by the end of this week. Of course, Komaka Iki, a shattered LGB m2075 we rebuilt specifically as our plantation engine stripped its gears, so the test run will be behind another loco.
Thanks for the continued help and guidance! Oh, GAP, that “tender” was spot on. I had seen pictures of similar, albeit oil, tenders in service here, and I had envisioned a coal carrying one for Komaka Iki. Like you said, each plantation did it as it saw fit. So does mine!
Aloha,
Eric
Eric Mueller said:
Gents,
Thanks for all the tips. GAP, I especially liked the kebob skewer trick. I had been puzzling about how to make something similar, as that sort of bracing seems to have been rather ubiquitous out here. The answer was quite literally laying next to my popsicle stick collection. Korm, we are out of the pacifier stage of life after a buys 13 years, but CINCHOUSE (Commander-in-Chief-House) makes jewelry, and, yes, Tim, the girls’ dresser is awash with stuff. We shall see what we can turn up. The only other question is more of a “how to.” To make the bulkheads, I had planned to get smaller strips of wood, drill out a hole in the end beams, and stick in the strips. Then I realized…how the heck do I bore out a “square hole?” I may go the simpler rout of make a circular hole a bit smaller than the end-posts, jamming them in there, and filling the gap, if required, with wood filler, but I am wondering if there is a more elegant solution.
We will mount all but one of the remaining frames to their journals this week as part of our home school course in “industrial railroad field engineering.” The last frame will have to wait until I can get washers to weight down the wheel sets. We should have the whole string out on the track by the end of this week. Of course, Komaka Iki, a shattered LGB m2075 we rebuilt specifically as our plantation engine stripped its gears, so the test run will be behind another loco.
Thanks for the continued help and guidance! Oh, GAP, that “tender” was spot on. I had seen pictures of similar, albeit oil, tenders in service here, and I had envisioned a coal carrying one for Komaka Iki. Like you said, each plantation did it as it saw fit. So does mine!
Aloha,
Eric
Eric,
For the rectangular holes try drilling 2 holes side by side and use a flat blade scalpel, or wood carving tools if they are at hand, and chisel the bit in the middle out.
If all else fails sneak into one of the ladies dressing tables and pinch any emery boards that happen to be lying around, then deny all knowledge about their disappearance, and use them to sand the holes to fit.
The owner/operator of the RAGs construction company ( a certain Mr GAP) would just carve the hole out to fit the piece and the fill the hole with filler mixed with sawdust to hide it.
RAGs = Rough As Guts
Five chassis are complete! We had a bit of a setback yesterday, when Oldest Son decided to glue all the journals to the frames without supervision. To be fair, it was on the list of scheduled quarantine activities…We broke them off, used a disc sander, and started again. After discovering that his interpretation of “one inch” was quite fungible, we cut two pieces of scrap dowel to an inch each, abutted them to the end beams, and he then made consistent marks for the centerline of my equally fungible journals.
Today, we drilled tap holes, which gave him an opportunity to learn to use the Dremel, screwed in the couplers (no splitting timbers! yay!), and glued on the journals. We had one frame that was just enough wider at one end to require us to cut a piece of that tubing to extend the journal inboard a bit. All is well, and the entire set is sitting on some track on our picnic table awaiting a test run tomorrow. Pictures or film to follow.
Eric
Eric Mueller said:
Five chassis are complete! We had a bit of a setback yesterday, when Oldest Son decided to glue all the journals to the frames without supervision. To be fair, it was on the list of scheduled quarantine activities…We broke them off, used a disc sander, and started again. After discovering that his interpretation of “one inch” was quite fungible, we cut two pieces of scrap dowel to an inch each, abutted them to the end beams, and he then made consistent marks for the centerline of my equally fungible journals.
Today, we drilled tap holes, which gave him an opportunity to learn to use the Dremel, screwed in the couplers (no splitting timbers! yay!), and glued on the journals. We had one frame that was just enough wider at one end to require us to cut a piece of that tubing to extend the journal inboard a bit. All is well, and the entire set is sitting on some track on our picnic table awaiting a test run tomorrow. Pictures or film to follow.
Eric
Good to hear waiting for pictures/video
GAP,
Operational check satisfactory! Kid-zilla placed everything behind Diesel Dan (I had just stripped Diesel Dan looking for an electrical fault, only to find my rechargeable batteries gave up the ghost. Lesson (re)learned…start with the easiest answer first!):
They tracked just fine, with the occasional derailment at turn-outs. No worse than the Hartland minis, so, success! Video evidence from a circuit passed Bandit Curve below:
OpTest: M&K Sugar Co. Cane Car Frames
I have to ransack the house for everything but the decking (chains, something to hold chains, endposts for bulkheads, plastic clothespins to serve as journal boxes), so we may be at or near “all stop” until the craft shop can reopen. This will give us additional time to just run these cars and see if there are any real issues with how they track. I figure it will be easier to fix any problems before they are decked over and rigged for sugar cane.
I also plan to take one of the frames to sketch out and build a rough jig. There is probably a correct clamp to hold these simple frames together as the glue sets. I don’t have it, and Oldest Son and I ended up using rubber bands to hold the lot in compression as the frame dried. This led to some creative renderings of the concept of parallel as well as a few timbers shot across the lanai. I figured if I sketeched the best of the lot on a bit of scrap lumber the glued some scraps to align things, the next round of cars should be easier.
Oh, and I came across a book I just ordered detailing Fowler locomotives serving in the Kingdom of Hawaii. Might be a few choice shots of unique rolling stock in there to inspire the next flight of these things!
Aloha,
Eric
Eric Mueller said:
GAP,
Operational check satisfactory! Kid-zilla placed everything behind Diesel Dan (I had just stripped Diesel Dan looking for an electrical fault, only to find my rechargeable batteries gave up the ghost. Lesson (re)learned…start with the easiest answer first!):
They tracked just fine, with the occasional derailment at turn-outs. No worse than the Hartland minis, so, success! Video evidence from a circuit passed Bandit Curve below:
OpTest: M&K Sugar Co. Cane Car Frames
I have to ransack the house for everything but the decking (chains, something to hold chains, endposts for bulkheads, plastic clothespins to serve as journal boxes), so we may be at or near “all stop” until the craft shop can reopen. This will give us additional time to just run these cars and see if there are any real issues with how they track. I figure it will be easier to fix any problems before they are decked over and rigged for sugar cane.
I also plan to take one of the frames to sketch out and build a rough jig. There is probably a correct clamp to hold these simple frames together as the glue sets. I don’t have it, and Oldest Son and I ended up using rubber bands to hold the lot in compression as the frame dried. This led to some creative renderings of the concept of parallel as well as a few timbers shot across the lanai. I figured if I sketeched the best of the lot on a bit of scrap lumber the glued some scraps to align things, the next round of cars should be easier.
Oh, and I came across a book I just ordered detailing Fowler locomotives serving in the Kingdom of Hawaii. Might be a few choice shots of unique rolling stock in there to inspire the next flight of these things!
Aloha,
Eric
Eric,
One suggestion; when you sketch out the frame, scan and save it so that if you want to make some more cars you just have to print out the scan and there is your template for your jig.
To hold joints together for my trestle I used small nails that “pinned” the joint while the glue dried. To prevent splitting of the wood I pre drilled the nail hole with a 1mm drill.
A tip for “bearing” lubrication look for graphite powder similar to what locksmiths use, I have a graphite puffer and every bearing I have used it on it runs freely, just be careful if using track power as graphite can be conductive. If you can’t get any powder look for 2B pencils in a stationary supplier and scrape the graphite from them. Good therapy for the youngsters.
GAP,
Thanks again. We’ll do some pencil shaving this coming week. In the meantime, I took that bit about kebob skewers and glued them to the journals. Wat a nice touch! Because of how low these cars sit on the tracks, any detail other than the bars themselves will be lost. Painting them black should be sufficient to imply “metal bar.” I’ll find a hole punch and makes some journal bearing caps and paint them black as well. Then I have to figure whether or not to paint thee frames. A deep forest green was the norm on O’ahu, but I am sort of fond of the unpainted look. I’ll use a permanent marker to mark “nails” after we apply the decking.
Off to enjoy trains running in circles!
Aloha,
Eric
Eric
Finally got some track laid and ran a few trains.
Couple of pictures
A cane diesel with a string of molasses tanks.
A side rod diesel (candidate for Australianising in a kitbash) with a string of bulk sugar bins.
The bulk sugar bins are used to get the raw sugar from the mill to a bulk sugar terminal for transport to refineries or export, each bin held 20 ton of sugar and some trains had up to 50 bins (Australia does sugar big time)
Rooster ’ said:
Eric Mueller said:
OK, with Mik 2020 behind me, it is time to get on to the next challenge…cane cars to go with the recently refurbished Little Thomas, a long defiunct battery powered LGB m2075, now in service as M&K Sugar Co #7. “Rooster” had sent along some beautiful redwood timbers, spare wheel sets, and hook-and-loop couplers to make a series of cane cars with some detail parts to finish off Little Thomas. This will be a slow build, as I have a number of professional obligations before me, and I am going to prioritize Oldest Daughter’s “shorty rehab” over this project.
Eric,
Those (old growth) redwood framing timbers are 5/8" x 1/2" I believe so depending on how “detail oriented” you want to get they may/WILL need shaved down.
Or “YOU COULD” just work with what you have as you and the kids have done many times over?
LOVE the updates Eric !
Recycle / Reuse…(https://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)
GAP,
First, congratulations on getting trains up and running!
Second, thanks for the information on cane hauling “down under.” The Kingdom / Republic / Territory / State of Hawaii did things differently. Each plantation had its own mill. The Oahu Rail & Land Co. picked up the processed sugar for transport to Honolulu for either rmcal use or export. The other islands worked the same way, with or without a common carrier. Locally distilled rum is a 21st centuryy discovery. Back in the day it was 'okoloehao, or moonshine. No train required! There were some Shay types out here, with the OR&L using them for the pineapple run for a while, others in construction service, and a handful on the plantations. Most of O’ahu seems to have been Baldwin 0-4-2T or derivatives, with a handful of 0-6-0 and x-6-y variants. The other islands were close. Diesel came towards the end, with a lot of it being war surplus. Kauai seems to have gone diesel early.
Back to the project…another afternoon of op-testing yesterday showed a pair of cars rocked a bit much, so a bit of prying to separate the timbers and some small shims corrected the issue. One of this will become my field tender. The rest will be cane haulers. The next flight will include a tanker, though I intend that to be for drinking water for the workers. No prototypes of which I am aware, but it would seem useful to me! It would also serve as a test project for an engine service area I envision (Check back in a couple years on that one!).
Rooster, this was fun. I was amazed how starting with a trip to the real thing resulted in believable, proportional vehicles. I had been concerned that my compromises would be “too much.” As I mentioned, though, once on the tracks, the compromises largely disappear. Oh, and I hope you noticed that there was virtually no scrap timber! What there was went into the scrap bucket, and it will become shims for the various projects that seem to be going on around this place.
Aloha,
Eric
