The decoder went in, no smoke came out, and the loco runs great. Better yet, it all fits under the shell! Until I sort out the lights, the function wires can be conveniently routed out the cab door. And speaking of lights, my UDE lights arrived from Shapeways. Any advice for working with 3D printed parts?
I took the frame for a test drive on the club layout; I still have to find the best CV settings to accommodate the old 3-pole motor, but for now it runs at least as well as it did before I modified it. Nothing left to do to the frame but add LEDs. @Sumner, I see you've used some very neat flexible PCB strip for LED wiring, any idea where I can find some? My searches have turned up empty-handed. In the meantime, the rest of the loco is in the paint booth. I'd hoped to spray at least the red today, but the primer turned up some flaws that I need to patch first.
I believe this is where I got some a couple years ago. https://www.cozyardor.website/detai...inseitig-Oder-Beidseitig_80ajikknnlmgmmo.html $1.05 for 500mm. Shipping is a little high but not if you buy more than 1 500mm strip. I did approach a U.S. seller that sells a lot of decoders to think about stocking the flexible PCB strips but it didn't go anywhere. I think there isn't a big market here but think there is one that could grow. I did recently find an alternative and that is 38 awg magnet wire that you don't have to strip or burn the insulation off of as the insulation is actually a flux. Makes it much easier to solder to the wire or the wire to other wire or something else.... ( HERE ). Sumner
Thanks! That shipping is definitely on the high side. Magnet wire is my usual go-to, but it's so tiny it always leaves me a little cross-eyed. I suppose I'll grit my teeth and get out the magnifier again. It's only 3 LEDs, how bad could it be?
Busy day today. I got the shell patched and painted before the rain came in. While that cures I've started working on the handrails. For now they're lightly soldered together, but I'll probably reinforce the joints with a little bit of epoxy. The shell needs a couple of minor paint retouches before I decal, too.
Yes, that looks great! I see that you added jacking pads. Did you already post what you did for those?
Thanks! I completely forgot to document the jacking pads. But what I did for each one was file a notch into the sill with a square jewelers' file, cement in a couple slices of strip styrene stacked in a roughly jacking-pad-shaped arrangement, and sand off any excess styrene that was sticking out the sides. The styrene was from my scraps drawer and all the dimensions were eyeballed; any semblance of accuracy is almost pure luck
Lots of things to juggle as the loco approaches the finish line. I put the lettering decals on both sides before having to take a break; getting those big decals to lay flat over all the hinges and latches was more than enough fun for one decal session! While I recovered from decals, I sprayed the handrails with a light coat of automotive self-etching primer. Hopefully that will provide enough adhesion that I can mask the handrail ends and bottoms, and not have the paint pop off in one big handrail-shaped piece like my last project. Finally on the building front, SMD resistors arrived so I wired up the LEDs. I fabricated some quick and dirty styrene brackets to hold the LEDs in place behind the openings. I also added a few miles of Kapton tape to hold everything in place I tweaked a few CVs (and flipped the motor over, doh!), and it's running and lighting up. Even with maximum back-EMF it'll never creep like a modern switcher, but it'll do a respectably slow pace once it's going.
Hey, you put the decals on after the primer coat and before the black paint...next comes the orange stripes and THEN the road name...
Sometimes I wish I modeled the time before tigers went extinct! It's been a hot minute (well, a cold minute, given the weather lately), with 1:1 life getting in the way of things. But the last decals I needed finally arrived, and now the locomotive has builders' plates: To paraphrase Einstein, "The definition of insanity is putting gear ratio decals on N scale trucks.": In between decals, I made headlight and Gyralite (not shown because they fell out unbeknownst to me) lenses out of my preferred material: scrap fiber optic off a long-gone Christmas tree. Meanwhile, I also became a diehard convert to the ways of self-etching primer. I was able to mask and spray three separate colors onto the handrails, and the paint actually stayed! Once I get some weathering done to knock off the very un-SP shine, everything will be ready for final assembly.
As far as I can tell, the only constant feature among SP's entire H-12-44 fleet is absolutely filthy roofs..
So are you going to share a link to what you used ? Also you have ruined how I feel about the FM series of locos. A year or more ago I thought they were ugly and only got some because UP had some. Then over time, kind of like getting use to the VW Bug, they grew on me more and more to yes the ugly makes them quite nice to look at. Now seeing what you have done with one the ugly is completely gone so I have to now get reattached because yours isn't ugly anymore. Can't believe you got those decals on!! Nice work all around, love it, Sumner
Thanks! Your work was a big inspiration in moving forward with this project. There's something endearing about the late FMs; a little bit of Raymond Loewy magic that survived even as the bean counters pared the design down to a box on wheels. The metal primer was nothing fancy, I just picked up a can of Rustoleum's generic etching automotive primer at the hardware store. The hardest part was reacquainting myself with using a rattle can. The cut levers got stripped and re-primed a few times before I felt confident enough to move on to the handrails!
Seems I'm going to have to do one in tiger stripes by popular demand! But man are those stripe decals intimidating...
Once my life normalizes to where I can do commissioned work again, I'd love to do some more H-12-44s. But right now my schedule is so hectic that the turnaround time might be measured in years. And I wouldn't wish that kind of customer service on anyone! And I still couldn't guarantee the stripes would look good
The final clearcoat is on, the windows are in (a process that probably took a few years off my life!), and everything is reassembled. Only a few more details (windshield wipers, headlight lenses, and fixing the one too-tall exhaust stack) and it'll be complete.
