A Garrat 2-8-8-2 from 2 Bachmann Consolidations updated 30/11/13

[Woderwick]

Re:Congar anyone. 2-8-8-2 project

Hi tech manufacturing today.

An empty, and I mean totally evacuated aerosol, even then I made sure by puncturing it a ways away with the use of a felt nail, a length of string and a 2 lb club hammer.

By now you have realised that this is going to be a smoke-box door

Bottom cut out and marked out for the snips. I used a piece of gash plastic fixed to the centre with a piece of double sided tape to keep the compass from slipping.

Next I glued it to an appropriate template to dress of the edge to a nice circle. (large 1/2 drive socket)

Now I know the size of the door I can work out the position of the rear of the water tank on the leading unit.

Re-mounted the pilot support that was cut from the opposite end.

Lastly now the pilot is remounted I can start to tinker with the drive unit, some Photoshopping here, but I think you get the idea.

 

[Woderwick]

Re:Congar anyone. 2-8-8-2 project

Really enjoying this thread. Your photographs illustrate so well why the Garratt made such an excellent "vehicle", and it's clear that you attention to proportion is going to pay off in the finished model. A couple of questions -
About what scale do you envisage the finished model being ?
Do you intend to alter the cylinders to piston valves ? Virtually all Garratts were so equipped.
I admire your bravery in posting "real time" progress - with my sort of two steps forward and one step back modelling I wouldn't dare !
Greatly looking forward to more.

Phil

Thanks Phil, yes it's true that no Garrats were produced with Baker Gear, also none in the US. I have done a number of slide to piston conversions in the past, most noticeabley on my K-27, I am going to let this one stand as is, as an expedient. I quite like watching convoluted motion and I think as the loco is fictitious it's no big deal to me. I think this is going to pan about 1.20.3, that would make the boiler quite big, so it might even end up as a 7/8ths job.

 

[Woderwick]

Re:Congar anyone. 2-8-8-2 project

I spent some time thinking about the original idea of retaining the Baker gear and realised it was n’t going to work. The Connie gear on a Garrat would be an anachronism. The period we are looking here is circa 1924, such use of slide valves in that day an age would have long been superseded by piston mechanisms. Which is why, as Phil observed that you don’t see many Garrats with anything other than piston valves. I know of only one in fact.
I made a USA dock tank with the Connie gear ages ago out of curiosity and it looks awful, a modern loco with ancient gear.
I decided to make some new cylinders and gear; here is a walk-though of the Connie cylinder, which could be used for any Connie Slide to Piston conversion. There are other methods, but this is what worked for me.
First I needed to make some front and back parts; this is a shot of 4 x 2 mm styrene held together temporarily so as to ensure the parts are identical. This is important as miss-alignment of 4 center-lines can bind the gear and is maddening to put right once it’s all up together.

Here I am dressing the piston valve holes with a drill by hand. The material is held on horizontally to avoid any tendency for the components to twist out of line. Once half way through the work is turned over to stop the drill ripping the last sheet as it penetrates the bottom.

Here the piston holes are being used to maintain the alignment whilst a half round file is used to dress off the cylinder recess.

Separated out we have this.

Which ends up like this, note the nibbled bit of the original cylinder assembly, the sleeves won’t go through otherwise.

A strip of styrene needed to be added to bring the existing cylinders up to the level of the new faces.

Alignment check, passed. (Have since cleaned thumbnail)

10 Thou cladding added.

Fit Cross-head slides.

Looks like a plan.

 

[ge_rik]

Re:Congar anyone. 2-8-8-2 project

A masterclass masterpiece, Wod!
Did you make the slides or recycle them from elsewhere?

Rik

 

[Woderwick]

Re:Congar anyone. 2-8-8-2 project

Hi Rik, those are the Connie slides. The motion bracket and slides can be dismantled as they are made up of subsections. I might change them yet.

This afternoon I shortened on of the Connie tenders the front water tank, trimmed of the raves and put a new deck on the top of the tank.

 

[Woderwick]

Re:Congar anyone. 2-8-8-2 project

Time to start on the valve gear, until that’s done I can’t get any further with the upper-works on the drive units. The most tedious and mind-numbing bit for me is the manufacture (by hand) of the expansion link, bad enough doing a pair, but 2 pairs is purgatory. In order to achieve some consistency, once again I started by working on multiple layers temporarily held together. In this case 8 pieces of 1 mm brass, sweated together.

These are then filed to a marked out profile.

Once this was done I separated the parts into 4 pairs (I did n’t trust myself to drill through 8 layers, accurately even with a drill press).

Once separated the parts were marked out and drilled.

Much of the same ended up with a bunch of parts like so.

Here is a close up of one the links; it’s only soldered one side as the radius rod has yet to me fitted.

Run out of Bakers No 3, so a trip to the factors tomorrow.

 

[ge_rik]

Re:Congar anyone. 2-8-8-2 project

Incredible accuracy in your drilling, Wod. I must get a drill press - my drilling tends to be somewhat haphazard. Do you use a miniature pillar drill for this type of work?

Rik

 

[Woderwick]

Re:Congar anyone. 2-8-8-2 project

Hi Rik. One of these, I have had it for about 30 years, its possible to go down to half mm drill with it.

http://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/product/details/cdp5dd-drill-press < Link To http://www.machinemart.co...ils/cdp5dd-drill-press

 

[beavercreek]

Re:Congar anyone. 2-8-8-2 project

This is such fine stuff Woders.
The downside, for me, of seeing this exemplary work, is that I am in no way ever posting any of my ham-fisted attempts at kitbashing any more!:

With reference to Rik's inquiry, I was looking at a Proxxon mill/drill with adjustable table. Do you know anything about the Proxxon gear?

 

[trammayo]

Re:Congar anyone. 2-8-8-2 project

Fascinating work!

 

[Steve]

Re:Congar anyone. 2-8-8-2 project

Brilliant as always Wod a pleasure to catch up with

 

[Woderwick]

Re:Congar anyone. 2-8-8-2 project

This is such fine stuff Woders.
The downside, for me, of seeing this exemplary work, is that I am in no way ever posting any of my ham-fisted attempts at kitbashing any more!:

With reference to Rik's inquiry, I was looking at a Proxxon mill/drill with adjustable table. Do you know anything about the Proxxon gear?

Hi, I can't speak for Proxxon, but my old Clarke has a tilt table, Looks like the current one has too. It's main value to me is the abilty to drill nice plumb vertical holes,

 

[Richie]

Re:Congar anyone. 2-8-8-2 project

Fantastic looking project Rod
Look forward to the finished Garrat

 

[JonathanJ]

Re:Congar anyone. 2-8-8-2 project

Nice garratt - I've got a Connie in stock that's headed for tank engine conversion - really ought to have walschaarts, and looking at the garratt, I'm going to feel really guilty when I decide not to bother..

Re: the Proxxon - I have a small Proxxon micro-mill. Not in front of me at the moment, but I think it's an MF210 (or a similar number). To be honest it's had very light use over a five year period (mostly drilling holes rather than actual milling, and probably no more than 2000 of them - say 5-10 hours total with the bit actually spinning)and while the X-Y table is generally OK, the Z axis has developed enough of a rock (ie the head rotates in the plane of the Y axis when pressure is applied) to give a persistent error of maybe .35mm. I'm usually doing lots the same so I can factor it out by scrapping the first couple until it's exactly where i want, but it would make the thing useless for one-off work. Another idiosyncrasy is that the X axis is calibrated left and right from a central zero rather than from one end - this is surprisingly irritating.

I was going to CNC it (that really shouldn't be a verb, but you know what I mean), but reckon the rock is probably incurrable, so won't now bother. In truth, they're cute, but I wouldn't recommend one - this is the only Proxxon I have, so I can't comment on any others in the range, but I won't be risking another machine from the stable with my own money.

J.

 

[Woderwick]

Re:Congar anyone. 2-8-8-2 project

Today’s mystery object.

This piece of square stock has been annealed and curled so as to provide the radius rod slides that attach to the expansion link.

Here is a shot of the slide attached to one side of the expansion link; to the left is one of the centre spigots. I chose to rivet the spigot as trying to solder it in would unseat all the other components. The centre of the link is countersunk to produce a seat for the spigot “skirt”.

A tap with a tapered drift.

Lastly some shots of the link in position. The original Connie bracket has been trimmed, reversed and inverted; I think it looks quite plausible.

 

[3Valve]

Re:Congar anyone. 2-8-8-2 project

Today’s mystery object.

It's a "C"

 

[mbiff]

Re:Congar anyone. 2-8-8-2 project

me liking it

 

[Tony Walsham]

Re:Congar anyone. 2-8-8-2 project

Unbelieveable!!!!!
Brilliant work.
Nice to know there are still talented people out there and we are not all out of the box modellers.

 

[jameshilton]

Re:Congar anyone. 2-8-8-2 project

WOW great work so far

 

[Woderwick]

Re:Congar anyone. 2-8-8-2 project

No update this weekend, the valve gear is trying my patience, more later.