Metro Vick WCG1

[cabbage]

Well this is not the picture you were expecting -but that is sometimes how things are.... The shot shows a "rough up" of the "B" bogie. This shows how it would look after I have fitted the sabots to the wheels. The building of the jig and the conrod construction will have to wait until I have time to go to "Screwfix" for more MAPP gas(!)



regards

ralph

[cabbage]

Well after an evening of work -spent mostly uttering Burmese swear words, (a gift from my father!), I have begun cutting the sabots that will hold the wheels to the axles. Because it was the first thing to hand that was the right diameter I used a length of aluminium rod... This was a mistake -however I have got this far so I will have to continue. The idea is that the sabot is threaded and sits on a threaded length of bar (i.e. the axle) and is locked into place via Loctite Green. This is a direct crib from the method I saw being used as a boy -except the wheels where held in place via long pins. This made converting wagons from Cape Gauge to Metre Gauge by turning the wagon wheel three times clockwise -pretty easy!!! The sabot then connects to the drive wheel by the 3mm crank pin through it.

The problem with the aluminium is that it produces long streamers of tinsel which promptly envelope the cutter and flies around the work shop like evilly malign confetti...

regards

ralph

[cabbage]

Well after having turned my workshop into a mad version of Xmas with all the aluminium swarf streamers that it produced I have a bogie with six wheels screwed onto the axles. The 19mm dia Aluminium bar was chopped into 11mm lengths and them turned down to 10mm for 6mm of its length. Then six of the twelve sabots were then bored to 4mm and tapped to M5 the remainder drilled to 5mm. The brass rod axles were then tapped to M5 at one end and "loctited" into the threaded holes -this gives me one end of the axle that is fixed and I can use the wheel to pull/push the axle through the chassis sides. The other side of the axle will be drilled and pinned through the sabot for ease of removal.



This means all my gears will have to be drilled to 5mm (easy!) and then once both bogies are on rails I can think about the construction of the "Scotch Yoke" and conrods -plus the pivot points. This would then complete the bulk of the mechanical work. Then it is the simple part of wiring all the motors to the relays for fwd/rev and then the ESC to the power supply.

regards

ralph

[cabbage]

As most people will have gathered there have been "sight problems" with errant volcanoes... However after having got back home and got rid of the backlog of stuff that had built up I am now able to continue with the loco!!! I have tapped the shafts at one end and then "loctited" them into position. One of the main problems that people get with "sleeve retaining compound" is that don't allow it time to grab solidly-this can take anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes -and the joint never quite makes the grade.... My solution to this is to apply bucket loads of compound and then allow the compound to cure overnight. This does mean that you have to clamp whatever it is quite firmly and for extended periods of time. I normally use either the Drill press or my Mill (at the moment I am using both!) to hold the axle in a truly vertical position relative to the wheel while the compound sets.



The sabot has been milled from the front to produce the slot that the sawn off M3 bolt will rest in. The shot below shows the  section of bolt.



By Friday Morning I should have 6 completed axles and then I can move on to the "fun" part of the bogie -building all the linkage. Despite careful examination I am still not sure of the correct dimensions and (to be honest) I don't think that some of the figures on the drawings are anyway accurate. As explained elsewhere the Vulcan drawings are dimensionally suspect as some of them are based on 2cm to the inch(!) What I have a feeling that I am going to have to do -is guess and hope... SLM were an extremely conservative company and really didn't like doing things anew. Thus it is very likely that another loco of theirs has the same power bogie and I can crib from that.

Time to dig out the collection of postcards.

regards

ralph

[cabbage]

This is always sort of a "momentous occasion" for me -whatever I build...



The next step is to "crib" the linkage dimensions from a Swiss loco that I found in my collection of postcards -it is termed by Swiss trainspotters as a "Flatiron". This is basically a "Krokodil" bogie with a cab on it -in fact that is exactly how some of them were made... I have put in my "request" to friends at the BLS Transport Museum and I will get them e-mailed me later this week.

regards

ralph

[MikeWilliams]

Ralph - it looks great.  Reminds me of the old Kitmaster plastic kits and the Swiss Crocodile they made - not that I ever had one - had to content myself with 08 shunter and 4-wheeled railcar!

Just to get an idea of scale, can you please tell us roughly what the overall length and height of the model is?

Mike

[cabbage]

The model is 82cm from nose to nose, (the cow catchers and buffers have yet to be made). It stands 19.5cm from the rail to the top of the snorkels and is 12.5cm wide. As you can see it it nearly takes up a complete length of track(!)

regards

ralph

[cabbage]

Having just "Googled" for the kits in question, I have to agree with you, if you saw off the front pony truck -you have the GIP loco(!) However they would not be able to get away with that "slight technical error" in description -that is an OBB loco... SBB and BLS "Krokodils" used inclined Kando drives. But on the other hand it does illustrate very clearly the inherently conservative nature of SLM. And (it has to be said) a better possible match than the "Flatiron" that I have been looking at(?)

Thanks Mike!

regards

ralph

[MikeWilliams]

So, in English, that's 32in long - a scale 60ft or so.  No wonder it looks big!  What were they normally used for Ralph, passenger or freight?

Mike

[cabbage]

These were originally designed as pure freight haulers in the Ghats and the Deccan Traps area of India. Iron ore was their principle cargo during the GIP era of their lives. Later when the GIP was "submerged" into the Indian State Railways they got used for carriage hauling between stations. They were nicknamed "khats" by the crews (khat =crab in Hindi) and they make a weird moaning noise when stationary -due to cooling stresses of the expanded transmission gear. The pantographs were raised and lowered by means of rubber gloves holding a long length of varnished bamboo. They "locked into position" by catches -and were not held there by compressed air.

It is actually quite a "fun" model to build and I hope it inspires others to have a go with their own "Krokodils" or "Flatirons"!!!

regards

ralph

Post Scriptumn: There have been no further purchases so the running total still stands at £123.06p

[cabbage]

After having dutifully emptied my e-mail box this morning and obtained the drawing I required from the BLS Transport Museum I translated the dimensions into G3 and sat down with a Bagel -or two... The Lunchtime Farl was munched in deep meditation... By the evening meal I had a rough idea how I was going to do it -and by 6pm I had enough courage to start operations!!! After some evil marking out, delicate sawing and precision bashing with a hammer -the roughs were ready to meet the drill.

What you are looking at is the raw cut and drilled pieces of K&S brass.



The large rectangular piece has to be cut and shaped into the familiar triangular shape of the Kando. The next shot is the vertical slice through the drive -forgive the mish mash of nuts and bolts -all this will be silver soldered on final assembly



To the important question "does it work?" the answer is yes -it squeaks horribly too!!!

regards

ralph

[cabbage]

To the tumultuous cheering of the assembled, "B" bogie moved under its own power for the complete 1 yard length of the test track and duly fell off the end at 8:30 pm this evening!!!

I have to admit that this is one of the nastiest pieces of home made engineering that I have had to do. Even with marking and drilling everything to a fractional millimetre of its life -the thing would still "bind" at the odd angles... I took it apart and gently filed the  "egg" shapes for the Kando holes for more times than I care to remember(!) The chief problem I have now is the fact that the bogie is really too light for effective testing and I have had to tape a pair of SLA batteries to it to give it the correct mass for the task -otherwise the thing simply sat there with its wheels going around -going nowhere...

regards

ralph

[cabbage]

The last purchases for the loco are the Radio Control (R/C) system and the Electronic Speed Controller (ESC). I could simply home brew the latter but I think that would defeat the purpose of the experiment. As with the NER EE-1 I have opted for a 2.4Ghz transmitter but I have gone for a simple ESC rather than the more complex programmable one I used there. This I believe completes the purchases for the loco so that a final tally can be put down. The remaining parts and so on will come from the scraps pile and bits boxes.

Giant Cod 2.4Ghz 4 Channel Tx and Rx £27.42p

Electronize FR8T-PS £36.60p

This brings the total cost of the build to £187.08p over the course of 9 months.

I may be biased but I think the experiment was well worth it, as it has proved that a Gauge '3' loco can be easily affordable.  The biggest expenses were the Wheels and the R/C equipment. The R/C equipment alone accounts for 34% of the total cost and if this were an issue it would be easily possible to use a Dual Pole Dual Throw switch to provide Fwd and Rev from a 2 Volt Sealed Lead Acid battery.

What remains to be done now is the essential "faffing & nit picking" that goes with the end phase of any model, the gap filling, wet sanding and priming that completes the model. I will update what goes on as I finish it -but essentially the construction phase is now complete.

regards

ralph

[cabbage]

I prefer a brush (normally 4x1) and a pot of paint to paint my models with. I have never been able to get to grips with and air brush and all I can do is clog the things up. However my de Ville Biss and compressor work perfectly on Gertrude when I spray her lilac every 5 years or so... The last layers of "Brown Lake" have been applied to the body work. This has been the most horrible and vile stuff to work with that I have ever used. It exhibits all the worst points of "Candy Apple" and "Krysta Kryl" automotive paint with none of the advantages.

However it is done(!)





The next task is the give the chassis their coats of paint. I normally use either Red Oxide or Cyanide Blue epoxy paints for this. They may not be the correct colour -but they are tough and very durable.

regards

ralph 

[cabbage]

After a coolish Sunday in the shed -the home straight is now in sight. I have begun transferring the blu-tacked wiring to the roof to the underside and gluing bolting it into place. There are still two power cables sticking out of the side window -but this is the power input from the shed PSU -a genuine Farnel type 7 lab pack(!) The relays have been glued to the roof, the coolant fan installed in the snorkel chamber and the circuit breaker installed between the batteries. This is I have to admit a personal foible of mine as the first time I took a loco out to a G3 get together the wiring had become shaken by the taxi from the Railway Station and the fuses dislodged and broken, since then I have used circuit breakers...

The pantograph has emerged from the box of K&S tubing as expected this is my own variant on the Henry Greenly pantograph as discussed in "The Newsletter". The kitchen "Creme Brulee" maker also doubles as my blow torch for small silver soldering jobs. Making a "Panto" is not a hard job -it is however mind numbingly tedious. The standard diamond panto requires EIGHT lower arms and EIGHT upper arms. These are duly cut from tube with a small K&S cutter. Then 1cm long stubs of 1mm brass rod are chopped up -you need THIRTY SIX of these... Each 1cm length of rod is then crimped into a 3mm connector -do this THIRTY SIX times. The rods are then fed into the end of the brass tube and crimped -do this THIRTY SIX times. Then when you have done all this, gone out side and screamed(!) you can begin to assemble the bow collectors. I "cheat" and produce a bow collector where the ends of the bow are joined together -this produces a stronger bow and it can take the knocks from impacts that a "true to scale" one would not.

The ends of the bow are bent using the ends of a (modified) clothes peg, this provides a set shape. The ends then have a length of wire placed into them to hold them together while I hit it with the torch and silver solder.

I will post some pictures later.

regards

ralph