And with that compliment, here are some more details...

I finished the suppressor stacks and they're ready to be installed once the painting's done. I glued on the bushing bases for the secondary side and added two more conduit runs: radiator fan wiring and radiator temperature sensing.

Firstly, I did air brush the sky gray on the primary and suppressor insulators. I always force dry Tamiya and other water-based paints using a heat gun. I start it hot and then immediately click it on cool to keep it from melting the part I'm attempting to dry. The tool I use is a Top Flite  heat gun for applying mylar aircraft skins.

When they were dry I assembled the stack using a couple of V-blocks clamped to an angle block so the stack would be comparatively straight. I use CA between each part. Remember, they're all held together with the 1/16" brass rod.

The only problem using the light gray is that you can now see clearly that the "insulators" are not finned all the way around. But since they're so convincing from the viewing distance they're going to eventually lie, I'm okay with it. I would have had to machine them from scratch to make them and that would have been very difficult. I tried it on a test piece and was not happy with the results. In looking at these pictures I'm realizing that I've yet to build the corona rings. They're going to be challenging, but are so cool to look at that I'm willing to give it a whirl. I can't be any more difficult than building the hand-made masts and yards for the Battleship Missouri project that I did two years ago.

When these were finished, I created the radiator fan wiring conduits using the same scheme as I did with the current transformer conduits; i.e., making junction boxes and CA'ing the brass into them.

I didn't permanently glue this conduit into place. I will after the radiators are installed (which they are not yet).

I then formed a conduit that would go behind the radiators to serve as a connector to radiator temperature sensors.

This conduit is permanently glued since it just lies against the radiators.

I realized that the secondary bushings were not yet installed so I made the bases out of some 1/4" sq. styrene, cut with a saw and miter box and then trued up on the Tru-Sander. The centers are the same as the primary bushings.

I'm going to use the same plastic Christmas tree fasteners for the secondaries as I used for the High Voltage transmission towers. For these I'm turned some nice, domed caps for them. I don't think they have current transformer bases, but I'll check my resources. If they do, I'll turn them too. It there are current transformers on them, I have to add more conduit for their sensor leads.

I have a very cute little spherical turning attachment for my Taig lathe that I used to make these perfectly domed shapes.

Tomorrow's the weekend and I usually don't do any shop work then. And next week is preparation for my #1 grandson' Bar Mitzvah with lots and lots of family and friends coming to L'ville from all over the country, so I may or may not get shop work then. If I do, y'all will know about it.

Trainman,

Congratulations to Number One (Grand)Son!  I'm sure it is an important event in his life and the whole family's.  Have a great visit with all the incoming relatives and friends.

You accomplished enough fine work this week to take a week off from the transformer!

Just fantastic.  Wow.

    Trainmann2001 I see what you are talking about on the insulators. the fins not going the whole way around. In my past I have worked on lots of cars and trucks and the door panel plastic pins that hold the interior panel to the door were completely round like what you are looking for. I don't know if you are that worried about the look of them. I asked A friend of mine at A body shop and he will give me some and I could mail you the ones that the fins go the whole way around for free. I know you already have A lot of time into them and you may not want to start over again. Just an option I am not judging your work so please do not be offended by my statements. Choo Choo Kenny

As usual, Thanks!

Kenny, let's see what they look like, although it might be difficult, I may be able to remove the plastic from the spacers without having to make new spacers. The primary bushings are not yet glued together so I can change them easily. I found some with full fins, but they weren't the large ones needed for the big insulators.

Wow!  Builder's plates.  Oh my, you are getting down into the details now!  This is incredible.  

Excellent detail.  I do not remember, if I ever knew, what the third gauge was for.  However, I was wondering if you are adding a sudden pressure relay (SPR).  Here is a link I found that describes it and gives a drawing and photo.

http://electrical-engineering-...ed-power-transformer

It should be mounted near the bottom of the transformer, and have a conduit for wiring to the Trip circuit.  When there is a fault in the transformer, the pressure increases.  The relay detects the sudden pressure increase, and closes it's contacts which are wired in the trip circuit to open the low side breakers and high side automatic switches.  It would be an easy project for you to add.

Thanks Mark and Lee!

I will try to add an SPR. I also have to add the drain valve and oil filter. I need to get three scale globe valves: one for the SPR, one for the drain and one coming out of the conservator. Plastruct values are too clunky, but PSC makes some really nice ones for locomotive details that might just work. I'm guessing that these pipes are between 3 and 4 inches. Most of the loco lines are smaller than that. I've thought about scratch-building some valves, but this is getting ridiculous (getting???) and I need to finish it up to do the rest of the substation and get it on the railroad. After all, this is all about model trains at some point. Right?

I also spent time checking out some terrific videos that were linked from that site including some good ones on transporting 350 ton large power transformers by Schnabel cars on rails that the many-tired specialty trucks that haul them on roads. I was able to pull a screen shot off one showing some great exterior details of a newly installed transformer. I learned about Ferroresonance and Turns Ratio Testing too. I have no idea what I'll do with that information. I'll just file it away with the rest of my eclectic trivia on things technical to impress my friends.

I've pulled hundreds of screen shots off both stills and videos using SnagIt. It's not free, but is a much more sophisticated way to capture any kind of image (or audio) from you computer. Very much better than "Print Screen". In SnagIt, I can put in time delay so I can enlarge an image full-screen before it captures it, and i can also crop the picture while capturing in one step instead of having to do it either in SnagIt's editor or in Corel Photo Paint. In the SnagIt editor I can also annotate the image more easily than in most paint programs.

Watching one of those large transformers being transported like that in person was quite a sight.  I saw it done once, and up a small hill at that.

Wow, a sudden pressure relay!  That was the very first work order I ever did at a utility.  I assisted my boss with adding one to a 138/12.47 kV unit at a substation near the ship-channel on my third day at Houston Lighting and Power, back in June '68.

A small, but vital part of the fault protection scheme of any transformer!  

Yes, protective relaying is way too much information for this project.  We had a three year training program with bookwork, classes, and on the job training to get somewhat proficient.  You are doing a great job on the transformer.

Oh yes, protective relaying is really intricate and difficult to learn.  Relay protection engineers are a class unto themselves - its takes a special type of person and a special type of commitment.  I am not saying they are better than other types of pwoer engineers, but the really good ones I know had a really different worldview compared other types of power engineers.  I was (and am) a T&D planner - about as different a worldview of power systems as you can have - in many cases the polar opposite.  It takes all types to make it work.  The largest group of people we have in my company now is our protective group. they are the busiest, too. Good guys all . . . 

While it took a while to learn protective relaying, I liked it because the concepts didn't change even after 19 years.  After being laid off in '95, I ended up at the telecom company.  That technology changes way too fast for me.  I still can remember concepts from the power company, but have trouble with the new stuff.  I have worked with some great people in both fields.

I think you are on the right track making.  I cannot think of a better way.  

I have thought of another way...sort of. It might be easier to make the fixture in the positive rather than negative. What I mean is make a cone with a hole in top for the hub and a lip around the bottom for the corona ring. Slots cut in the sides of the cone to support and space the hangers. This is easier (to me) than first using a forstner bit to create the counter-bore for the corona ring and then drilling to a specific depth for the hub and then trying to slot into the sides of this hole for the three hangers. I was thinking about this while trying to fall asleep last night and realized that making the slots would be very tricky at best and impossible at worst.

Here's the re-designed fixture top and side views.

Even though this won't be a slam-dunk either, it is still better than trying to assemble the corona ring just sitting on the workbench. The problem is the hangers that just don't face sideways, but support the ring well below the hub. I'll create a diagram sitting under spool to set out the 120º hanger spacing.

Wow!  Looks like the real thing!

Not to make you nervous, but a lot of people are watching, now.  This is just too fantastic.  I sent a link to my friends who run ABB's transformer division.  They love it!

The more the merrier... I'd really appreciate to hear what they think moving forward. Thanks for doing that!

I bought more paint and some metals to finish up the project. I stocked up on #73, 74 and 75 micro drills since I seem to eat these things. I also bought some small aluminum tubing that will be used for the HV bus bars. I bought six pieces, but I may need more. I bought some 1/4" brass rod to attempt to make some scratch-build globe valves. Like the corona rings, this one has me thinking.

Like Jack Nicklaus, I pre-vision what I want to do. I'll build it many ways in my head until I think I have something that works. Jack always used to play an entire upcoming golf match in his head as part of his prep. To me, it's a fun part of the model building process. I try to get my grandson to do it too since he likes to dig in and start building before really understanding what has to go together and what problems may arise.

Today was a "Details" day. Installed some inspection ports, and added bolts and washers to them. I painted the corona rings, and then turned my attention to turning some scale globe valves. 

Here's access hatches on the conservator (both ends)

Large bolts holding the tank top in place.

Access ports at the bottom of the tank (5 places)

The small nut/washers are from the Tichy Group. The larger bolt/washers are from True Details Ia Squadron product).

Here are the painted, glued and completed corona rings. Suppressors are not glued to transformer and won't be until transformer is painted. 

I don't know about you, but I couldn't imagine the rings turning out better than they did.

As to the valves. I'm starting the process by attempting to turn the body on the lathe. I'll then mill a flat on one side and drill a hole to receive a turned bonnet and valve spindle. The hard part will be making the hand wheel. I'll experiment with brass or styrene for that. 

The first valve I'm doing is the large one that will sit in the conservator oil line.

I'm not completely happy with this first attempt since I turned it while the work was in the 3-jaw chuck. This created interference that prevented me from using the ball turning attachment for the center bulge so I approximated the curves like you do on an Etch-a-Sketch with both hands turning both of the lathe's hand wheels.

I'm going to try again next time. On this attempt, I'm going to put the brass bar either between a collet and a dead center, or a collet and the steady rest.  Either way gives me room to swing the ball-turning device. All of this is kind of new for me so it's a process of experimentation. We're taking a quick trip to Chicago so next work session with be Monday or Tuesday.

This is a wonderful series.  When it (the transformer) is done, please contact OGR or another modeling magazine (would not even have to be a model RR magazine on modeling, come to think of it) and write an article about this.  It really is unique, and very enjoyable!

For some reason I am not seeing some of the photos, but what I do see - wow.  You ahve some lovely machine tools, by the way.  I'm jealous.

Thanks Lee! Hope everyone had a nice Labor Day weekend. It bums me out when Summer is ending and the days are getting shorter. While October is one of my favorite months, it leads right into November and that is not my favorite.

Back from State College, PA. Saw my granddaughter since the National Anthem at the Spikes Minor League baseball game. She's 9, has an amazing voice and left me speechless... which is very hard to do I'm told.

Back in the shop today and finished the drain valve an pipe assembly and almost completed the Sudden Pressure Relay blocking valve. 

I made a smaller hand wheel for the drain valve and just drilled some holes in it. I did add a small Tichy Group NBW on top. That took as long to do as machine the valve body.

I decided to glue this pipe and the conservator pipe into position. I initially thought about priming and painting them off the model, but after re-thinking it, I decided that the chances of messing up the paint were greater than any difficulty in painting the whole assembly.

For the SPR, I made the smallest valve so far. For the gate valve bonnet I filed down a piece of round brass rod since I didn't have any rectangular stock. For the drain valve I re-shaped a piece of square brass tubing. I didn't like how this worked so well and took the different approach for this small valve.

You can get an idea of scale being that it's held in a hemostat in a Pana-vise. This valve handle will even be small and will have no holes in it.

For the SPR itself, I'll shape that out of styrene and CA it to the valve body. I will add a piece of brass rod to the valve's back and drill a hole in one of the blocking plates on the tank's bottom.

There are a couple more conduit runs needed, from the Bucholtz valve and the SPR which won't take long, and then I'll build a permanent ladder going up the side. Many big transformers have ladders permanently in place to reach the upper regions. At first I thought about building it from brass, but the drilling of the small holes could be a nightmare since there would have to be so many of them. So I'll do it out of styrene. 

I just did the ladder design after doing a bit of fast Google research. The rungs will be 0.030" styrene rod and glued into spaced holes on the 0.030" X 0.080" styrene bar stock. The rungs are on 1/4" centers (1 scale foot) and is 3/8" wide (18 scale inches). The tricky part will be making the flat bends for the upper hand rail area. I may cut that out of styrene sheet and bond it to the ladder's rails. Bending materials edge wise is generally not easy.

Tomorrow will see more progress.

Oh wow!  This is great.  thanks for the update.  This is a jewel of a project - a big jewel, but a jewel of the project.

Excellent!  I feel like a slacker.

You continue to add more and more.  The small parts are amazing.  Glad you have the SPR on your list.  

You could add a model of Lee standing next to the transformer with a clipboard, and me on the ladder taking a reading.  Not too high, unless you have it switched out of service.  I don't want to get electrocuted.  

I've been on top of many a transformer in my younger days testing the CTs with a megger.

Continuing Saga of the P&PRR

As always an excellent update, with a detailed story & photos

Thanks for sharing all this information.

Cheers

Thanks to all.

Dave, don't feel like a slacker... I just started this scratch-building thing and I'm 69. I never could imagine doing it since I always built models using instructions. I would read them over many times and build the entire kit in my head (a la Jack Nicklaus) before putting it together. All of a sudden I'm building a complex structure with many levels of details with no instructions at all other than a few drawings that I made. At each point you have to sit and think, "If I put this piece on now will I be painting myself into a corner?" It's a constant thinking process so it took me many years to get up the nerve. It also took amassing a ton of specialized tools with which makes scratch-building—especially in styrene—much more enjoyable.

PLEASE do an article on this when it is done.  It is truly a work of art.  I promise all of us will nag Allan Miller until he just can't take no for an answer from you!

Lee, I'm game! Alan had said that he was going to publish my coaling tower modification article, but my eMails were no longer receiving answers. I would be very happy to write an article about the transformer.

Speaking about the transformer; Everything came together today. I finished the ladder and installed it, mounted the instruments, painted the unit and attached all the bushings, and made a fixture to glue the lightning suppressors and then glued them.

I cut out the upper ladder railings using an Xacto, and used a half-round file to finish up the inside curve. These were then glued to the ladder rails. 

For the brackets I used some pieces of 0.030" X .100" stock glued to little chunks of Evergreen angle. 

After they dried I measured where the attachment points should be and glued 6 brackets to the ladder.

When dry I glued the ladder to the transformer and then added the brackets to the top handrail. Getting those in position was the trickiest part of the job. The thick rungs don't look too bad...

The things to do before painting was to attach the three gauges. I first thought that I'd paint these off the Xfrm and then glue them on. After reviewing that decision, I reversed it, primarily because I needed to attach signal lines to them and mount them into the control cabinet. I marked and carefully drilled an 0.020" hole to accept the brass into the instruments' aluminum bezels, and then CA'd in the brass.

For the cabinet end, I also drilled a 0.020" hole in the end of a 0.047" piece of plastic round rod. I'm pretty good at this having perfected it when drilling out gun barrels on military models. These little plastic ferrules were CA'd to the brass signal leads and then solvent glued to the control cabinet.

With this, the model was ready for the paint shop. The first thing I did was use some liquid mask on the gauge faces. I then sprayed the parts of the Xfrm and radiators that would be inaccessible when the radiators are mounted.

I used my Badger 150 double-acting airbrush and sprayed Tamiya Sky Gray. I also sprayed the cooling fans while off the model.

I forced dry the paint with a heat gun (only a little hot, mostly cool) and then CA'd the radiators in place. BIG STEP! With the radiators in place, I sprayed the entire assembly.

Already it looks a million percent better!

When this was dry, I assembled the high and low voltage bushings and CA'd them to the Xfrm. I then created a simple fixture to stabilize and hold the lightning suppressors while their CA cured. This was a quick job. I then glued them into position. Since I couldn't pull the fixture straight over the corona rings, I just took a mini tin snips and cut the fixture away. It did its job.

I put a few more stickers on the unit and with that this baby is ready to energize.

I think I'm going to put the beauty shots into its own post coming up next.

As promised here's the finished transformer posing for its "coming out" party. Before taking the pics I painted the valve handles red and some of the cabinet pass throughs black just to add some interest. I have not weathered it yet and may not. I quite pleased with how the black pre-shading of the radiator fins looks now that the finish gray coat is in place. It was the right way to approach it.

I now have to put this someplace safe until it's ready to install on it's 'concrete' pad in the substation and get wired up for business. 

Thanks to all who've been watching this sub-project since July 14th. I also really appreciated the encouragement and insights. It was a 7-week project and easily the most complicated part of the substation and its center piece. I don't think the remaining parts are going to be as intense. Starting next week I'm either going to build some of the lattice work, or get working on the HV breakers. It depends on what I feel like.

It has been great fun watching this project come together. When this started, I would never have guessed it would finish with this level of detail. Simply amazing!

That's some amazing detail work, if I didn't know any better I'd think you slipped a picture of the real thing in here!

Thanks guys! If that's the impression it gives you, then my work here is done... or at least until I start the next part.

Trainman,

It sure looks like the Real McCoy!!  Congratulations on a superb model!!

I am jaded and not easily impressed.  That is absolutely amazing and I salute you.

mikeg

that is just a work of art!

All your work is AMAZING and it give us all a level of perfection to shoot for when making a model to add to our layouts.

Just absolutely amazing.

Thanks to everyone for all the really nice comments.

I'm almost as amazed as all of you are. Considering when I started, I had the MTH transformer body, a load of styrene shapes, and the ideas to use HO cooling fans for the radiators and auto body fasteners for the insulators, and it ended up looking like it does, blows me away too.

Today, I'm going to clean up the shop a bit and get ready for the next project... the hybrid breaker/disconnect switch. It will be complex too, but no where near the transformer.

Myles,

Bravo! 

Dave

You did an outstanding job and it has been a good read following along.  We just got back from a road trip, and as a result of your article, I was eyeing substations as we passed them.  Actually knew what some of those items were for - thanks for the education!

Gregg! You and me both. I have to watch myself when I'm driving that I don't do something stupid while trying to get a good view of substations (rock formations, telephone poles, cloud formations, etc.). There's a few here around Louisville that are accessible from public areas. I want to photograph them, but don't want to be too 'suspicious' about it.

Today I got some shop time and felt it was time to clean up a bit between projects. I straightened some and then got sidetracked. I repaired the Victorian Station's loading dock which got whacked when my J1-a collided with it. It was just too wide.

I decided to reduce the width by 1/4" to make sure that it never happened again. I scribed the line and just took the razor saw and hacked it off. I then trimmed some of the internal structure and salvaged the side rails. I glued it all back together. I also needed to make a new stair stringer since the original got lost.

After a quick air brush job I put it back onto the layout to see how it looks. I still have to reinstall one of the porch posts on the street side since that was ripped out along with the loading dock during the collision. This post was entrapped by the floor boards. I may have problems re-installing that unless I remove the station and bring it back to the shop. All I have to do is disconnect the lighting wiring to remove it. I no longer glue building into the layout just for this reason.

I'm sure that loading dock now has sufficient clearance. I will have to re-touch the paint job on the base board and I still have to add ballast up to the station's edge (also the parking lot).

I still have more shop cleaning to do, but at least I got this little fix-it job done.

It's an occupational hazard, by the way: you get to where you automatically notice things - a span of wire gone slack due to leaning poles, leaking transformer, etc., even if you aren't looking.  

Utilities are becoming very wary of people stopping for pictures.  There have been several "physical security" incidents lately to warrant their concerns.  Fortunately the internet is full of posted photos sufficient for any modeler . . . 

Lee is so right.  Now that I have worked for both, I notice items like that for both electric utilities and telephone.  

I also don't take pictures of much of anything anymore-trains, utilities, public buildings, etcetera.  If I want a photo, I usually just look online.

This entire thread has been a joy!  You are doing such a great job on all aspects of your layout...  AND...I love the transformer...WOW!

Alan

Thanks again!

For anyone who wants to tackle a large transformer I just discovered another source for radiator detailing. Detail Master makes photo-etched radiator core material for 1/24 scale cars. It would work great for transformer radiator faces. And they make a nice automotive electric radiator fan photo-etch that would also scale nicely for an O'Scale transformer build. It's too late for me, but it's good to know. It's why I subscribe to Scale Auto Modeling and Fine Scale Modeling magazines. It's good cross-fertilization.

Today, I finished cleaning up the workshop and finished the repair to the Victorian Station. It was no problem to slip the porch post back into position and gluing it there. I re-glued the loading dock back to the base board and touched up the ground cover paint where it was damaged. I did remove the station from the layout to affect the repairs and then replaced it.

I then cut out a piece of 1/4 plywood for the transformer's "concrete" base. It was a little warped so I wet the high side and put some weight on it. I'll leave it overnight and see if it flattens out. If it doesn't, I'll cut another piece from a flatter piece of stock.

On Thursday, I'm going to start working on the Hybrid Breaker/Switch.

That's nice looking!.  Tell us if the wet-it-and-leave-it method of flattening the board works.  I know it does not with poplar, but thats not plywood.  

The wet method might work for balsa wood, but it didn't work so well for ply. Now to be specific, I really didn't do it correctly. To pre-bend skins for RC air planes, you need to use vinegar and water. I used alcohol and water. But it didn't flatten it enough for the purpose so I found a substitute. I cut two pieces of 1/8" Masonite and laminated them. This produced a perfectly flat base for the transformer. This was German pressed board left over from our living there. It's finished on both sides and is wonderful stuff. I've said it before, but as expected, German wood products are superior to ours.

I also finished basement straightening with the clean out of the store room space. I filled two contractor-sized trash bags full of stuff and opened up some shelf space. today it's back to model building.

Basement cleaning is officially done! (for now).

I sanded the edges of the new Xfrmr foundation and then created the entire substation foundation. I wanted this to match the train station's elevation. To do this I first started with a piece of 3/16" Masonite, a couple of pieces of some approx. 3/8" foam core I had leftover from some training display posters I brought back from Germany, and another piece of 3/16" foam core from Michael's Crafts. These were laminated together with Liquid Nails panel adhesive. The height is now correct.

I put it on the layout and plopped the transformer on it (just to see what it looked like). The transformer is not sitting on it's faux concrete base.

I had to modify my site plan to update it and then print it out. I printed it "tiled" so it outputs on six, 8-1/2 x 11 sheets that get taped together.

The foundation pad's pretty large, but I wanted a person to be able to walk around the transformer without have to step off the "concrete". I'm also going put a similar pad under the control room building. Its pad will intersect with the transformer. There's really only an 8 foot cartway to enable vehicles to get into the property, but hey... this is O'scale and we just don't have real spaces on which to erect things. Besides, there's a rumor that a huge giant lives in the same region as the railroad and whenever something needs to be picked up and moved, a giant arm comes down and does it for the towns folk.

Terrain will be formed up to the site on the three sides. I think the access to the site will actually be from the opposite end since a truck couldn't make the tight turn into the gate from the station's drive. I'm probably going to make some light poles that will have LEDs in them so this will be illuminated like the rest of the layout. I should have put a red pilot light on the transformer to show that it was "on". 

I totally agree, the pad should be large enough to walk around.  I don't know how many times I tripped on a pad or tower support.  We had some substations that only had about that much access.  One night we had a failed transformer, and they tore down the fence to get at it to hook up the portable sub-station, then had to build a temporary fence around the portable sub-station.  An all niter, just to check out the protective relaying (including SPR) as the sun was coming up.  Yes, red means good, green means bad.  Some guys have a hard time figuring that out.  

Started attempting to make the hybrid breaker/switch. I use the word "attempting" to signify that the first go was not successful. I tried to machine the complex contours of the breaker's body from a single piece of aluminum bar stock. While I DID make a contoured piece, it does not resemble the prototype in any way. It is too long, and not correct. 

As a refresher, here's the drawing of the actual breaker.

I was machining this between a dead tailstock center and the 3-jaw chuck. It did solve the chattering problem when I, at first, tried to machine it with the work in the chuck and the long end sticking out from a steady rest. The piece sang like a tuning fork and produced a horrible finish. 

My next attempt will be to machine each lobe, the ends and center as separate pieces and then tie them all together. I'll drill them on the lathe and either machine a matching lug on one end of each piece, or—and I think this is the best approach—through drill each segment to support a brass rod that will align all the pieces. Since these pieces will be aluminum for ease of machining, I'll use epoxy or CA to hold them all together. Probably won't be for a couple of days before I can determine if this is going to work. 

My fall back position will be to choose a different breaker style...one that has a straight profile if this one proves too difficult to replicate. 

I also did some work with #2 grandson on Saturday which I added to the Sunday Showcase.

Just fantastic!

Peter

Not only will it be a work of art, but it'll be the heaviest accessory on the layout!

Thanks GunRunner!

Today was a good work day in that I had almost 4 hours in the shop, but it wasn't very productive. I will illustrate.

Before I started cutting anything today I used CorelDraw and determined a) the approximate radius of the concave surface and b) the approximate center point of this arc. With these two pieces of data I was able to set up the ball-turned and swing the curve. It came out well.

As I machined the second right-side lobe of the breaker and the work piece in the collet got shorter, I ran into trouble. I was unable to swing the ball-turning attachment far enough to the left to complete the concave profile on the left side of the part. The curve was to lie between the two lines marked on the work piece. I was able to do the first piece since the work stuck out far enough, but when trying to do the second, it wouldn't make it. The yellow line shows the interference between the collet closer and the ball-turner.

I thought (incorrectly) that if I made a holding fixture to extend the work piece further out of the lathe collet that the ball-turner could swing clear. I used the slug that was the mandrel for winding the corona rings and machined the other end. I needed a nice fitting 5/16" hole which I had to bore with a boring bar since my lathe chuck could hold nothing larger than a 1/4" drill.  

I was having trouble with the boring. It wasn't cutting when it was getting deeper into the hole. I realized that the bottom of the boring bar was rubbing on the hole and forcing the cutter away from the surface. With a little touch up on the grinder, the boring bar cut nicely and finished the hole to a good fit.

I then drilled and tapped into the bore for two 10-32 NC set screws. 

I then re-chucked it in the lathe and continued to turn down the o.d. of the fixture until it was a smaller diameter than the collet holder. But I needed enough "meat" in the walls to provide enough threads for a good grip on the work piece. Looked great! Didn't work! It was still too large and blocked the ball-turner from swinging left enough to complete the concave turning.

Plan B: Instead of trying to duplicate a mild curve that no one will ever notice or even see, I just set the compound feed to an approximate angle and machined a straight cut down to the finished diameter on the left end. This did work, but not after I spent over an hour messing with the fixture.

With the little bit of stock remaining in the collet, I was unable to get another fat component so I proceeded to make the next piece in the puzzle, the middle transition piece.

Here are the pieces completed so far assembled on the 3/32" rod that will support them.

So far I have 3 right ends, 2 large right side lobes, and 2 transitions pieces. Another good work session should have the body parts finished. I will then have to put them into the milling vice and machine flats to support the bushings, observation windows and rupture disks. 

You can be sure you'll be the only person with something like this, nobody else could afford all the hand work that goes into something like this!  I'm always envious of people with a metal lathe, I've always wanted to tinker with one of those, just not enough hours in the day.

I look forward to the progress and the finished product.

I hear you!   I'm a tool junkie, and I have a lot of tools I've used once or twice.  OTOH, sometimes I buy something just because it catches my eye, and it suddenly becomes the indispensable tool, so you never know.

Definitely! But sometimes, I actually forget that I have those "impulse buy" tools. That was the case for the hollow punches. I was making the little circles using my "poor man's punch press" method, only to realize that I have sized hollow punches that would do it quicker.

Finished machining the breaker's body parts. They came out reasonably well.

I figured a good way to produce the back taper. Instead of switching tools I simply went straight in with the parting tool to the finished small diameter, and then use the same parting tool to very gently cut the taper. The parting tool has a little side relief allowing it to cut sideways as long as the depth of cut is very light.

When I was machining the last main segment and parted it off, I found out that the drilled hole didn't go all the way through. Since I want the brass rod to extend out both ends to install the other parts that hang on each end, I needed to finish that hole. I try to drill the hole as far into the work piece as possible, but the drill is a #41 and isn't that long. I made one part from it and then produced the other one before re-drilling the hole deeper.

I had to hold it by the little lip on the back end in the collet and hope that it held well enough to support the drilling operation. It held and I was able to not only finish the hole, but also true up the facing since the parting tool had left a little crown in the middle.

With all those pieces down, I threaded them all on the brass rod for this picture.

Clearly, machining the parts separately instead of trying to machine all these contours in one piece was a much better way to go.

Now it was time to machine the recesses for the bushings. The one in the larger piece goes in square, but the one in the smaller piece goes in at a 30º angle. I should have done a practice piece first as you'll see in a moment.

For the straight recess, I set the milling vise up connected to the cross slide 90º to the lathe axis. I used a 3/16" end mill which by luck happened to be the right size. The first one I made the mistake of moving the cross slide hand wheel and made the cut the right depth, but also across the piece. I can probably work with this.

The next two machined much better where I just plunge cut the recess. The pieces I talking about are the three larger ones in the middle. You can see the one on right next to the end with the cut all the way across.

To cut the 30º recess, I now had to mount the milling attachment onto the compound top slide. I set the slide at 30º and tightened everything as much as possible.

As you can see in the picture, the mill is going to come at the work piece with the flutes hitting on only one side and this creates a ton of vibration, and this is a very insubstantial setup. This is the piece where I should have used a piece of scrap as a trial. I did just about everything wrong on the first piece. I was moving the wrong handles in the wrong direction and made a total mess of the piece. The next one came out a bit better and is usable. The last one came out perfect. This is illustrated completely below.

I have enough 1/2" aluminum stock left to machine a new part. It only takes about 10 minutes to machine one now that I know I'm doing. Tomorrow I'll start machining the bushing bases that will set into these recesses. Believe it or not, this is actually the first major job I did with the milling attachment. The vertical Z Axis lead screw is very stiff and it has limited capacity on the lathe, so it's not as useful as a real milling machine would be, but for a special job like this one, it works. I don't know of any other way to bore a hole into aluminum at a 30º angle. Using an end mill in a drill press might work, but I could also lead to a broken end mill and a wrecked job. 

Before I get a 3-D printer, maybe I should get a milling machine. If I ever want to make a working model engine, I will need a mill. To make buildings for a model railroad, I can get away without one. After all, I've made it this far without one.

Excellent job!  Especially since you said you don't use the lathe that often.  I remember making a center punch in high school metal shop, but that was 45 years ago.  I remember I had issues with it, and had to get another piece of stock from the teacher and start over.  He wasn't happy.  

I guess that's why I thought I was a very different Industrial Arts Teacher. To illustrate this point I will regale you a (long) story.

For most of the time I was a metal shop teacher, the projects kids were building were mostly what I would call "artistic metal work". I define that as items that didn't have to function after they were created. I quote an old Bill Cosby line about shop, "We just put two grooves in it and call it an ashtray". Things like log tongs, plumb bobs, didn't have absolute measurements or fits that needed to be minded. A plumb bob worked as long as it was heavy, had a string on one end and a point on the other. It didn't matter if the diameter was 0.030" larger than it should be. The usual answer from the kid was, "That's the way I wanted it to look."

Meanwhile, I was getting very interested in model engineering. I got a set of plans for a vertical, single cylinder, double-acting, slide valve, steam engine and thought it would be a great project for the kids. I had my classes take a look at it and asked for volunteers. It was a much more complex project than any we had ever attempted and I only wanted kids working on it that wanted to.

I got 15 volunteers. Some of the kids had wood shop also so they were tasked with making the patterns (and getting wood shop credit) for the base, and cylinder block. I was also the Power Technology teacher in the next classroom so we had a nice supply of old lawnmower engine pistons to be melted down for casting metal.

So for the first time in my classes, Kids had to pay attention to tolerances. If something was too big or too small it wouldn't fit or the machine wouldn't function. We began to explore the entire concept of "quality" being defined as "fit for use". This was almost a decade before the quality movement took hold in the USA.

The kids poured their hearts and souls into the project. The casting patterns were terrific. We used every tool and every technique in the shop. It was a very complete shop with full-sized vertical mill, surface grinder, and an electric discharge machine. (EDM) We actually used the EDM to open up the oval steam ports in the valve face of the cylinder block. Before that time, the EDM was only used for demonstration purposes. The kids learned about lapping, brazing, fits and finishes. It was the quintessential project combining all of the skills in one beautiful thing. Most people build these things from kits containing the casting. We started with nothing.

I knew I arrived at nirvana when one of the kids brought the valve body to me and said it didn't meet the specs and he wanted to make it over again. It was the first time a kid had asked to make something again because the dimensions were wrong. It was amazing! In that instance, there was a huge difference between your teacher and me. Good enough wasn't good enough. It had to be right.

I was already working at Fischer and Porter after school and was training people in their manufacturing facility. I was able to scrounge great metals from their scrap bin, and had become friendly with chief inspector Clarence Jones. We made a field trip to the plant, brought our subassemblies and had Clarence inspect them. The kids had the chance to view some of the critical parts displayed a very big, very sophisticated optical comparator. They also saw some of the most sophisticated machinery available in 1974.

After final assembly we attached compressed air and it RAN! It ran perfectly. The kids were ecstatic. It was the center piece for the industrial arts fair that year along with some pretty cool projects from the power tech lab including a functioning tesla coil and a cutaway model of a hydro-electric dam. Both of those were also multi-media projects combining work in metal and power shop. 

That was my last year in public education. Fischer and Porter gave me an offer I couldn't refuse and I went to work for them as their only technical trainer. The kids presented the steam engine to me as a going away present. I ended my public school teaching career on a high point. 

That is a great story!  1974, the year I graduated from high school.  That certainly is different from what we were doing.  Yes, most of our wood and metal shop projects were artistic, as you say.  The center punch and a small tool box were the only ones that had a use.  I still have them.  We had drafting too, and that was what I liked best.  I would have taken a third year of it, if I had been allowed.

I had 9 years of drafting including junior high, high school and college. I could have been a drafting teacher. I fell into the Power tech thing.

It pains me that most Industrial Arts shops in schools are gone. I visited the high school in which I taught in 1995 (20 years after leaving) and was very disappointed. The metal shop was still there, but un-used, the power lab had been converted to a weight room for the football team. It was a joke! The same textbooks that I used in 1974 were sitting on a shelf at the back of the room. When I was arrived there in '71 all they had were lawn mower engines. That was the entire program. They had a hydraulics training unit, but it had never been used.

When I left we had a diesel, gas turbine (from a Naval engine start cart), 3 V-8s, and a Mercedes straight 6. We took field trips, learned about jet engines, and on and on. When I left the program died and then became a weight room. What a waste. The minds of people in administration were much too small.

The world needs engineers and people conversant with technology as much today as they did in 1974. Today, when kids study technology it's basically robotics; Lego robotics, as if that's the only kind of machinery in use on this planet. It's the reason we're falling behind in manufacturing...there's no one that knows how to do it coming up through the ranks.

It is a travesty.  When people speak of working in technology today, they are referring to computer use.  Many have forgotten that the mechanical, electrical, civil engineering world is also technology.  We need engineers, mechanics, electricians, etcetera.  My high school was a small rural one, so we didn't have much.  At least now we have a county wide vo-tech school which has a lot of good industrial arts programs.  That is good to see.

The problem I see with Vo-Tech is that they're in lieu of college. They're meant to train skilled workers—which we still need—but aren't addressing the fact that engineers need a blend of practical and theoretical skills. In my experience, the engineers who performed the best, and I define "best" as those that developed solutions that were readily integrated into the real world processes and products, were those that had sufficient practical experience to understand how things actually worked, and the theoretical training to do things based on reason as well as intuition. 

How many people don't even understand how a simple home thermostat works? Not enough! With cars and every other appliance we touch having digital controls, most people are at the mercy of repair technicians whom themselves may not fully understand what's going on, but simply replace components until they fix it.

There's a similar challenge in medical education where doctors learn all about "doctoring", but nothing about how to run a medical business. Running a medical practice is hugely complicated and most young doctors are ill-equipped to do it. Hospitals then are ruled by accountants and lawyers and they aren't helping improve health care in this country, but this is a topic for another thread not in the Scenery and Structures forum on OGRR.

i couldn't agree with you more, especially that we have gotten off topic.  Back to O gauge railroading.

Thanks for the photo of the master at work!  You look like a real live shop teacher there, although as I recall ours wore a dull gray coat.

Always a pleasure to watch the progress!  Wonderful.

Continued great work!  

Who makes that breaker you are modeling?  Does it use SF6 as an arc suppression agent?  That was what all the ones our company was buying used when I was laid off in '95.  I then ended up in telecom where I had started back in '76, so I haven't kept up with the latest like Lee has.

What a build and what a builder...

Alan

I strive to not disappoint.

Today was an exercise day so I didn't have as much time in the shop... got down there about 3:00 p.m. But I still got some stuff done. I may lugs where the diagonal bracing will attach to the posts, I then made a fixture of sorts to hold the posts at the correct distance apart so I could measure the distance between the lugs for the braces.

But that's not how I spent most of the time. I'll get into that in a moment.

To make lugs, I simply crush a piece of 1/16" brass round rod in the jaws of a Vise Grip, steadily tightening the clamp force until it flattens to thickness I want.

When it's first crushed it doesn't look this good. I put the Dremel flex-shaft hand piece in my Panavise and use a diamond coated cut off wheel to shape the edges and faces of the lug. I use the side of the wheel very lightly.

I use a scratch awl to make a indentation where the hole should go and tap it a couple of times with a jeweler's hammer, and then drill with a #75 (0.021"). I just bought a bunch of new miniature drills to replace all of those that I've broken. But the new drill didn't seem to be cutting at all. To view the point of a #75 drill isn't easy, and sharpening one is even more difficult. To sharpen micro-drills I again use the side of the diamond coated wheel. The hardest part is to find just where the edge needs to go since the flutes are so tiny. And it requires almost no pressure on the wheel to cut the edge. Getting both cutting edges equal is just a guess.

After sharpening the drill cut nicely. I located the holes on the posts the same way and used a divider to make sure that the distance between the holes is equal on both posts. I used a #75 drill as a pilot, and then followed up with a 1/16" drill. The lugs were inserted and soldered with the RSU and TIX solder.

And that's when the fun began. When soldering the top lug on the second post, the heat caused the channel beam to separate from the post top block. No big deal, I just reheat it and put it back. When I went to do this, the heat traveled through the part and de-soldered the mounting blocks. Things were getting out hand quickly. 

When the mounting blocks fell off, two of them did a disappearing act. I found one, but lost one to the quantum rift. So I had to reshape and cut a new one. I decided to use a higher temp solder for this since I didn't want them falling off again. But then the angle bracket let go. When I put that back it wasn't centered properly and was tilted. I got it on and soldered the beam back on. Then I find that the beam was not square with the post. I had to remelt it, but it wasn't staying put. I again had to change solders and finally got it right. This consumed almost an hour.

When all was okay, I set the pieces up on a piece of paper and marked the front edges of the post bases. I then traced around the base, sprayed the back of the paper with 3M77, and then stuck it to a piece of 1/8" ply. I used a tungsten router to cut out the square holes, and then put the finished posts into the holes and taped them on the bottom to stabilize them.

Using the divider, I measured the diagonal hole distance and marked that distance on the small channel. Here again I used a #75 drill and cut some 0.021" brass rod and soldered it into the channel. I tried them on to see how they fit. Nicely! But I now need to machine another small part for each breaker on the breaker end to provide more mounting surface and a place for the breaker operating mechanism.

I will probably solder the pins and channel or maybe CA them to ensure that nothing else de-solders.

Tomorrow, I'll machine those additional breaker parts and hopefully start assembling this thing. I think I have enough plastic auto screws to not have to go out and buy more.

I spent another hour today re-doing what came undone... Even with the RSU, it's quite easy to overheat a larger area than intended and bad things happen. I soldered the diagonal braces so the stand was structurally sound. I was fitting the breakers onto the stand for a test and noticed that one of the channel arms was no longer at 90º to the post and was out of parallel with the other side. It occurred when I re-soldered it yesterday. So I thought (incorrectly, very incorrectly) that I could heat that joint, rotate it a couple of degrees clockwise and let it cool. I heated up and by the time enough heat was there to melt the channel joint. Instead of the channel coming loose, the top plate on the post came undone. 

To get this back on, I had to use a the mini-torch to heat the large post. I had to de-solder the plate from the channel first and all of the brackets started coming off. I got the plate back on the post and then had to add back all the brackets before putting the channel back on. 

This nonsense repeated itself more than one, plus I lost several brackets on the floor and had to remake these too. Eventually, I got the whole thing back together. 

I then measured, cut and soldered small angle stock for the top cross pieces that keep the stand from twisting. These went on pretty trouble free since very little heat was needed to get them on.

This picture shows the cross members in place. I then wrapped Tamiya masking tape around the mounting shoes in preparation for filling them with J-B Weld.

Here's the stand with the J-B Weld in place. When cured next session, I'll re-grind the curve into the filler as close to level and parallel as I can to set up a good base for gluing on the breakers.

Speaking of breakers. I machined a little extension for the ends so they'll make good contact with the mounting shoes. I glued these on and masked the bushing base tops to keep paint of there. The first is so snug between these bases and the current transformer rings that any paint would be an assembly problem. I primed them with Krylon Primer Gray.

All of the other attachments on the breaker assembly will be made from styrene. 

I mentioned the Dremel in the Panavise yesterday, so I thought a picture would be descriptive. The bit in the Dremel is a diamond coated wheel available from MicroMark. They nice to use with brass since they don't load up like a aluminum oxide wheel would.

Myles,

the breaker is really shaping up!  Looking like the real thing!

Just better and better Trainman2001.  The whole substation will be a work or art!

Just amazing craftsmanship.

Thank you!

Continued work today, but got a late start. I cleaned up the J-B Weld that filled the mounting blocks and realized I had to remove some material down the middle of the breaker's flanged end to give relief so the flange will settle down into the shoe. Of course when I was using the Dremel cutter it grabbed one of them and popped off the solder joint. I didn't re-solder it, I used CA since I didn't want any more heat in the piece.

I then CA'd the three breaker units onto their respective mounts. I just held the side units at the 30º angle by hand until they cured. I also gave it a shot of accelerator after adding some more medium CA to fill the gaps more.

There are some added details that need to be built and attached, two of them—the junction boxes on the current transformers and the observation ports on the breakers themselves—have to conform to the curvature of the mating surfaces. Both of these objects are 0.450" diameter. I needed to be able to put that curve onto a piece of plastic.

I have adhesive sand paper that I bought at the hobby shop to mount onto the Precision Sander's block. It's 0.010" thick. So if I made a mandrel that was .450" minus 2X the thickness of the sand paper, I could attach the sand paper to that and use it to shape an exact curvature that will match the curve on the breakers.

I used a piece of brass, turned it to .430" and cut a piece of tape that was .430 X pi and stick it to the mandrel. This worked out well... that is until I attempted to use it to shape some plastic.

As soon I turned on the lathe and tried to sand a piece of styrene, it caught the edge of the paper, and the paper flew off the mandrel. I tried this twice and realized it wasn't going to work, BUT it did work great when I just held the mandrel and rubbed the plastic back and forth across it.

The picture show an end that I sanded and two current transformers with their "junction boxes" attached with CA.

After making all six I painted each box with Tamiya chrome silver.

While these were drying I primer painted the entire assembly. It may need a touch of tomorrow since some spots came out a bit thin.

I'll make the observation ports out of styrene rod, again with their ends shaped to conform to the breaker's curvature. I think I have rod I can use. If not, I'll have to buy some. When I finish these I'll construct the disconnect and breaker side actuating mechanisms that will go onto the brass rod protruding from both ends. In some cases the rod will have to be clipped a bit shorter. I also have to build the control cabinet that attaches to the breaker-side leg. When that's done, I give it a finish paint job and turn my attention to finishing up the bushings by turning bottom and top caps for the plastic screw insulators. And with those, this phase will be complete. This phase should be complete some time next week.

Man, you are a master with that lathe!  They look beautiful.

And yes, it never hurts to put on a second coat of primer.  I tried to find a youtube video to post here, of the scene in PT 109 where James Gregory, as the Commander, uses his knife to test John Kennedy's claim that yes, he had put two coats of primer on the boat, as ordered.  I just could not find a video clip of it.  For some reason that scene impressed me enough even back 51 years ago that I have always remembered: two primer coats are better than one.  

Well... Lee... it did get a second coat. Then the unit toppled over and the middle breaker popped off. I don't think the CA worked well. So I mixed up some 45 minute epoxy. It isn't coming off now. I then machined 6 bases and 6 top fittings for the insulators and also prepared the insulators to accept them.

I placed them all in place for a status shot. They're not going to be formally glued in until after all the rest is painted. 

All it takes is to hang some insulators on it and it look "very High-voltage-ish". 

The top fittings were a pain in the butt. Not machining them. That was easy! Holding onto them once they were finished. I lost at least two of them. One popped off during the cutoff operation and disappeared. The other disappeared after I was disassembling the status shot. I stand by my theory that small parts enter an alternative universe if they are under the required number of atoms that govern quantum mechanics. They simply pop in and out of existence.

I started making the observation ports. The body is a 1/4"styrene tube with an end shaped on the sanding mandrel I made yesterday that will conform with the breaker's curve radius. Attached to this are perforated plastic discs made by using two different size hollow punches that captures a clear styrene "window" made from a single hollow punched disc.

Using liquid solvent cement I glued the three pieces together and started final shaping. I still have more work to do tomorrow after this dries solid.

It was difficult getting the holes punched in the center of the disc. The hollow punches are Chinese from Harbor Freight, and frankly, they're crap, but they're all I've got. If there were some US made punches I'd like to know about it.

I'm going to mask the center window either by liquid mask or disk of masking tape cut from the same punch. I'll glue them onto the model before painting.

Tomorrow, I'll start building the breaker and disconnect control boxes and links. This shouldn't be problematic (famous last words), so this project's really coming along. I printed some ABB logos that I add to it after painting. Unlike the transformer, this project was an attempt to actually make a real machine so the logo will be appropriate.

Are you sure this is not going to interfere with your TMCC?    Great job, very well done and described.  Thank you.  Russ

This is getting better and better.  Fantastic!

As I do each day... Thanks! It's a shame that I'm putting all this work in AND IT DOESN'T DO A SINGLE THING MAKING THE TRAINS RUN BETTER. It will make the trains LOOK better.

Worked on the breaker operating mechanism today. It's still not correct, but I may live with it. Let me explain. I first built the spring engine box. This went together sweetly. I used 1/8" corner reinforcements and .040" sheet styrene for the sides. I needed the heavier materials because the edges on this box are all chamfered 45º. 

After it dried I used a V-Block on the precision sander to cut the chamfers. Worked great!

For the mechanism that attaches to the ends of the outboard breakers I needed to have a profiled part. The way I do this is shape a piece of stock and then slice off the pieces like salami. But I'm not completely happy with the shape, but it may be a AMS relapse showing its ugly head. 

The 1/4" sq. stock that I used didn't have enough height so I laminated a couple pieces of .040" strip to it. When dry I sliced off the respective thickness with the razor saw in the miter box. The middle actuator unit is different than the ends. It has two lever boxes attached to a central piece which then has the spring energy box attached to it.

The assembly on the right was my first attempt with the drive shaft running down the center of the middle piece, but after re-checking the drawing I found that the mechanism is off-center lying below the breaker's center line. So I made another one, with the lever boxes offset from the middle piece.

I cross-drilled #55 drill for the cross shaft and tried it on for size.

I had to relieve the inner face on the middle piece to properly seat against the breaker body.

The end lever boxes are drilled to accept the shaft sticking out of the breaker and I then installed them on the breaker to get a location for the outboard ends of the cross shaft. While I mounted the breakers onto the base pretty well, there's still some non-alignment which meant I had to spot the shaft's location on each piece.

Between each of these components I'm installing a piece of telescoping brass tube to more closely resemble the enclosure on the real thing.

I then glued the spring engine box to the center piece and took this last picture.

There's a couple of minor surface details on the spring engine box which I'll also add next session. While it's hard to see in today's pictures, I also finished and installed observation windows underneath. I used the punch to make small masking tape circle to mask the windows. Incidentally, the real observation windows are actually off center. And they're smaller than I made them. So I could have just as well used the really off-center ones.

With all this done, I'm still not very happy with it. I found a nice close up of the out board lever boxes and they too are below center. This makes sense because there has to be a bell crank inside to transfer the rotary motion of the cross shaft to linear movement inside the breaker.  There's also one more lump on the top that is the pressure relief valve. It's in a tough location to shape so I'm thinking about leaving it off.

As usual, the 1:1 details are always more complex than we'd like them to be in 1:48. You can see the offset, and you can see the subtle shaping of these parts. I have an eye doctor appointment tomorrow that will require dilation drops so there won't be any shop work, but I will be back on the "job" on Friday. Depending on my mood, I see if I can make a more precise rendition of this part of the project. It's also sitting on a round, not square, flange. That's something that I can change also.

The doctor's appointment was re-scheduled so I got a little "work" done, but not much... less than an hour. But in that time, I was able to start making the breaker mechanism a little better. I started by attempting to reshape the ones I made yesterday. But as I was working with them, the laminations...well...kind of...delaminated.

This forced me to do the right thing... remake them. In this instance, instead of building the end profile and slicing them off, I chose to use 1/4" X 1/8" styrene, shape the side profile and cutting them off the stick. This resulted in a much better performing part and I was able to get the drive shaft alignment. I finished one side, and ran out of usable stock. I'll get that tomorrow. 

I mentioned yesterday that I got the observation ports installed. Here's a shot showing them with their masking tape on the "window". When the whole shebang is air brushed they'll blend in nicely.

Tomorrow will see the completion of the breaker-side mechanism and a good bit of work done on the disconnect side. The disconnect side is less complicated than this side, and shouldn't take too long.

The breaker is coming along nicely.  Great job!

Thanks Mark!

The nice thing about scratch-building is you, the builder, have complete control of what's being done. So when I made the end pieces and didn't like them, I just made them again. If it was a kit, and you screwed something up, you'd have to get back to the manufacturer and beg for new parts. I know, I've done that too.

Went to the hobby shop and bought the additional stock to finish up the breaker. While there, opportunity knocked.

My LHS, traditionally only carried HO and N trains since there was a un-written agreement between them and one of the two train stores focused on O'gauge. When L & N Train Store closed this year, my LHS started carrying a limited offering of O. Today they were having a store-wide anniversary sale and I saw a very nice scale-length flatcar with laser-cut wood decking. I needed something like this since all the flatcars I have use dedicated loads and can't be used to carry "normal" stuff.

I'm going to the gigantic York train show in two weeks and didn't want to spend any money on an impulse buy. So as luck has it, a nice older women came into the shop when I was at the front counter asking if the hobby shop knew anyone who could repair an old trophy that was her late husband's. Her grandson just got admitted to UofK on one of their teams and she wanted him to have it. I suggested that I knew how to do it using pins and J-B Weld. The owner of the shop vouched for my skills explaining to her that was a "master modeler". Nice! She suggested she'd pay me to do it, and we agreed that she'd buy most of the flatcar. The deal was struck. It was a win-win. 

As soon as I got home I did the trophy repair and it's setting up. Tomorrow I'll see if the fix is good. Trophies are cast pot metal and it's sometimes hard to glue that stuff, but with 1/16" brass pins in each ankle and the epoxy it should be good to go.

After that I got back to doing the important stuff... making a hybrid breaker.

With the new materials I was able to build the second breaker end mechanism, drill all the the holes and CA all this to the model.

The ends of the rods were trimmed and I've subsequently added a styrene tube on the outboard end to finish that up.

I also completed the disconnect end mechanism. As expected, this was much easier to fabricate than the other end. I used 1/8" sq. styrene for the outboard ends and a piece of the 1/8" X 1/4" stock for the center unit.

On the center section I added the operating box, which consisted of piece of 1/8 X 1/4 with slightly tapered sides completed with a sanding stick, and then joined to some thin stock to make a mounting flange. This was glued to the middle unit with solvent cement.

I stuck the insulators back on for another status shot.

Next up: building the control cabinet. On the prototype the cabinet is held onto the upright post using straps. I think I'll epoxy the cabinet to the post and then fake the straps using the "wine-bottle lead foil" which conforms so nicely to round surfaces. Once that's one it will be ready for the paint shop. I'll spray the spring energy box white first, then mask it while I paint the rest sky gray to match the transformer.

With that, the entire assembly will be complete except for some cabling that will go from the various parts to other parts. I already cut the "concrete pads" for the mounting the posts. And then it will on to the next component. There's a lightening suppressor in front of this breaker, that's just a big insulator sitting on a metal pole. That should be easy too. I'm going to use some styrene tube instead of brass for this component since it's so simple. Then onto the girder work for the HV end.

I went downstairs to finish working on the broken trophy and while down there I sneaked some work on the breaker.

The pins and J-B Weld worked perfectly on the broken trophy commission project. I cleaned up any excess epoxy and then did a little touch up with Tamiya gold leaf. It's as good as new and I'm sure the women who entrusted the job to me will be very happy.

I then built the control cabinet for the breaker. The cabinet was a straight forward rectangular box project with a top that over hangs the front a little bit as a drip molding and another piece of 0.010" styrene sheet laminated to the front as the door. I also put a piece of my thinnest styrene rod down the side as a piano hinge. It's a little oversized, but will show up as a hinge.

After reviewing the drawings I found out that the breaker has two pieces of angle behind it that flanks the post. It then had two bars across the angle that connects to the strap that wraps around the post's back which clamps the box to the post.

I took a piece of 1/4" tube (the post's size) and held it to the back as a spacer while I tack glued the angles. I then removed the tube and fully glued the angles in place. After which I added the cross bars. I'll trim them to exact length next work session. My older grandson's requested to sleep over so he can work on the trains tomorrow. So there will be another work session tomorrow most likely.

I'll CA the box to the post and then use the wine bottle "lead" to form straps around the back. I may add some Tichy NBW castings to this to simulate the clamping bolts.

I have to add some cabling and wire runs. I attached a small piece of aluminum tube to the base side into which I'll feed some simulated cabling from one side to the other. There's some heavier cables running from the cabinet to the spring engine box. I probably add all these before painting.

Again, some surprise Sunday work time thanks to the grandkids being here and working in the basement and running some trains.

So I was able to mount the control cabinet and run some faux wiring.

The cabinet was CA'd directly to the post under the breaker end. It went on well, unfortunately, I put it on upside down. DOH! I know this because the cabinet top has extends out a little over the door to act as a drip ledge. Rather than try and pry it off (and breaking something) I simply made an applique for the the top and extended it out over the door. After sanding the edges, it looks okay.

Before mounting I did trim the top and bottom cross pieces so they were flush with the two pieces of angle. On them I drilled and then added four Tichy NBW castings to simulate the clamp bolts that clamp the straps to the post's back.

I added the wine-bottle-lead-foil strips to the back. I pre-formed them using a 1/4" rod sitting on the back of the cabinet again BEFORE mounting. I had formed them with the ink-side inwards. I find (now) that the CA reacts with the ink, removing it, and then doesn't stick well. After struggling with the first one, I soaked both of them in acetone to remove all ink traces and then re-installed them. This time they stuck well. 

With this done I started to add some cabling. I'm using different diameters of black iron wire for the wiring. I'm also using two drill sizes 0.021" and 0.016". Yesterday I glued the aluminum tube to serve as a cable guide. Tomorrow, I'll finish the cabling and get ready for the paint shop.

In the bottom pic you can see a little door handle I fabricated. The real one actually doesn't seem to have one, but I thought it needed it. A piece of 0.021" brass rod with a flattened end did the job.

You could sell it to ABB for a demo unit!!

It's good, but it's not perfect. Are the ABB folks still checking in?

Today, did just a little bit. Made a few errands and didn't get down in the shop until 3:00. I added a couple more cables to and from the control cabinet and then added 6 more from the control cabinet up to where the current transformers are going to be installed (after painting). I also located and drilled holes in the current transformers' junction boxes to accept these leads. I then washed the whole deal with alcohol in preparation for paint. I wrapped a bit of foil around the bundle as it enters the control cabinet so it looks like a cable clamp.

I didn't start painting yet because I was asked by #1 grandson to help him finish up the masking job on his 1:48 F-22 Raptor model that he's been building on and off for over 2 years. This plane has a complex, 3-color paint scheme which includes painting all the leading edges of wings, nose and engine intakes light gray, which is the same gray I'm using for the breaker. So it made sense to get his model ready for paint at the same time and not have to mix paint and clean the airbrush more than once.

You can get an idea of the complexity by looking at the irregular chevron pattern on the nose. You can see why maintaining the real Raptor with all of its stealth attributes is challenging, as it will be for the JSF F-35 Lightning II. It too has a very complex surface both in the prototype and any models available of it. There's a little more masking to do which will be done tomorrow, and then both it and the breaker get painted.

Who said the ABB breakers are perfect??  I never saw one. 

Every company has good and bad products.  ABB's are mostly good, and I'm not saying that 'cause I used to work there.  So too are all the other major suppliers: the industry demands pretty much perfection and they usually get somethjing close to it.  

Then and now, I'm always particularly leery of 63kA breakers (breakers rated to interrupt 63,000 amps as opposed to the standard models at, say only 50,000 or 55,000).  The 63kA stuff isn't necessarily bad, but among equipment I saw from several suppliers, particularly among GIS (gas insulated switchgear - breakers) stuff, 63 kVA equipment had less margin built into it than other equipment.  Most 63 kA units were upgraded versions of 55 kV designs, and in a few cases the way that extra capacity was engineered was to start out with a 55 kA unit that had been originally engineering with a lot of margin (say 15% so it was already really capable of nearly 63 kVA) , and add a bit of metal, etc, until you had it sufficiently over the 63kA threshold, to say to 66.   My concern then, and even more now, is that the utilities were used to the 55 kA equipment (15%) margin), yet the 63 kA equipment had only a 5% margin.  The higher rated equipment met the technical specifications but it wasn't quite apples to apples: operating and maintenance practices based on successful experience with 55 kV stuff might bump into problems with the 63 kA - you never quite know where and why that 'engineering margin" is needed or what it will get you.  

I knew of one supplier (not ABB and not usually bought in the US) who did nothing to their "higher capacity" breakers but de-rate the operate temperature (compared to the lower rated breakers) in order to push it up to 63 kA.  They cast an extra rib in the casing so the higher versus lower rated unit could be distinguished from one another in the field, and let it go at that: the 63 kV unit was really no different than the 55 kVA one except the paperwork called for operation at cooler temperatures.  We discovered this when a customer utility's workers in a utility in central America rebuild a "63 kA" breaker with parts  listed for the lower rated unit, and we noticed they all fit and looked identical.  If fact they were, just given different part numbers in their catalog.  Near as I can tell, this was not illegal, although it left a bad taste in my mouth.

Lee,

I didn't mean to indicate I thought all breakers had problems.  My intent was to try to praise Myles' efforts on his model, so my comment was a poor choice.  The two problems I did recall had to do with the control relays showing up with 48V ratings when we needed 125V and vice versa.  That problem could have been on our end not ordering the right thing, so I should not blame ABB.  The other problem was probably due to shipping where we had to make sure all electrical connections were tight.  That can happen in shipping.  Therefore, it was my poor taste in trying to praise the model by criticizing the real product.  The overall engineering and production was very good.

I promise that I will not be putting 65,000 amps through my Hybrid Breaker. I'm not even going to put 1 amp through it. Today was a milestone day. I got the gray paint on it and also did the leading edges on my grandson's Raptor. I then masked the breaker so just the spring engine box was exposed so it can get a coat of flat white. I'll do that tomorrow afternoon. 

The Raptor's painting is ridiculous. Stealth design dictates that there are no front or side facing horizontal lines. Every surface is angular, and if it's not, they make is so by making a saw tooth pattern. It's even worse than that. The saw tooths themselves are irregular. This meant that masking the model for painting took hours.

The gloss is due to a coat of Future floor wax as a prep for decals. Decals adhere best on gloss surfaces. I may shoot more gloss to cover the flat painted leading edges. These should have been masked and painted before the first clear coat went on, but grandson forgot about it so we masked and painted now. Once all the decals are in place—and there are hundreds—we'll spray it with flat clear to blend it all together. It's a **** of an airplane and a great model. This was a 1:48 Hasegawa kit and the always do a good job on fits and surface detail. I'm waiting for a good 1:48 F-35 comes out from them so he can have a set of America's 6th generation jets.

Oh I knew that, Mark, and I appreciated your comments.  I was mostly talking about them just to emphasize that we're talking about complicated stuff and mentioning the one thing that used to, still does, concern me. 

Trainman2001, I sure hope you won't put 65 kVA through you breakers.  Hopefully the power system on your layout will behave itself and those breakers won't even have to operate!

Thank you, Lee!

Trainman was hoping to power his layout from this substation and the power station we are going to convince him to build next.    Then he can save on his electric bill.  I have always wondered how much juice my older daughter's hamsters could produce running all night on their wheels.  lol 

Perhaps us model railroaders should power our layouts from solar panels???

Anyway, today was a milestone day. The ABB Hybrid Breaker/Disconnect is finished! I took some display pics using both the iPhone and then with my Canon and depth of field software. Only after I finished did I realize that I put the "ABB" logo on the top corner of the spring energizer instead of the bottom corner. Oh well...

I pulled the tape off the observation windows. They came out well.

When installing the bushings I couldn't find one aluminum base piece. They were all sitting on the workbench nice as can be for weeks and then... it just ups and disappears. Quantum Rift... curses! So I quickly machined another one and finished the assembly.

So... (Drum roll please), after one month of intensive work, I present THE BREAKER!

After shooting the pics, I decided to epoxy the "concrete" foundation pads on now since it makes the unit much more stable when it's on the stand. I mixed some micro-balloons into the epoxy to fill the slight gap at the foot pads.

These pads will be painted concrete color after the epoxy cures. With this unit complete, there's one more HV-side device that I'll make. It's another lightning suppressor, although not as tall as the one attached to the transformer. It can also have corona rings which I'll add if I'm in the mood.

As I mentioned before, I'm going to use all styrene for the base on these suppressors. They're much simpler than the breaker. I'm currently doing research on these and will post more details when I figure them out.

Solar panels would do.  It looks great!!

Hello fellow OGR Member • Trainman2001 • I always enjoy reading about the “Continuing Saga of the P&PRR”. Thanks for sharing your skills & photos.

Gary

The details are abysmal!

and the process absolutely didactic.

Andre.

Andre, I am assuming that "abyssmal" and "didactic" are good things. Thanks to all!

Enough accolades, there's a substation to build. Today I started working on the next piece of HV apparatus, an oil-filled, Capacitive Coupled Voltage Transformer, this one is also based on an ABB prototype. I've chosen a model that's not too complicated and sized the same as the circuit breaker; 145 Kv. I decided on this rather than another lightning suppressor, since it was more interesting and is also prototypical.

Here's a picture of a slightly lower voltage unit.

As the voltage increases, the insulator gets longer and fatter. Here's the print for the one on which I'm basing the model. The dimensions were in millimeters, but they're now scaled to 1:48 and in inches.

The post height (which I drew) is set to bring the top of the insulator on line with the tops of the breaker's insulators. As I noted before, I'm building this out of styrene instead of brass. I'm also toying with making a lattice stand out of styrene just for fun.

I'm going to use a different set of auto body screws for the insulators, which is the same one I used for the secondary outputs for the transformer. I'll use two in series. They're slightly short but it shouldn't make any difference to effect I'm trying to capture.

I started building the base using two pieces of 1/4' square styrene cemented together. I then started adding layers of thinner material to give it shape. After I did the wide faces, I started to add material to the narrow face and then realized that I was going about it all wrong. I popped off the narrow face appliques and added 1/8" square thick stuff which I then re-shaped on the belt sander and hand sanding. 

In reality, the box should be tapered in both directions, but I'm just tapering the sides. I chopped off the angle with the razor saw and sanded the surface flat. In this next pic you can see a before and after of shaping the side pieces. The prototype's case is obviously die-cast aluminum, and all the surfaces are irregularly shaped and rounded. I'm sort of faking this. 

I will finish up the rough shaping tomorrow and will work on the pieces on the top and bottom that will look like flanges. The bottom flange will get the feet. There's also a small junction box that goes on the side. I need to go to Lowe's tomorrow to get a couple more of the insulators. I only had enough to make two sets and I need three. This is a much, much less involved project that the last too. Whew!

You are going all out.  However, when I know something is missing, it stands out like a sore thumb to me, but no one else notices or even knows.  You seem like me in that regard.  We called them Capacitive Coupled Potential Devices CCPD.  Ours were probably made by GE, if memory serves.  Looks like you are moving right along.

Trainman2001, just good thinks.

there is no room for nothing else.

Andre.

Mark, here's the descriptive page for the CVT. There's probably different names depending on the manufacturer.

Only had about 45 minutes in the shop today, but did get some progress. I finished shaping the three housings and started making the base plate. I decided to make this part out of brass since I wanted to make the legs integral with the base for strength. 

I was using the belt sander to rough out the housing and knocked a couple of the glued pieces off, so I cut the excess off with the razor saw that was more gentle.

The housing sits on the base nicely. These will be CA'd together. The feet will be glued to stand with epoxy. 

I bought auto fasteners in both styles and will decide which I'm going to use as I go on. The long ones that I used for the transformer and breaker would work for this item also and I wouldn't have to piece two of them together.

You just keep outdoing yourself.  These housing are so true to life.  Really spectacular.

Practice makes perfect... I had another rare Saturday work session. The weather wasn't so nice and my wife was happy watching football. Go figure... I like to be in the basement and she watches sports.

It was a very productive day with the completion of the housings including the top plate and the junction box, the remaining base plates, shaping the insulators and drilling, and turning all the top and bottom fittings. 

The top plate overlaps the sides just a little bit. I located the center and drilled them with the 0.047" drill for the brass support rod. I then cut the junction boxes off a piece of 1/8" X 1/4" styrene stock. I sanded the ends true and glued them in place. I also CA'd the brass rod into the holes in anticipation of adding the insulators.

I then glued the bases to the housings using 45 minute epoxy. 

While this was curing I went back to the lathe and prepared the insulators by drilling the .041" hole from both ends. The insulators were just a tad loose in my collet chuck so I wrapped one layer of paper around them and it clamped nicely. The Taig's collets don't have much range. They're really only good for nominal-sized stock, but the paper worked well.

I then machined both the top and bottom insulator fittings. As I noted on my opening, practice does make perfect, and I was able to knock all six pieces out in about a 1/2 hour. Instead of changing tool bits between linear cutting and cutoff, I simply used the cutoff tool for the whole job. I also just dialed in the correct amount and cut the entire depth coming in from the side. The cutoff tool has some side relief so it will cut metal when moving sideways. It's not efficient, but with such tiny cuts it was the fastest way to do it. 

I couldn't resist trying all the parts together even though the epoxy wasn't really cured yet.

Looks like a CVT to me...

Here's the CVT laid on top of the prototype drawing.

Next session I'll paint the base and glue it all together, then start working on the stand. As I noted last post, I'm toying with the idea to build a lattice-type structure, just to add more interest. If it proves to difficult, plan B will be to use a cylindrical post.

Update: With the CVT pretty well under control, I'm working on the last component on the High Voltage side; the main front-end disconnect. I've selected the ABB 145 Kv Center-break Disconnect. It's reasonably complicated, but not ridiculous. It will require some more soldering, metal work, and lathe work, but nothing too challenging. This design will fit on the site plan that I have.

 Side View

 End View showing 3 phases

 Layout: It works this way: The two tower insulators rotate away from each other separating the conducting beam in the middle. There is a male and female switch contact in the middle that slide apart far enough to extinguish the arc. This drawing shows control cabinets for each phase so they can be disconnected separately.

I'll start building this when the CVT is done.

Yes different companies could use different names.  The meanings are the same.  they are coming along nicely!

Thanks Mark!

They're coming along so nicely that they're almost done. Went to the hobby shop and got .010" X 040" strip, .060" angle and a pack of .030" sheet stock. I then came home and got to work. I first rolled some tape to make it double-side and stuck the CVT bases to it so I could airbrush it flat aluminum. I then assembled the CVTs with CA. They're now complete.

With that out of the way I got to work making the lattice stands.

Before getting started I needed to make sure that the height would be correct. I wanted the CVTs to be the same height as the highest bushing on the Hybrid Breaker. My original drawing was based on the ABB Hybrid drawing, but my as-built was an unknown. I got my hyrbrid and set the surface gauge to this height. I then took my drawing, folded it into a square tower, set it on some 030 stock as a base plate and onto the plywood I'm using for the concrete foundation. It was too short by almost a 1/4". So it was back to CorelDraw to re-draw the lattice towers to conform to the new size.

I then taped the drawing to the Homasote work table surface (like I did when I built the bridges) and covered it with a sheet of polyethylene so nothing sticks.

At first I used pins to hold stuff in place, but quickly found that the .060" angle was to flexible and would bend and warp with very little pressure. I then added so angle blocks to form a square corner and only use on pin to keep on piece of angle tight into the corner. For the top and bottom angles, I used .080" since it offered a little more bulk. For the first pieces put in, I just used a square cut on the angle to nestle into the corner.

I then installed four diagonal members into the basic frame. At first I was using a small artist's brush to apply the solvent cement, but got my Touch-n-Flow working even though I broke off the back half of the glass tube. With these braces in place, the first frame had a little stability.

I built two sides, representing the front and back. To connect them I again needed to add the .080" angle at four corners. But now I needed to do a little sculpting to get them to fit properly. 

If I wanted to avoid making these coping cuts I could have mitered the corners of all the base angles, but I did it this way.

All four corners got angles and then I carefully glued the other frame on one corner at a time.

With front and back in place, I was able to add the remaining diagonal braces to complete the frame.

I checked this frame against the Hybrid Breaker before starting the other frames just to make sure that it was correct.

It was correct so I went into production and knocked out the other two. As usual, I developed easier techniques moving ahead, and the last two took less time than building the first one. I glued top and bottom plates on to ensure that these units would be strong. Before gluing on the plates I carefully touched up the two ends on the Precision sander to give them a true gluing surface.

And just for fun—and just to remind everyone that this is ACTUALLY a model railroad project—I put all the finished parts onto the substation base on the layout. Tomorrow, I will airbrush the stands the sky gray I'm using for all the apparatus, epoxy the CVTs and the "concrete" bases to the stands. And then it's onto the center-disconnect switch.

WOW!!  That last photo brings back so many memories!  I could rattle off the names of scads of stations that had that same look!!

I know its have been more than hinted at, but I hope you continue this same level of detail and make the entire substation.  The good think about subs is that while the components - transformer, breakers, etc., were standard products, they could be arranged any way to fit the footprint of the site, within clearances that is.  This gives you flexibility to arrange it so it fits your layout.  

I agree. It's my substation, I'm the project manager, the general contractor, and the equipment builder so I can decide how it all goes together. O'gauge folks are pretty little and don't need too much room to get around. I'm heading to York tomorrow (get there on Friday) and am thinking about getting a crane of some kind that would be used to hoist equipment onto the site from outside of the fence line. Speaking of fence, I still haven't ordered the fencing from Brennan. We're going to continue the trip to visit family and friends back East so after this afternoon's session, there won't be any production from my shop until late in the month.

Since yesterday was a work-out day I only had a short session and got the gray paint onto the stands and epoxied everything together. By bedtime last night the epoxy was cured, so I'm ready to do some final detailing. I want to add some NBWs on the base plate, and a piece of faux conduit from the junction box down to the bottom. And then it's onto the HV disconnectors.

You're not leaving a nice safety zone to protect them from the high voltage?

I think without a doubt, you'll have one of the most detailed power substations that's ever appeared on an O-scale layout!

Thanks Gunner! I'm not sure that was my goal at the outset, but it certainly has been evolving that way. I initially just wanted to make one that was reasonable. Now that I've gotten this far, there's no reason to slack off.

Today I put the finishing touches on the Capacitive Voltage Transformers. This included running the 'conduit', installing some faux foundation bolts, and doing touch up painting. With that, they're done and ready for concrete painting. I'm going to paint all the concrete at one go since I have to mix that color and don't want it varying all over the place.

Now onto the Center-break Disconnects...

First up was building 6 leg sets. I decided to go with styrene here. It's just so much easier to join pieces than using brass. I measure the height of my CVTs against the disconnect drawing and found the ABB drawing was about a 1/4" shorter than the CVT. Again, I want these to be at the same height since I'm using rigid aluminum bus bars to connect the high voltage equipment. So I added this height to the legs.

I measured and cut the lathes in the lathe using a razor saw to make the cut and then very lightly facing the end to ensure that it's perfectly square. I then made a bunch of disks using the hollow punches. I used 5/16" for the top plate and 3/8" for the bottom plate. The bottom plate receives the angle brackets so it needs more width.

I eyeballed the glue job, and then to make sure that the disks were concentric and also square I again chucked the legs up in the lathe and made very light cuts on both the edges and faces. A little clean-up with a sanding stick finished them off.

I cut a bunch of little rectangles and then clipped off the corner to make angle brackets that looked like what ABB was using. These were then all glued onto the legs. 

This is the last work you'll see until the 28 or 29th. The trickiest part of this job will be the various links that control the connecting arm's movement. I'm thinking of making the connecting beams out of brass, but that's not final.

I'm trying to imagine what this will look like all together.

The leg braces look good.  Just like all the rest!

I'm back! Trip back East was great, ending with seeing my granddaughter sing the National Anthem at a Penn State ice hockey game in their new 100 million dollar arena. It was the largest crowd so far that saw this amazing 9-yr old kid sing the heck out of the Star Spangled Banner. It made such an impression that the sports writer who was reporting on the game made special mention of the performance and suggested that the team should have her back since they won 7-1 over Holy Cross and she must have been a lucky charm.

The trip started with my wife and I going to the York Show. I didn't buy much, but got a nice Tomy 1:50 John Deere Excavator at the DHS booth as a load for my new flat car. I also got some Artista figures for the substation, some concrete colored paint and some Tichy NBW castings. I also spent some time with NJ International discussing getting operating crossing signals for the layout. I didn't buy then, but will get back to them to start the process.

Here's the excavator sitting on the car. I'm going to add some chocks and chains. The car also needs some weathering. The excavator is new and will not be weathered. 

Here's the substation crew.

And I finally got back to work on the disconnectors. 

I cut and installed the cross-pieces out of .100 X .125" styrene using solvent cement, and then cut a piece of fine-grain Masonite for a "concrete" base. To this I CA'd the 6 stands after laying out their location on the pad. 

After putting them all on I realized that the pad needs to be twice as thick so I cut another piece and and laminated them together. When dry I sanded the edges so it looks like on thick piece. This matches the base heights of the rest of the equipment.

I plopped it on the substation base to see how it looked.

While it's a little tight, it fits. 

Lastly, I started making the moving parts for the disconnecter. There are 6 long rods and several short ones. The long ones take the rotational energy of the center phase and sends it to the end phases to rotate those insulators. The short ones send the rotational energy to the opposite pole of each phase. Under each insulator will be a movable plate that will be brass with a soldered pivot pin. I didn't have a #56 drill so I drilled the plastic cross-bars with a #57. The brass for the pins didn't fit, so I took a piece, ground a flat on it, chucked it in a pin vise and used it as a "D" bit to enlarge the holes. The local big box home stores don't carry individual number drills, nor does the ACE hardware nearby, so I may have to buy them on-line. For numbers 60 through 80 my local hobby shop carries them individually, but not the lower numbers.

To make the operating rods, I flatten and shaped the ends with the vise-grip technique and then drilled a .032" hole for the smaller pivot pins.

Trainman,

I'm glad you had a great trip!  Sounds like you had a good time.  We formed a TA group (Trainman Anonymous) to get through Trainman withdrawal.  We survived.

The substation looks great!  Also the excavator on the flatcar is a great addition!

Thank you for sharing!

Perhaps we could formalize the TA support group and I could collect dues...It would help support the habit.

I've been perusing DHS Diecast's website and some of the construction models are so cool it almost makes me want to switch hobbies from trains to construction equipment. They had a beautiful Manitowoc high reach crane at the show that he'd sell me for $400. I was very tempted. I do want to buy some form of crane model to use as a prop either next to the substation or to move around to any in-progress construction project on the railroad.

Thanks for reading... I'll keep writing.

Yes, I think you could get away with charging admission!!

I agree $400 is a little steep.  You could buy a really nice locomotive for that price.  You will find something suitable.

Keep writing, and we will keep reading!

You're correct! It would be another hobby to get involved with and I can't handle that right now. (Although I'm lobbying my better half to get a 3D printer.) 

The boys had a day off today (Halloween?) so after peeling them off the little screens in which their heads were buried, I got them into the workshop. Grandson #1 was attaching details to his on-going F-22 Raptor project and #2 landscaped some more barren areas on the layout and filled in some ballast areas that were damaged during all the scenic building.

While this was going on I did some more work on the disconnecters which included machining the rotating plates that sit below the insulators and finishing up making the control rods.

I made six of these (actually 7 after one got away into the quantum rift). I drilled a hole into this big wood block I found to hold the pieces while I prick punched and drilled the operating holes around the perimeter.

I then assembled some of the pieces for the trial fit. I quickly found a slight anomaly with the spacing between the three stacks is slightly off. The C-t-C distance from the left to the middle is about an 1/8th inch shorter than the C-t-C distance from the center to the right stack. I shortened two of the rods so they are all aligned and will have to keep them separate when I finally assemble them.

If I want to make this piece actually operational—other than my grandson thinking this would be cool, I actually have no valid reason why I should go to the trouble—I think that I will have to make an addition to the scheme. I noticed on the plans that the attachment point of the control rods is further out from the center of rotation than simply attaching it to the disk. I will have to make an extension arm that brings out the pivot further. This is necessary since the rod binds when it only rotates about 1/8th. To fully separate the contact arms they should rotate 90º, not 45º. With the pivot holes so close to the center of the hub, the rods impinge on it and can't rotate. If I'm not making it actually perform, I can leave the pivots where they are.

I will have to machine another brass disk to sit at the bottom of this assembly. Here's my design for this detail.

I'll solder the control rod pivots to the hub and may add a spacer to the center pivot to keep the bottom plate at the right distance. This pivot assembly is the most complicated of the disconnector. Whether it's operable or not, it should still look good.

Spent some time out of the shop working on CorelDraw to detail the disconnector mechanism. I'm going to cut some bell cranks out of brass that will lie below the insulator bases. If I fabricate it right, it should actually be operational.

I've come to a conclusion about what industry to feature on the railroad... a bourbon distillery and rick house. My daughter lives next door to the owners of a large distillery in town and we've become friends. I can get some good details on construction and should make a neat and interesting addition. I bought some grain cars at Roundhouse Trains yesterday to begin the process. N #2 grandson thinks it ought to be built right in the town. He said, "people would like to visit, so why not put it where they can get to it." I like his reasoning. I have lots of vacant space in town.

Started building the operating mechanism for the disconnecter. After printing out the drawing and sticking it to some brass sheet with 3M77, I located all the holes and drilled them while the drawings were still attached to one big piece. I then cut them out using a jeweler's saw. This went pretty well. 

After cleaning up all the edges with the belt sander, files and sanding sticks, they came out decently.

Here's where things started getting dicey, before completely screwing up.

To attaching the moving rods to the bell cranks, I chose to solder 0.032" brass rod to the plates with the small holes, 

then using the small spacers that I produced on the lathe from some small diameter brass tubing, I trimmed the pins to the same .052" height. I assembled the pieces together and then attempted to solder the blank up plate. My idea was to have the upper plate capture the rod onto the pin so it wouldn't fall out. Everything went swimmingly until the very last piece. I was using the resistance soldering unit to apply the heat. 

And here's what it all looked like when things starting hitting the fan. First, I couldn't get the solder to behave to attach the bottom plate to the shaft. When I picked up the unit to look at it, the bottom plate along with all the rods, fell apart. Then one of the eyes on the long bar broke from the center bell crank, finally it all came apart.

With this failure, I'm rethinking the engineering. First of all the brass is too thick. It scales out to almost 2 inches. I bought some .015" brass sheet today to remake the bell cranks. Next, soldering the pins on one side and attempting to put a blank plate on top to contain the rods wasn't good. The pins should go through both pieces. Lastly, the center large bell crank actually blocks 90º rotation. At best it gives 45º. To correct this problem I need to separate the right left rods from the fore and back rod and mounted on different planes.

So here's plan B. I'm going to solder two thicknesses of brass together, and drill and cut them at the same time to ensure that everything lines up. I will then Solder the tops and bottoms together with the spacer and center shaft, and then install the rods and pins. The pins won't need to be soldered at all. I'll just pinch the pin that extends out of each side to make it so it will no longer fit into the hole and then trim of any excess. This will allow me to do all soldering without any moving parts in the way.

If this doesn't work, plan C is to simulate the whole affair with styrene.

On another topic. I'm going on a private tour of the Heaven Hill distillery in southwest Louisville on Friday. I went on Google Earth to get some aerial pictures of this installation. It's not a very big plant and could work well with selective compression. Heaven Hill Bourbon has two installations. The distillery with some old aging houses in Louisville, and a very large barreling, aging and bottling facility in Bardstown, KY. The Bardstown bottling plant is 1,200 feet long by almost 800 feet deep. In O'scale, that's 25 feet long, by 16 feet wide, and that's just one building. So I'm staying away from that.

You can't see the storage silos in the above picture. There are 6 big ones that are about 25 feet in diameter. They could be shrunk in size and I wouldn't need 6. My trip on Friday will certainly help me in understanding what can be done in my scale and what should be left out.

This picture shows some old aging houses in Louisville. These are big. They're too big to do in scale and I'd only make one of them. They look like brick structures. In Bardstown, they're corrugated metal siding covering a very large timber structure. Building a "rick house" is an art in itself. They entirely constructed of very heavy oak timbers and the rack assembly is independent of the roof and side walls. They hold immense weight. 

For example, a loaded bourbon barrel weighs almost 500 pounds. One rick house holds 42,000 of them. Heaven Hill has over 1,000,000 barrels in storage. 42,000 barrels weighs 21,000,000 pounds. There is plenty of air flow through the building since there is constant evaporation of alcohol vapors out of the barrel. There's no ignition sources allowed anywhere near these buildings. A 20 year-old barrel of bourbon in storage loses about half of its liquid.

Imagine trying to plan for a business where your product has to sit in inventory for 8 or more years before selling the first bottle. With bourbon undergoing an international boom (helping both Kentucky and Heaven Hill) they can't produce enough, but alcohol you distill today can't be sold for a decade or more. It's a tough business. The empty barrels cost about $42 a piece. Imagine 50 million dollars just tied up in the barrels. When they're used, they are sold to the scotch industry for aging.

I'm sure that's more information than you've asked for, but it's good for us railroaders to understand the industries on our pikes and what infrastructure they would need to thrive. Modeling any large industrial facility in O'scale is a challenge. Just ask the guys building petroleum refineries and steel mills. A bourbon distillery has lots of interest having some food industry and chemical industry aspects. They are served by railroads especially to bring in raw materials. Heaven Hill has their own tractor-trailer fleet for delivery.

Oh man, so much.  that is a good idea, using the images of actual buildings and all as a a start for ideas and such.  And you mechanisms are just fantastic.  Wow.

My mechanisms could be better... especially if they worked. I tend to over-engineer. Speaking of over-engineering... we all praise German engineering, but they too over-engineer. While living in Germany, our house had these very sophisticated large windows. If you turn the handle 1/4 turn, the window would open inward from the top. but if you turned it a half-turn, the window would open fully from the side. In addition to this, the window had all sorts of cams and latches that would lock it closed. Very engineered. It took burglars 15 seconds to break into such a window. Just because something is highly engineered and complicated doesn't make it better. It's all about function. I hope my second design is better.

I redesigned the bell crank mechanism for the front unit(s). This is made of much thinner material and will require some bending, but no spacers and should be easier to solder in one go.

The rods are staggered so they won't interfere with one another. I won't be able to get to this till next week. Tomorrow I have a retina checkup resulting from getting flashing last year, and Friday is the trip to the distillery. I may have time Friday afternoon when I get back.

I visited the maker's room at my grandson's school today. I'm offering my time as a mentor. They have a 40W Full Spectrum Laser engraver/cutter and a Makerbot 3D PLA plastic printer. It's the rebirth of Industrial Arts Education which has almost died in the USA. I graduated as an Industrial Arts Teacher from Michigan State University in 1968. At that time, we had an entire wing of the Education building with all the shops represented. In 1985, when I had the opportunity to visit again, those rooms were already vacant and the program no longer existed. In other words, the US was losing the desire to teach kids to make things already. This was long before the cry about the US losing manufacturing jobs. The canary was in the coal mine and it already was dead.

Finally, some folks are beginning to realize that not everything can be done in a virtual world. At some time folks actually have to make something. I am very excited about being able to help in this effort. As a side benefit, I'll be able to do some model work with those amazing machines.

Wow, with this much effort, I think you could engineer real ones!

Oh no! You wouldn't want me designing HV equipment. 

I fabricated the redesigned bell crank today. It came out as planned, but unfortunately my plan wasn't exactly right. I still can't get the range of motion I need on the rods. I'm going to stop working on this aspect, make it a fixed detail and get on with the rest of the disconnector. I've got a lot of stuff to do and build and can't get too bogged down on a detail that really won't ever be necessary.

I also had that plant tour of the Heaven Hill Bourbon Distillery in West Louisville. It was an excellent tour and I took looks of pictures. This project will be so comprehensive that it deserves it own thread, so I will now start that thread to run concurrently with this one on the substation.

I made the new bell crank out of three formed pieces of .015" brass stock. I bent the offsets, then drilled the .047" center hole so I could put a rod in them to align and hold them. I used the RSU and TIX solder and got a solid job. I then drilled the .032" holes through both sides of the clevis and got nicely aligned holes. 

After cleaning them up a bit, I attempted to assemble the rods in the clevises along with the brass pin. I had to reshape the rod ends a bit and clean out the clevis from some excess solder and got the pins to go through everything. The problem with range of motion lies in the clevis blocking the rod from rotating inwards. This greatly limits the amount of travel and makes the opening and closing of the contact arms an impossibility. I suppose I could go back to the "drawing board" and do another go around, but frankly, it's totally unnecessary. 

Here's all the pieces assembled.

I started preparing the insulators that will go on top of the rotation mechanism. I'm using a different Hillman auto body fastener for this one. It will take 3 insulators per connector arm. I have to cut one in half to make one segment, then there will be a turned piece and another 1-1/2 plastic part to make the other segment and then the top fitting with the disconnector arms. I'm going to make the arms out of square brass tubing so I can solder the various fittings and arc extinguishing pieces.

I have to buy more of this style to finish the job. I don't foresee any more complexities, but then I can be wrong. I know I have been very wrong in the past.

Behind our entertainment center was a horrendous rat's nest of cables which my wife hated to look at. In our old house, it was in a location that you really couldn't look behind. In the new house, it was there to be seen every time we went out of the house or into our bedroom. We bought a ton of organizing stuff at the Container Store in Cincinnati, and I got to work on it. Needless to say it was difficult work, we had plenty of very "passionate" discussions and I finally did it. It took three iterations and over five hours of work. 

Before:

 After:

So, you may ask, "Why am I telling you all this?" Here's why. One of the most cogent arguments my wife was making when I made a first—and unsuccessful—attempt was "How come you work on stuff with your trains over and over until you get it perfect, and yet on this you're trying to pass off a sub-par job?!" (those weren't the exact words, but you get the idea. Bob might redact the actual words). It was a good argument, which I didn't like very much and it hit home. So I did it over two more times until the final result. Well folks. She's right. I do keep doing stuff over and over until it meets a high standard. And that's what happened in yesterday's session.

I was unhappy with version 2.0 of the bell crank mechanism since it was still blocking full rotation and therefore precluding any mechanical fidelity to the real disconnector. So I went at ver. 3.0.

What was really needed was a pin system that didn't protrude to the underside which kept limiting movement. I machined some small (really small) brass pins that would captivate the rods. While machining the pins, I also machined all the other bits that would make up the insulator stacks.

The pin diameter is 0.031"; the head size is nominal and doesn't matter very much.

I attempted to solder the pin in place holding the rod without soldering the whole deal together. This work...sort of...in one instance, but ended up soldering the rod to the pin in the other two. I ended up riveting the pin on the other two. It still needs some more work. 

I was able to use the bell crank plate from Ver 1.0. Along side you can see the remains of Ver 2.0. The expanded pins on the two auxiliary arms are sticking down into the path of the long rods and is blocking their motion. I'm going to try and fix this a bit.

Here's the range of motion with the new design.

Once again the picture was flipped. I didn't take the pic upside down.

You can see if you look closely that it's getting something less than the desired 90º rotation. If I can flatten the protruding pins that might work. Now... the real way to make this correctly, IMHO, is to make some shoulder screws that are threaded into the bell crank plate. With a little Loctite on the thread, and filing the protruding threads on the bottom, the unit would work exactly like the prototype, which from the pictures seems to have ball-end connectors a la RC air craft servo connections. To this end, I've just ordered a set of jeweler's taps and dies that will enable me to make such miniature specialty screws. My wife was right, I don't give up until I get it like I want it.

After working on the mechanism, I spent some time building the insulator stacks. They consist of 1-1/2 Hillman auto fasteners in each section, with the aluminum turnings in each. This style of insulator doesn't have ejection pin blemishes or the missing segment like the bigger ones I used on the Xfrm, breaker of CCVTs, but I do have to cut them to make them work.

The insulators look very good with almost the right profile for the water shedders. Here's one stuck on the rotater mechanism.

I'll finish these today and get working on the actual disconnector electrodes. This is getting near done.

How did you get a picture of my layout wiring!!!!

Spy camera...

After messing around with the bell crank one of the holes broke out. It wasn't centered in the piece of brass. Since I had to remake the whole deal it gave me a chance to attach the pins by riveting them, instead of crushing them in pliers.  I also found that the main crank was impinging on the cross beam.

Every time I crop a picture, this website turns it upside down. Doh!

I made a new bellcrank, and machined some more pins. One of the other mechanisms let go and I remade that one also. I ran out of the small brass rod and had to make lots of chips when carving down a big piece to 0.030" pin. I used my new Tap Matic brass cutting fluid to make the cuts nice and smooth. I used the cut off blade to do this by just plunge cutting in a series of bites until getting down to the finished size.

I again reassembled the whole affair and got pretty good range of motion. If I were to refine this further—and I'm not—I'd redo all the rest of the cranks and make them with the riveted pins.

Here's the new bell crank. If anything, it's certainly prettier.

This took a lot longer than I wanted. I lost at least two pins into the Quantum Rift. Seriously, I swept the floor twice and they were gone. So it was back to the lathe to make more. I got pretty good at making them. When I get my watch maker's taps and dies I'm going to experiment actually making my own miniature screws.

I did get the rest of the insulators made.

The last bit that needs to be done is the contact arms themselves. There are these aluminum plates that lie one over the other that serve to manage the arc on separation. I was planning on making the bars out of brass so I could solder thin brass supports to hold the aluminum arc management plates. Then I'm left with CA'ing the plates to the brass. I could make the plates out of brass and solder them too, but I would like to have the natural aluminum showing. It, like the bell cranks, will probably take multiple tries to get it right.