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Reply to "Continuing Saga …"

More chimney work.

 

After mounting in a drill press vice I continued adding bricks. It's trickier than meets the eye since you have to not only keep the individual rows on the side you're doing straight, but they have to line up with the rows on the adjacent sides at the corners. To add to that, you have to ensure that you alternate between full-size and half-size bricks at the corners so they appear as whole bricks at each corner. When I started side #3, I didn't pay attention to this and was five rows into it when I realized that the corners were not correct. I had to remove the rows with a single-edged razor and start over; this time getting it correctly aligned. 

 

Chimney 12

 

Here's the chimney with three sides mostly bricked. The top part gets the decorative build-out and that comes on Wednesday.

 

Chimney 13

 

I almost has a "Bricktastrophy". I had a reaction to some Chobani Yougurt yesterday that seemed like there was artificial sweetener in it. I can't tolerate any type of artificial sweetener. It immediately tastes like medicine and the taste lingers long after the food is gone. I hadn't had it before with this product. I've been using their plastic containers for all kinds of things in the shop including as a holder for cut bricks. My wife went down to the shop to get one of the containers to bring upstairs to see what ingredients were in it. We called and complained and it turns out there are two kinds now available. Regular "0" Chobani with cane suger (140 calories) and Simply 100 (100 calories) with some cane and Stevia. Apparently, Stevia, even though it's "natural", still reacts the same way with me. The reason I'm telling all of this is... 

 

That container she brought upstairs was the one holding several hundred "full-size" bricks. They're white and so is the inside of the container. I went downstairs and found a pile of white "bricks" on the concrete floor. She hadn't realized what spilled and didn't tell me. When I swept them up with a dust pan I got a large amount of general dirt with them. I sifted the dirt out over a piece of window screen and then washed them in alcohol. It took an extra half hour. My wife was surprised when I explained that those tiny white specks were actually parts that I needed. Oh well...

 

MODELING A DIESEL PRIME MOVER

On anther topic... I have old builder's photos of Baldwin Locos and prime movers given to me years ago by an uncle who was a Baldwin mechanical engineer. I've been thinking about making some model diesel prime movers to have around the service area. I believe you can get these in HO, but not in O.

 

I was inspired today to start planning this when I found a Robert Hundman drawing of a Lima switcher where he drew a cross-section that showed the prime mover. I've been having trouble getting blueprints that show the actual sizes of big diesels. Lots of great pictures and cutaways, but no dimensions.

 

I was able to bring it first into Corel PhotoPaint and then into CorelDraw. This enabled me to properly scale the drawing for O'scale. I then scanned photos of a Baldwin straight 8 cylinder diesel prime mover. The pictures weren't taken directly from the side so they had to be cropped, straightened, perspective adjusted and stretched so they would now appear as straight side views. I then imported these into the sectional drawing and sized them accordingly. I realize that the Lima switcher probably had a slightly different engine, but I'd bet that overall sizes were very similar. Here's the drawing so far. The dimensions are full-size for an O'scale model.

 

Diesel Plan

 

This project will go to the bottom of a steadily increasing pile, but it's something I've been wanting to do. Who knows, maybe I can get someone to make a resin kit out of it. I keep toying with doing resin work, but Les Lewis says it's a pain in the butt and it would be best to not get started.

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Images (3)
  • Chimney 12
  • Chimney 13
  • Diesel Plan

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