Thank you Larry and all your friends. Living with the layout for so many years, I sometimes need outside eyes to remind me just how special it is to be able to build and enjoy something like this. As a kid I really dreamed about having a big train set. I tend to be one of those kinds of people that when I set my mind on something it really doesn't matter how long it takes, I will eventually make it happen.
I was jumping from one thing to another today. The Engine House has sort of entered the punch list phase. I got the gantry railing on, primed the gantry and then air brushed it with Tamiya yellow. I found out why the one pump on the 567's gear front didn't print right, corrected it and printed another. I also fixed the engine block. The lower mounting rails were too thin and were breaking. I also had one set of access hatches moved too deeply into the surface and they didn't look right. Fixed that too. I revised and reprinted the hoist carriage to solve two problems. It was too wide for my rail spacing.
It wasn't the problem of the carriage. It was the spacers that I used to separate the gantry girders. My miter box is so worn that it no longer comes out square. When I squared them up on my Precision Sander, they were no longer the length that they were supposed to be. So when I glued the beams together with the spacers, it was no longer in gauge with the carriage. I also wanted to change the cable spool to make it so I could load it with "cable" more easily than feeding the string around by hand. I separated the spool and added a stub on the end that can go in the lathe. I also found some reversed faces that had escaped me when I first grew this part way back when the printer was new.
The pump printed badly because it wasn't actually touching the gear case face. It was sitting proud by a very small amount, but it was enough to create printing problems. It was actually touching by the bolts that were sticking out from the pump's back face. The bolts I used on some of the parts were actually fully formed objects. In other places I used just a bolt head. There was enough of the bolt touching the surface that kept the pump from not forming at all. I fixed this problem too.
I painted the gantry outside using Tamiya white primer since white is the best color to have under yellow. I brought it inside to dry.
I tacked the railing at key spots with medium CA, and then went back and epoxied the rest using the 6 minute epoxy. Before priming I did a thorough scraping and cleaning of any residual glue on the girder's flanks. I then wiped it with IPA to make it ready for paint.
While the yellow was completely drying I put it into the engine house.
I wanted to bring my big (huge) Pennsy Q2 into the Engine House to check its height (it was a 16' tall loco) so I could determine how much overhead door could be exposed without getting whacked. I was backing it in and all went well until the engine was about 3/4 in and then "Clunk". Stopped dead running into something. I opened the gate and moved it by hand and "Clunk" stopped again. I thought it was running into the filler strip like the SD35 was, but it wasn't. It was impacting the door frame. Actually, just one tiny brass detail sticking out from the cylinder was catching the frame. I had to grind the frame about an 1/8" to give sufficient clearance. I tried it in the far door and it cleared. I didn't try it in the near door since there was the UP switcher sitting there.
I hate when that happens. And I'm still having conductivity problems on the engine house track.
I got a great print of the traction alternator. I made two. In order to hollow out the inside I cheated and made a separate plate to close the hole when it's assembled. I was able to grow the part with the commutator actually separate and below the outer frame. It's very hard to see in this picture, put tomorrow I finish cleaning it and prime it and you'll be able to see what I'm talking about. Again, I erred in making the mating surfaces the same size. The generator nests inside the flywheel's rim, but the i.d. of one is the same as the o.d. of the other and the machine is so accurate that this becomes a press fit and I don't what to press anything this fragile. It took me a half hour to draw those louvers (also almost invisible in this image).
I finished my son's nephew's AC unit. I wanted to print the text on decals. I first used some Microsol decal product that I thought was inkjet film. It wasn't! It was trim decal. You are just supposed to cut out shapes in it and then apply as a decal. It didn't work with inkjet ink. It didn't dry and smeared. When I put the decal sealer on it, the lettering just went all to ****. That's when I realized it wasn't a decal film. Then I found some of my white background film and some HP photo paper. I printed the text on both and decided to go with the photo paper. I fixed the ink with Final Fixative and the applied it with the PSA. My daughter in law was duly impressed.
I started assembling the first lighting unit for the engine house, but got side tracked when the printer was finished. I'll work on them tomorrow.
The last thing I did was to begin assembly of the overhead doors. It turns out that just a little bit will be exposed. These will be painted Coral Blue to match the other metal trim on the building. I'm going to add some channel on both sides of the door to simulate door track. Forgive me… the door turns out to be wider than the mechanism. The mechanism was created from the original SketchUp drawing. The as-built doors came out wide than the ones I drew on the version I used to take off the mechanism. That mechanism was a SketchUp download. No one will know (except you all).
