Selasa, 19 Oktober 2010
October 19 My SP Snowplow
I've been working on my rotary snowplow. The front truck was held in place with a 2.5 mm shaft without a keeper and every time I picked it up the trucks were left on my bench top. After a couple of days of that it upset me to no end. This morning I decided to put an end to that problem. I drilled a 1/16" hole through the chassis/shaft and tapped it for a 2 mm screw. It came out exactly in the center of the shaft and it's like it came from Athearn that way.
Next I decided to try to power the blade just for kicks. I dug through my motor collection and found a gearmotor that Motorman sent me to experiment with. It fits like a glove! I put an NWSL U-joint cap on the shaft from the blade and one on the gearmotor shaft and the alignment is better than it could have been designed by an engineer at the Athearn factory. I used my old standby "Goop" to glue the gearmotor in place. The gearmotor turns the blade about 100 RPM at 2 volts. I used a 180O resistor in series with the gearmotor and at 12 volts it's about 150 RPM. The current draw is only 40 ma at 2 volts so I can use an accessory output from a DCC decoder in the Snail to turn it on and off. I'll play around with the resistor value when I get it hooked up to a DCC decoder to turn the blade somewhere between 150 to 200 RPM. I used three pin Dean's connectors for the interconnect between the Plow & the Snail.
This has turned out to be a real fun project. I decided to add a crew to pilot my snow machine. By not painting the back of the LED headlight the it should illuminate the crew just enough so they can be seen through the windows. I'm going to use a crew from a Proto E-9, they are in exact alignment for the windows on the snowplow. The double A unit of E-9s only needs one crew in the front engine anyway.
I ended up using the 180O two watt resistor in series with motor and a 100�f capacitor paralleling the resistor to help the 12 volt motor start reliably at 2 volts.
I ended up using the 180O two watt resistor in series with motor and a 100�f capacitor paralleling the resistor to help the 12 volt motor start reliably at 2 volts.
It's hard to tell but the snow blade is turning about 150 RPM, the flash stopped it. Everything is working great. The LED headlight is so bright even with the current reduced to 3 ma that it's hard to see the engineers in the cab.
Sabtu, 16 Oktober 2010
October 16 Decal Info
Many Southern Pacific Model Railroaders are wanting the SP text fonts so here's my answer. I use Century School Book Bold. My Windows XP Pro didn't come with that font. I hadn't dinked around with fonts before so I went to Google and found an excellent Web Site.
The site is: WebpagePublicity.com
Click here to Download File
The site is: WebpagePublicity.com
Click here to Download File
I downloaded the font file and it was a TTF extension just under 130K. The instructions said to copy and paste it to Windows\Fonts and it worked. Now I have the "SP" font available in every program on my computer. Century School Book Bold font is extremely close to the real thing as my picture below shows.
I was very surprised at how close the font is to the Micro-Scale decals. I made several decals for my MOW Equipment that took some doings to apply. I don't have an Alps Printer so the best I can do is make a negative decal using black on clear and painting the car with a white stripe.
The picture above is the corner of my wrecking crane. I printed out the MW 7032 decal on my HP Photo Smart 7900 Ink Jet Printer. It is a negative, black background with white text, printed on clear decal paper. I painted a white strip on the car to make the clear text white.
Rabu, 13 Oktober 2010
October 13 MOW Equipment
Last week it was cool enough to put some time in the garage working on my layout. I got some serious cleaning and sorting done. I found two unfinished MOWs to work on. It warmed up here in Bakersfield again and I'm back working in my computer/hobby room where it's cool.
I cleaned up the wrecking crane and snowplow then I put on the SP decals and painted the blade on the plow red like the prototype.
Athearn forgot the headlight so I drilled a #33 hole and installed a white LED between the windows top center. The Athearn plow was longer than the SP prototype from the 50s. The SP plows were shorter so I removed 10' making the plow 45' long. I have a F7A that I'm converting to a F7B as the "Snail" that powers the traction motor. The SP Shops installed the traction motor to power the blade in 1953. It was built as steam powered in the 1920s, notice the exhaust stack on the roof and the boiler front plate on the rear.
The wrecking crane is very close to the SP prototype. I crawled all over the crane in the El Paso SP Yard when I was a teenager and it didn't have glass in the windows so I don't think I'll put glass in my crane either.
I put the full name on both of my MOWs because I like all my railroad equipment to display Southern Pacific. The prototypes only have "SP" on them.
There wasn't a snowplow in El Paso where we lived when I grew up but there was one assigned to the San Joaquin District here in Bakersfield to clear the Tehachapi Pass during bad winters. Since my layout has mountains I need a snowplow. I'll park the snowplow in the yard because it's still summer on my layout.
It's 1956 in the middle of summer on my layout so there's no snow and the kids from town are hanging out at the RR Super's swimming pool.
There are more pictures of the Railroad Superintendent's swimming pool in my December 2009 Archive, check it out.
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I cleaned up the wrecking crane and snowplow then I put on the SP decals and painted the blade on the plow red like the prototype.
Athearn forgot the headlight so I drilled a #33 hole and installed a white LED between the windows top center. The Athearn plow was longer than the SP prototype from the 50s. The SP plows were shorter so I removed 10' making the plow 45' long. I have a F7A that I'm converting to a F7B as the "Snail" that powers the traction motor. The SP Shops installed the traction motor to power the blade in 1953. It was built as steam powered in the 1920s, notice the exhaust stack on the roof and the boiler front plate on the rear.
The wrecking crane is very close to the SP prototype. I crawled all over the crane in the El Paso SP Yard when I was a teenager and it didn't have glass in the windows so I don't think I'll put glass in my crane either.
I put the full name on both of my MOWs because I like all my railroad equipment to display Southern Pacific. The prototypes only have "SP" on them.
There wasn't a snowplow in El Paso where we lived when I grew up but there was one assigned to the San Joaquin District here in Bakersfield to clear the Tehachapi Pass during bad winters. Since my layout has mountains I need a snowplow. I'll park the snowplow in the yard because it's still summer on my layout.
It's 1956 in the middle of summer on my layout so there's no snow and the kids from town are hanging out at the RR Super's swimming pool.
There are more pictures of the Railroad Superintendent's swimming pool in my December 2009 Archive, check it out.
Jumaat, 8 Oktober 2010
October 8 Mag Lamp
I finally broke down and installed my Mag Lamp next to my computer work station.
It is becoming more and more obvious that my reading glasses weren't cutting the mustard. I went to my stored Mag-Lamp and mounted it on my hobby workbench next to my computer. That way I can swivel it back and fourth between the two. It sure helps when I'm working on fine detail like the marker lights.
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