Pete,
Just trying to give you an excuse to go back to the dungeon (sounds funny), but instead of getting you out of our hair, you get to do your best work. We get to enjoy the photos of the fanstic work you do on your buildings especially.
Meanwhile, not all RTR trains have reasonable detail (like the Bachmann G gauge passenger cars, see below).
Been making progress on my 1898 air break valve, tank and piston for my C&P snow plow. It has general applicability, at least according to my 1898 Train Shed Cyclopedia books, the design has some size variations but they all look a lot like this:
Some installations split this into two parts with piping between them. I am thinking about printing this in G:29, O and N Scales to see how it comes out. This still needs a couple updates, but looks pretty good so far. Tedious and time consuming, but I don't know if the detailed part is available anywhere in a casting?
Anyway, it will go with my N Scale version of the C&P snow plow. But for example, what does the detail under some of your freight cars look like? I don't have my N Scale trains out at the moment to look at them. But while I was working on this and trying to figure out how all the pipes and linkages worked, I looked at the underside of my Bachmann G gauge passenger cars. Before I started looking into the break system, the detail looked interesting, but puzzling. Now that I have had to learn this stuff, the Bachmann detail is terrible. Whoever put it together had no understanding of what they were modeling. They just threw a bunch of piping, linkages and a cylinder together. It makes a representation of the breaking components, but is completely unworkable. Perhaps it represents an interesting combination of time saving on the drawing development for the mold production process, while trying to have some details under the car. But at the same time, the time saved error has been cast in production thousands (I suppose) of times.
Oh well,
All the best,
Charles
Pete,
That's a pain, thanks for the reminder. I have noticed there could be clearance problems with break lines built into the truck area, especially with the super tight curves used in model railroading.... I actually made wheel recesses in the truck bridge for the heavyweight flatcar for a 9" curve using my drawing, it is pretty close, does need a little adjusting for the accuracies in the Shapeways metal printing process. I may not do much more than try for molded in break line linkages myself, except for the break cylinder. In the photo this is really obvious hanging under the C&P snowplow. I have fitted the break cylinder drawing to the developing snowplow drawing and it is a pretty good match for the dark silhouette in the photo.
At your prompting, I did find some details at Walthers, one company in particular, Precision Scale Co., has a bunch of stuff, mostly larger scales, some N Scale (no break cylinder like mine in N though). I have saved their web site info and catalogs. They do have a ton of O scale stuff, and are happy to do custom casting and even injection plastic (must be big bucks... oooh).
Here is the current C&P snowplow with the break cylinder in place (though may be adjusted a bit more):
All the best,
Charles
Pete and Dave,
Thanks, I don't really expect to put lots of detail under the car where it becomes impractical for sure. But I feel compelled to put some of this stuff in the drawing I don't necessarily expect to see modeled. Part of the reason is if I don't understand why some visible item in a the photo is there I have a difficult time imagining how to draw and place the item in the 3D world. Another part of the reason, is that I would use the drawing as the basis for both N Scale and G:29 Scale (my term for G gauge at 1/29 scale) models. Another part of the reason is this G gauge air brake arrangement under the Bascmann G gauge passenger car:
If you look closely at the linkages and stuff under here they do not make sense. It took a while for me to figure it out myself from knowing little about rail car air brakes. When the brakes on the C&P snow plow first came to may attention (I don't remember why at the moment), I tried studying the Bachmann car, and that only tied my brain in knots (oh well..., poor brain...). Studying the drawings in my Train Shed Cyclopedia books took time, but I believe I have it reasonably well figured out now (and doing some mechanics statics analysis).
But I am now convinced about what the visible blivit (??, aka air brake cylinder, reservoir, and valve assembly and "train pipe" branch) hanging under the snow plow is, and a good location for it. You won't see it looking down at the car, but in a side view it is kind-of obvious. So it is a likely addition to the model, even without all the linkages and train pipe. The linkages being much less visible without looking under the car like you said Dave.
I agree with you all about automatic operation of the trains, I am not very interested in that. I will let you-all know if I figure an efficient process for occupancy detection and signal operation (the prototypes did this over 100 years ago) from my perspective. Like you Dave, if it gets too tedious I will not have the time or energy to do it. This is part of the reason I do the planning I do, because I don't want to be stuck with something that seems to require too much effort and cost to let me have some fun running the trains. I also don't want to do something obviously dumb in my modeling from the perspective of real trains.
And, I am having some fun with the drawings. I sure know a lot more about air brakes than I ever did before!!!!
One of the things I have decided in cool, are the levers and such at interlocking towers, as well as manually operated clearance signals (like the prototype).
Have any of you ever looked into these guys:
Hump Yard Purveyance: http://humpyard.com/
or:
Lever Frames by MODRATEC: http://modratec.com/
A limited installation of some of these for controlling signals might allow for some operation of turnouts and clearance signals like the prototype years ago (like the time span of my modeling plans...), for a little variety and fun.
All the best,
Charles
Pete and Dave,
Do the throttles you have have a display or just buttons and knobs? Thanks for the discussion, nice to hear about someone actually running their trains with DCC and practical experience.
On to my C&P snow plow, how's this for a car bolster:
I measured a Micro Trains car bolster to come up with this, it is for the N Scale adaption of the drawing. I figured it should be compatible with MT trucks. For my N Scale version of the drawing I will fit the bottom of this to the car mushing it into the frame I have drawn based on the rivet pattern.
All the best,
Charles
