Pennsylvania A3 Switcher (Kozo)

Jo said:

"I do parts lists for my engine as well but I decided it was best not to write down how much it cost"

When I was restoring cars one of my mentors said:

"Never, NEVER keep track of what it costs or the time involved: It will make you want to do something different."

ShopShoe (Still only keeping track some of the time.)

Kim,  I'm really looking forward to a video of your tractor running......Regards        Terry

Thanks Terry, me too!  I posted a bunch of pictures of it today, but no steaming video. Not yet anyway


Over the weekend I did a little more preparatory work toward my new steam locomotive project.

One thing I did was to change the oil in the lathe.  That took a while and was a messy job.  But its been needing to be done, so now its done. And it gets charged to the Pennsy

I also checked in some additional materials.  Metals On Line shipped the Bronze stock I needed, plus the 3/4" copper tube to be used in the boiler.  That big hunk of bronze (2” diameter on the left) is for the cylinders. It wasn't cheap! But it's still about half the price of the castings.  And this way I can screw up several times and still have extra material left over!


Another thing I did was to experiment on how to make copies of the parts drawings.  I like to have copies of the drawings so that I can have them with me at the machines and see the dimensions I’m working toward.  And of course, I don’t expect the book to remain pristine, but I don’t really want to have it close to production where oil and yuck can get splashed on it.

For other builds I’ve just photocopied the main drawings.  But it can be difficult to hold a book on a photocopier. And with this one, there’s literally hundreds of drawings I’ll want to print out over the course of the build.  So my solution to this problem was to see if I could find a scanning app for my phone that would work. And as it turns out, CamScanner seems to do a pretty good job. You take a picture of the page you want to ‘scan’, and then outline the section of the image you want to extract.  Based on the outline, it rotates and scales the picture to fix keystoning and other image artifacts. Then it filters out the lighting variations to make a nice, clean, black & white image and converts it to a PDF. Here are a few samples that I’ve tried:


It’s still not like having CAD drawings, but it’s a heck of a lot easier than photocopying each page, that’s for sure. Here’s what they look like printed out.


The last thing I did today was to go through the pile of screws, fasteners, and miscellaneous hardware and put them in my nifty dividers for little parts.


You were supposed to be able to see that these are full of various screws and such, but the glare on the plano boxes seems to prevent you from seeing inside. Trust me, there’s a lot of goodies in there now

One more significant shipment of metal this week (hopefully tomorrow) and I should be ready to launch forth!

Kim

Hi Kim,

Looks like a great start to another amazing build.  I will be following.

If you use an iPhone, the new "Notes" Ap has a great feature to incorporate a document using the camera.  It squares up the document and everything.  You can save it then print it.  Incredibly easy to use and seems to give a good result.

MJM460

Kim, thanks for the  tip on CamScanner. I can see where that would be very useful. With my own 2D drawings I can save them as a .pdf file and that works. This sounds ideal for getting other printed material onto the phone though. WIll be checking that out.

Bill

Chapter 2.1 Tender Wheels

What is the saying?  “The journey of 1000 shop sessions begins with the first swarf.”
Or something like that, right?

Today I started cutting metal on my Pennsy Switcher!

Earlier in the week the last of my big shipments came in (this one from Speedy Metals).  It had all my big 12L14 bar, which is what I needed to get started.


Because the 2 3/8” round 12L14 stock was destined to be tender wheels.  I needed to slice off eight 1/2" pucks.  That little HF saw really earned his keep today!


And here they are.  All eight of them.  These are going to become the wheels for the tender:




Not a ton of progress, but it’s a first step.

I also cleaned my assembly table, as you can see in the pictures here.  Something to keep me busy while the saw was working away.  There’s still a little more ‘between project’ cleaning to be done, but it will happen over time.

Now, to make those pucks look like train wheels!
Kim

Great start, going to be watching along! You are right, its a big project, but just a lot of manageable small parts.

Hot dang, first cuts.

Now I'm very curious: why 3.5" gauge?



Pete

Why 3.5" gauge?  Good question Pete!

Well, partly because that's what Kozo's plans are for. He does show modifications for a 7.5" gauge (1.5" scale) model.  But I opted for the 1:16 scale (3/4") model, which is big enough to be fun, but small enough to be nearly manageable.  It will be over 3' long, and weigh more than 60 pounds.  Luckily, that will be in two smaller pieces - the tender and the engine.  But still a sizable chunk.  And another reason is the cost of the materials.  I opted for less expensive materials than Kozo specified (i.e. I'm not using all brass) but even with that, I had to save up quite a while to afford my recent metal spending spree.  It would have been MUCH more if I opted for a larger scale.

Maybe I could have gone smaller, but then things would get too small to suit my tastes (or more specifically, my talent .

Guess we'll see how it all comes out!

I don't really have any plans to build a 3.5" track in my back yard or anything.  I doubt this locomotive will ever run much.  It's just a fun project for me to build.

Kim

Well, I asked because those same questions have been rattling around in my gourd for a few years now with precious few solid answers yet. I'm 70 and by the time I could finish a loco it could be too big to handle! Hmmmmm...

Oh, and I really like your new avatar.

Thanks!

Pete

As a builder of the 7.5" gauge version I will follow your adventure with interest.  There are several websites that list some of the few errors in the plans, so I'd  familiarize yourself with those.

You might want to check out Friends Models for castings of the loco drivers and cylinders.

Great to see you off on this new project Kim. Everything you learned on the traction engine will surely be of help here as well!!

Bill

Oh yeah, I'll be following this one Kim.

-Bob

Hey Chris, thanks!  Didn't mean to overlook you last night in my reply!

Pete,
Think you should dive right in and do one of these with me! I think that would be just too fun!

Thanks for following along, Bill and Bob!
Kim

Quote from: kvomAs a builder of the 7.5" gauge version I will follow your adventure with interest.  There are several websites that list some of the few errors in the plans, so I'd  familiarize yourself with those.

You might want to check out Friends Models for castings of the loco drivers and cylinders.

Hi kvom,
Where are these websites with the plan errors listed?
I've done some research and haven't run across that yet.  Sounds like it could be really helpful!

I have found the Friends Models site, and I've elected to fabricate the cylinders and the drivers.  Partly for cost reasons, and partly because I want the chalenge.

Thanks for the pointers,
Kim