Jan, 2018. Continued on with the building of the Rail Roller Bender. Drilled the two fixed holes and then drilled some of the places of the curved arc hole. Got a 1/4-20x4 1/2 bolt and put the rotating handle on the handle arm. Machined the other end sleeve to go over the drive roller shaft and fitted it to the handle arm. Got a 3/8 ID single split collet for the drive roller shaft also. Also got out the plastic box to put the bell ringer driver in and started to modify it for the circuit board. Then made a bracket to hold the rail roller bender plates for machining. Next, made a jig to hold the plates and to be able to rotate the plates at the right arc dimension. Then set up and milled the curved slot into the plates. Punched out some .032 and .015 thick shims, 3/8 ID and 5/8 OD, from brass stock, for the roller shafts. Machined a mandrel to hold the shims for trueing the OD. Made up the pointer bar for the curved slot for the adjustable roller. Drilled and taped the ends of the shafts for the fixed and adjustable roller. Welded the sleeve that goes over the drive roller shaft to the handle bar. Finally, assembled the rail roller bender to check it out. All looks OK. Now, need to take apart and harden the shafts/plates at the mating surfaces and then to paint the plates. Plus, catching up on some photo's, that I had forgot to take, of some other stuff that was built.
jigs4makingrailbender2.pdf | |
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shim-mandrel2.pdf | |
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Feb, 2018 Got two finish coats of paint on the center beam seat and the little work/ballast car. Then put the little work/ballast car together. Oh, and painted the wheels and axles black on the work/ballast car. For several years, I had plans to build a file/storage cabinet for the metal shop, so did that. Painted it and added some old doors, that my wife had gotten along time ago at a garage sale. Love reusing stuff. Plus, I was having a problem with the smell from the propane heater in the metal shop. It was affecting my sinus's. So, went and got a propane ceramic infer-red heater and installed it. I had a 30K BTU and went to an 15K BTU one, it is a little small but bigger than what I calculated for the size of the shop.
May, 2018. Not much got done on the railroad for the last two months. Worked on projects in the house, modifying a pellet gun cabinet, added a shelf in the bathroom and worked on cleaning an old gun up and refinishing the stock of the gun. Finally got my wife's gondola car into the shop and cut it down to make a combo car out of it.
June, 2018. The weather turned real hot real fast, over 80 deg+ every day. So got an extension cord run out to the train station shed so I can charge the batteries on the engines. Will install the plug later. Plus we got a new Chief of Security on the railroad. His name is Riley.
July, 2018. Still very hot outside, so headed to the basement and worked on the bell ringer for the SW-1200 (GTW-1508). Had to modify the bell striker to get it to work with the ringer circuit. Installed the ringer circuit board into a circuit board box and wired it all up and tested. Had to adjust the circuit board to get the bell to ring right, but it worked. Plus got a better weather day and installed the plug for the extension cord out to the train station shed. Now we have power for charging the engine's batteries and for the lighting of the Xmas light's.
Sept, 2018. The weather is still HOT out, did not get anything done for the month of August. Finally got some yellow tape on the battery areas of the speeder. So the batteries don't corrode the steel. Plus had a split rail fence installed on the south end of the property.
Oct, 2018. Finally the weather started to cool down a little. Clear coated a new birdhouse pole, installed and attached the bird house on top. Also got a new propane supplier, so got a new bigger tank. Had to build the fence around the tank bigger also.
Dec, 2018. Not much being done the railroad, have been working on the house doing projects. Did get a fixture to hold the 1/2" drill to turn the ends of the tank car.