What's on your workbench?

What did I do?

 

After, I watched the Alex video and got advice from people on the forum so I was able to fix it. I don't know how long it will last because superglue is not forever, but I glued the pins all in minding the quartering. So it runs OK now. I need to check slow speed operation but have not got to that yet.

I'm kinda going for the look of this NP prototype:



And this is where I am now with the wiring complete for all wheel electrical pickup and dual motor drive. I still have a bit of tender shell detail, including truck sideframes, step handrails, rear drop step boards, and coal bin weight and load. as well as all the loco shell detail to do before painting:

 

I just finished the tender trucks:

 

I drew them up in Corel Draw and laser cut the parts for the truck sideframes.

I had convinced Walter Smith that we needed a USRA 0-6-0 shell for the Matklin BR89 a year ago, and we were working on it. Walter had drawn up the locomotive and tender shell for Brass on Shapeways, but Shapeways kept rejecting his drawings as being too fine and unprintable for the loco. He printed a tender shell in FUD and sent to me for evaluation, while he kept working on the loco shell drawings. Then Shapeways fell, halting the whole project. Then we found out that in parallel to Walt's 0-6-0 project was Rokuhan and Rob's 0-6-0 project which succeeded.

So my NP L7 0-6-0 with sloped back tender project was revived. I also received some resin slope back tender shells, as well as an early undetailed sample USRA 0-6-0 white metal shell from a British guy (name escapes me at this time) who made white metal shells, and I had almost had him convinced to make an 0-6-0 USRA shell for Z back in 2008, but I heard he passed away.

I have been dreaming of an NP L-7 Class 0-6-0 switcher that can actually operate for my Z Scale collection for decades, and as with almost everything Northern Pacific, if you want it, you build it yourself, so the USRA version was the closest decent starting point.

 

I am almost done with the tender. I just have to fashion a coal load, paint and decal it. Here is the progress pics:

 

After working in the yard a bit yesterday, I came back to the model, painted and decalled the tender, then started working on the loco shell details. Today I added a cab vent, I domed the flat top USRA steam dome to make it a Baldwin type, and added popoff valves w/whistle and a pull wire to the engineer's side of the cab. I also added a compound air pump and piping, and a small air reservoir on this side:




I added a larger air reservoir under the fireman's side of the cab, and a steam generator between the front sand dome and the smoke stack:




And I painted the shell, but I have not made decals yet. I'll add these decals into the next car's decal sheet I make, as it's a waste of decal paper for the minimal lettering needed on this loco, so here is what the fireman's side looks like finished:




And here is the Engineer's side painted: