SteamPower4ever

Here's the truck with bearings and NWSL wheels mounted and sitting on Märklin code 200 track. I haven't made up my mind yet, but look at the springs and it rolls like a champ. Let's see when it gets a coat of paint and braces at the forks mounted ... Jens

I'm going to open them up anyway as I need to separate the current pickup leads from motor power. They'll get a service while I'm at it.

Alright, here goes nothing I've ordered a test print of one truck. Looking forward to see what I actually get in the mail ... The current price for the print of one truck is 42,57 Euro or 47,31 USD at today's exchange rate. Subject to change and not including shipping. Jens

Hmm. Well, time will show.

I believe they're called diaphragms. Jens

Sorry - late to the party, but keep drooling all over the floor Very nice. Can't wait to get mine. One thing though, Jim: The only pics of the "grown-up" NS F7s are of course the modern PR train, and all the pics and videos show an ABBA consist. I really think you should get one more B. It would look much better and be prototypically correct. Tell the Mrs I said so if you need support. Jens

Great locomotive Love the trackwork too. What code are you using? Jens

Not quite ready, but it's comparable to Accucraft trucks. Jens

Still need tweaking, but I tried uploading a test model this evening, and I'm very close to my target price

Still having some issues with modeling the 3D solids. Looks like I may have run into the limitation of the CAD software, so I need to find a way to work around it. The good news is that preliminary testing (still only in CAD, mind you) shows that the trucks pivot unrestricted when put in place under the cars, so the minimum curve radius that the cars will handle should be very small.

I'm always amazed at the amount of tiny detail jobs that pop out of the woodwork after the overall lines are done. In large scale you can simply keep detailing ... Jens

He sure did, and their booth at the hobby shows is always lit up with all kinds of flashing and blinking and running lights on everything from 1:160 to 1:32. On that YouTube channel there's a lot of example videos including "Tamiya scale" beacons. Whatever that scale is. Tamiya is doing various large scales.

Thanks. The thing is - I have no experience with this, so I don't know if it's actually a good design. I go with my gut feeling and try to make a model that is easy to deal with - even for an inexperienced modeler. That means I do take the time to search for alternative and maybe simpler solutions to problems. Jens Edit: I'm told that the German manufacturer MBW is using the same scheme - albeit with tighter locking on the bearings - so it would seem I'm on the right path. Makes me think maybe I should tighten the locks in the cutouts as it's easier to remove material than to add it.

Here's an NSWL wheelset with the 10mm/3 mm bearings mounted. Also a CAD rendering of the rear of the axle boxes on the trucks. I've made cutouts to embed the bearings and allow for the axle studs. The idea is that the axles with bearings clip up into the truck and are held in place - but allowing for easy removal.

Took me a while, but I've tracked down who made the beacons I saw a while back at a show here in Denmark. The install was made by a guy at togteknik.dk who got the parts from schmidt-teknik-hobby.dk This video here is H0 which of course is 1:87, but the rotary beacons look mighty convincing. I've seen them with four and five LEDs.

It does look great and I am drooling myself But ... one thing is CAD and another thing is the finished part. Can't yet say for sure what is possible and of course only time will show if the design is reliable in the long run. Jens

"What a nice morning. Guess I'll go out and fire up a live steamer ..." Absolutely lovely. Thanks for sharing

Done. All the parts are now in place. It still needs some spit and polish and I need to have a look at why some of the parts act up in the CAD modelling. I also need to strip some material on the inside to optimise the price. It hasn't been tested for printability at Shapeways, but I've kept all dimensions within their recommendations, so it can't be much off. Jens

What? NWSL trucks or just NWSL in general?

NWSL trucks arrived today. Ready to power/repower the F7s ... Jens

As far as I know, LBG is always 1:22.5 scale. Jens

A bit more progress. Dang, it's beginning to look the part I took the time to figure out the principle of the suspension, and then I needed to figure out how to make the model. Learning the features of FreeCAD as I go along ... Jens

14ft curves should be no problem. My preliminary design goal - and keep in mind I haven't measured or tested anything yet, as I'm still designing strictly off the drawings - is the European 1020 mm or 40 inch radius.

Doesn't matter, really. I've picked my wheels, but there's a tradeoff. On the drawings, the truck frames are of course designed for prototypical wheel flanges. When using model wheels you need to extend the end crossbars a little to allow for the larger flanges. This may not be needed if you're using fine scale wheels, but using the wheels I picked - the NWSL #28671-4, I need to move the crossbars on the design away from the prototypical dimension. If you're using even larger flanges, you need to adjust for that. This is actually bad news, because (I think) the larger flanges are typically used on layouts with sharper curves, and bigger truck frames restrict the movement of the trucks, and thus the minimum negotiable curves of the cars. This can probably be mended somewhat by designing the truck frames for maximum movement between the skirts of the car, and I'll work on that eventually. When I'm done, my plan is to provide the CAD file for the trucks as a download, so anyone can adjust to their particular like of wheels and bearings. Jens

On the German gauge 1 forum there's a thread about Rail-Kees from Holland working on the SBB/NS type RAm TEE train. The designer mentions a possibility of the Northlander version, which could be of interest to US/Canadian modelers. He also mentions the Northlander with an F7. http://s1gf.de/index.php?page=Thread&postID=131802#post131802 The pics in the thread are H0 models from Roco. Jens