Daryl.... Its great when the spouse is involved. Mine has been involved since I started gutting THE RV to make room for THERR. She also has her on excursion train she enjoys running. BUT...She has to park my freight in Lucky Penny Yard before she can bring her train out of the station.
That's really cool. Great Picture! I can see the smile on her face! I'm sure that my Wife had never seen a model train run until today, and she was kind of fascinated. I didn't know She was watching when I was testing the infield track. She just said that Nolan was going to love it. I said"Nolan? Heck, I love it! He's going to go gags over this thing!" When I get the switches hooked up to the turnouts, and mount that next to the transformer He's going to think that He's the King of the railroad universe! I only have a barn, a lumber yard and a chicken coop, but with the buildings lighted He should really get into it. Thanks to all of the assistance from You folks, I'm going to pull it off I think. Now I can't wait to get his delivered somI can start shaping some foam! My only problem is going to be raccoons in the barn. I may have to shield everything that I build! I may have to do some clearing of space in our storage room. I have tons of space with wood floors in my barn, but I think I'm going to have to forego space for survival of my layout. Please tell Your Wife that She's a very cool Lady!
Finally got access to finish worm gear tooling. While I have used and applied a lot of gears over the years I had never made my own as my applications were industrial, not Z Scale, so were satisfied with commercially available standard gears. For these tiny gears the availability isn't so good, quality suspect, and due to limited space, shaft sizes and tolerance, etc, can't always use what is off the shelf. Then, the effort to modify standards that even are available can become more difficult and costly to set up, fixture, etc, than to just make the whole thing from scratch, designed with all of the details specific for the application. Plus, for a manufactured product that will use some quantity and requires a consistant supply but not enough dollars to be important to the limited number of vendors, it was determined that I would be better served over time and for the design flexibility as well as quality control, to make them myself. Set it up and ran a couple and it was completely successful. Finish, dimensions, and smooth operation were perfect, first time, and to the calculations. Shaft C/L's were on the money with minimal backlash. Here are a couple of pics of the first one in an adjustable inspection fixture to check fits and operation. (The worm was made some time ago, described in this post. http://www.trainboard.com/highball/...-on-your-workbench.45048/page-240#post-966485 ) The pics are enlarged tremendously so the parts can be seen but the actual OD of the worm is under 1/8" and the worm gear OD is just over 1/8". Both gears pitch lines are under 1/8". This set is a 14:1 reduction and I'll be making a 20:1 set in this run for a future application. I can actually make any 120 DP set I want with this tooling as it's a true hob, not a milling cutter. That's also what allows for a true enveloping worm gear, not a modified spur as is typical in these applications. For these small DP gears (and future smaller DP with a new hob) the enveloping design is very nice for individual tooth support. It's funny but the strength for the load in actual service is way less than that needed to stand up to us while servicing and handling them. Unfortunately I had to break down the setup instead of running off the sixty or so that I need at this time as I have a couple of axle considerations to finalize and the machine had to go back into production on paying customer's parts. I'm quite happy with the whole effort and the efficiency and reliability of the tooling. It's coming together, slowly but surely. I'm quite happy so far.
That's really cool that You can make exactly what You need, and with You setting up Your needed tolerances they will probably last forever and give You zero problems.
It's nice to have access to some really nice machines. Tolerance on parts like these can be held to a few tenths of one thousandth with little effort . Good tools, good setup, and let 'er rip! The gear mesh is really amazing. With at least four places for tolerance to go wrong it all comes out with near zero backlash and smooth as glass mesh. I expect these gears to be lifetime pieces in this service and what has proven manageable this far encourages me to go even smaller. But that's for another day. These are small enough for the current project and buy me the space needed to accomplish DCC mounting with tolerable access for servicing. I can get the whole power truck height down to the upper 8mm range, between 5/16" and 3/8". The biggest challenge now is keeping weight in something this small but I think I've got it sufficiently covered with the basic design density and strategic use of heavy stuff. We'll see.
The foundation is great.. There's a barn on the same property as a wild beam home that we built in around '02. It'd the same color as yours on two walls, and two are a flat Pine Green. That barn is so nice I would have skipped the mansion and converted the barn to a house. No great silo like yours though. I really like your scene. I'm not used to n scale. I bought some Hobos from Woodland Scenic, and they're so small the look like mosquitos. I looked at them through a 10X loupe, and the paint detail is pretty amazing. I'm going to make a really rusty boxcar and make a scene with them. MAYBE people will be able to tell that they're Hobos. When I was a kid we would see hobos when we were riding down the tracks to get to our fishin' hole. Back then they weren't dangerous. These days the track jumpers are mostly runnin' from the law. We even knew one of them by name. Herbie. We'd see him three or four times a year. If we caught a mess of bluegill we'd give them some fish. Those were the good ol' days. Now they'd probably kill kids for booze money.
Well, today was the day that my project was delivered to my neighbor boy. That is the GREAT thing about a hollow door layout. Nolan's Dad and I carried his layout and all of his cars and Locos in two trips. My barn is 200 feet from their front door, so the whole move took ten minutes. It was a complete surprise, so here is a picture of the newest N-Scale enthusiast on the planet. That smile cannot be faked. She is one VERY happy boy. Thanks to Rodsup9000 and brokemoto. These guys made it all possible. Without their generosity, it would've been a two foot circle!
I don't have the skills to build a complicated layout. Yet. But if I can make a kid smile like that, I have a good start anyway. Thanks folks. I had help though. Rodsup9000 and brokemoto are the guys who made it all possible. Without Rodney and Max it would've been possible. We're starting him out with a medium speed locomotive and a few fairly heavily weighted cars, and ore car and a heavy tanker with really nice trucks so that he can keep it on the track and not get frustrated. He's really good with the re-railer, and these cars are lined up pretty well, so all he has to do is reverse the loco and bump the cars to couple them. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm starting him out with Rapido Couplers. Any suggestions for starting out a youngster are welcome, because Nolan probably knows more than I do about keeping it on the track. As You can see, the smiles on his face tell it all. He loves the n-scale life already. Yesterday morning his Mom was awakened at 5 AM to the magical sounds of an n-scale locomotive on my version of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. This oval can handle pretty high speeds and still stay on the track, so He was flat out and lovin' it. He has two more locomotives that are quite a bit faster that He doesn't know about yet. When he starts to show signs of being bored, his Dad is going to break out one of the "speedier" locomotives. This is an adventure for all of us.
Just remind him these are NOT slotcars. Slower is better when it comes to model trains... Mark out 12 inches on the side of a straight section of track. Time the locomotive from one mark to the next. Two seconds would translate to 54.55 SMPH. Thats a decent speed for a freight train. Here is a model train calculator you can play with to check speeds... http://www.stonysmith.com/railroad/speedcalc.asp If you have real trains running anywhere near you...take him 'railfanning'. Let him see how slow the real things run. Bet he would love to watch real trains...now that he has models of them.
Thank You. Rodney was telling me about scale speed being far faster than real trains are. I tried to convey that to him. The little guy will probably not figure it out until He gets a string of cars and has to keep it on the track. As long as it's just a locomotive He will probably continue being "Speedy" on the outside oval. I built it for him to have fun, and it's up to his Dad to teach him the finer points of not de-railing. I just hope that the little guy has lots of fun with it.
Always like seeing kids and adults happy of watching the trains. Have been asked by reporter at local show why we do this. Told them to watch the people like him.
Wow! Kudos to you! Wish I had a neighbor like you! Keep up the geat work! Sent from my SM-G920P using Tapatalk
Here's my friend Nolan havin' fun with his new railroad. I'm going to try to have his Dad sign him up here so that if He has any questions He can go to the greatest people in the N-Scale hobby. That would be all of You!If You look closely at the middle photo, You will see that the shelf for the controller that I glued on is an old level. The level belonged to my Grandpa. When I was about four, my Grandpa bought my brother and I a Lionel train set. It's no accident that my Grandpa's level is a part of Nolan's railway. A generational touch I suppose. I like having a piece of my Grandpa on a train set that I gave to Nolan. I should probably get that train set from my sister one of these days. I remember it had metal crossing signals, and the transformer is Bakelite like an old telephone from the 50's. I guess I'd love to see that train rolling again. I would probably feel a lot like Nolan does now.
