7mm Richards P48 US Thread

[richard carr]

I have been spending quite a bit of time in Chicago recently, I'm back there agai now so I haven't had too much time to work on models.

I did acquire this on Ebay a few weeks ago a 2600 gallon EMD fuel tank





The MTH EJ&E GP38s come with a much larger fuel tank than they should have.



The real thing has the 2600 gallon tank



So the plan it fit this new tank to the model and fit a new speaker into the tank.

I'm also trying to draw a tank in Fusion, this is how far I've got. Jim very kindly provided me with drawings for the tank, so the brass one isn't 100% accurate by any means. It was challenge drawing the end profile in Fusion trying to get everything properly dimensioned.




Finishing this should keep me busy while I'm here.

 

[richard carr]

So this week I have been busy drawing, if you really want to learn a CAD package you need to draw something for real



So this is how far I've got, I've added the fuel filler and the fuel gauge and some internal supports to stiffen the tank.
The object above it is a Tang Band speaker as that is want I want to fit inside the tank and some of those supports will probably need to be modified so it fits. Both the tank ends have been turned off in these images.

And if looking at that photo you are thinking that it's not going to fit, I thin this one shows that it will.

 

[richard carr]

I'm back at home this weekend, so I have had a chance to do a few bits and pieces before I head back to Chicago on Tuesday.

I managed to bring this back with me from the last trip



An MP15 DC, this one isn;t specifically an SP unit but it does have the spare parts with it to be one. But first I'm going to sort the MP15AC.
It was easy to strip down into it's main parts, as you can see the chassis isn't quite working as intended.



It also uses the american style pickup system with 2 axles on each side picking up.
It's going to need a bit of fixing, the model is from March 1986 so it's over 40 years old now. The plastic looks very brittle.



I took one of the trucks apart and set about making it P48



Everything was going fine until it cam to getting the wheels back on the axles. One set really didn't want to go back on and might need some more work as the gear isn;t correctly centred. On the other one the insulated wheel went on ok but the uninsulated moves freely on the axles, so it's had to be loctited in place.



The big thing that is incorrect on the model is the fuel tank, it's an 1100 gallon tank when it should be a 1400 gallon tank ie a foot longer.
Jim had already drawn an 1100 gallon tank for his SW1500 project so he very kindly gave me the CAD for that and I have stretched it in Turbo cad, ipmorted it to fusion and generated an STL file and printed it.

There are separate end pieces and there will need to be a support piece to locate the tank on the model but all easy enough to sort out.



You can see how much larger the tank is here.

 

[richard carr]

I'm back in Chicago now but before I went I managed to do a bit more on the MP15. You can't buy replacement P48 wheels for these older models with 4.5mm axles, so these wheels need machining to P48 standards, thats fairly easy. If you want to narrow the bogies then you need to shorten the axles (so there's no going back after that) and narrow the bolster.

The end result of all that effort is this the top truck in the photot below



I took 1.5mm off each axle end, the hardest part was getting the wheels back on the axles postioned so that the gear is in the centre of the axle.

One wheel went on far too easily and had to fixed in place with loctite 603. Another almost broke the vice and of course meant that getting it in right position was a real pain.

As for the bolster I spent 30 minutes trying to adjust it by drilling new holes but decided it was just easier to print a new one on the filament printer, it's plenty strong enough and only took 20 minutes to print.

I also printed a new version of the fuel tank




The end plates still need printing but it's looking a lot better.

 

[richard carr]

I haven't had the chance to do much modelling over the past few weeks with spending most of my time in Chicago.

I have though started painting the MP15AC







So I have just added the final coat of SP Lark dark grey.

Here's a loco I picked up at auction, it's the EMD demonstrator for the SD70 ACe GM70









Eventually this was bought by KCS and is still in service today

 

[richard carr]

So yesterday I got the final coat of paint on the MP15 AC, so all the masking came off and I'm left with this.








So the tricky bit to do now is get the LEDs in for the lights in the cab and get the wiring through the cab to the body without it showing too much.

Richard

 

[mickoo]

So yesterday I got the final coat of paint on the MP15 AC, so all the masking came off and I'm left with this.

View attachment 267605

View attachment 267606


View attachment 267607

So the tricky bit to do now is get the LEDs in for the lights in the cab and get the wiring through the cab to the body without it showing too much.

Richard

For the MP15 project I was doing (need to get back to that) I was planning some thin wall tube up the front of the cab between the two smaller windows (it'll look like conduit), the thinner the LED wires the smaller the tube, I'd worked it down to 1.5 mm OD as being the most practical. If you have more than one light then join the wires in the roof so only two go down the tube to save space.

 

[richard carr]

For the MP15 project I was doing (need to get back to that) I was planning some thin wall tube up the front of the cab between the two smaller windows (it'll look like conduit), the thinner the LED wires the smaller the tube, I'd worked it down to 1.5 mm OD as being the most practical. If you have more than one light then join the wires in the roof so only two go down the tube to save space.

I've got 6 lights !

 

[Big Train James]

I still maintain that you don't need to wire the class lights or the red emergency light, as they are essentially never used on the switchers. That is unless you want the play value.

I'm planning on trying hypodermic tubing for conduit for wiring on pilot mounted ditchlights. It's has a very thin wall, so that a pair of magnet wires can actually pass through like in the real thing while maintaining a prototypically sized O.D. dimension. Or worst case scenario, use the conduit as one conductor with a single wire passing through for the second conductor. But that probably isn't a great idea when used on an all metal model, and also stainless isn't considered a good conductor in the first place.

Jim

 

[mickoo]

I've got 6 lights !

Ah

Plan B then

 

[richard carr]

This past weekend we had a running day scheduled for both layouts. JB came round on Friday evening to help prepare the layouts as these haven't been run for a couple months.

The heat had got to the US layout, there was a lot of buckled track.







I thought I had left big enough expansion gaps, but clearly not, so I had busy evening make the gaps bigger and getting the track securely screwed down every where.

Fortunately that seemed to do the trick as the US layout ran OK on the Sunday, although a bit more track fixing would probably be good idea.

 

[richard carr]

I spent the last weekend at home so I had a chance to do some more modelling. Southern Pacific Lines Stephen has bought himself an MTH CANADA cylindrical hopper car and wanted to add some Kadee P48 trucks to it. Unfortunately,Kadee don't supply the parts to convert this they just give atlas and protocraft, which is really helpful anyway.
I have a few of these cars which are one of the nicest cars that MTH has produced so I said I would do a bolster for the car so you can fit the Kadee trucks.

I thought the best thing to do was to start with a damaged one, just in case I made things worse by trying this



MTH always fit the trucks from the inside of the car, so you have to take it apart to get them off.
This involved removing 12 screws and then it still wouldn't come apart. In the end it turned out that the hopper body is also glued to the frames and requires a good deal of force to break that glue.











Drawing the bolster was relatively easy in Fusion. I printed a test one on my filament printer to test the dimensions. Thats the nice thing a bout the filament printer you do a test piece like this in 15 minutes with no mess, it just doesn't look very good detail wise. I forgot to take a photo of it'
So thanks to Gareth Bayer for posting this on flickr. You can see that the bolster shows under the frames so a bit more work was need to get this added and to get the ride height correct


So here are some resin printed ones, these take about 90 minutes to print but you can get 10 at once, they need a bit of clean up but your never actually going to see any of that.



So here it in place with a kadee truck under the car, it's looking about right.



Now I just need to draw a coupler box to finish this off.

 

[Stephen]

They look great Richard - having the bolster extend the full width of the frames really is the finishing touch to massive improvement.

Cheers,

Stephen

 

[Jordan or Plymouth Mad]

This involved removing 12 screws and then it still wouldn't come apart. In the end it turned out that the hopper body is also glued to the frames and requires a good deal of force to break that glue.

Neither of my MTH cylindrical hoppers had glue holding the body to the frame, maybe a previous owner had a 'belt & braces' moment when they reassembled it?
My track hasn't warped at all - well, not that I can tell although my loft has got pretty toasty in recent weeks. Hand spiking every single tie seems to have made it pretty robust, and I did leave expansion gaps as the rails were laid.

 

[richard carr]

That particular car was weathered by a pro weatherer, I think you are right Jordan, they glued it back together to be certain it wouldn't come apart again, it certainly didn't want to.

I didn't fix my track down anywhere near well enough, that's why it warped as much as it did. It's better now that should be fine for now.

Atlas now owns the tooling for those cars and has done a recent run of them, I'm not sure if the Canada livery was one they did, but they certainly included Alberta cars like this one, notice that the bolster end detail is different !



Richard

 

[Jordan or Plymouth Mad]

notice that the bolster end detail is different !

Similar to the car I recently copied. Except I missed that bolster detail altogether!!

 

[Jordan or Plymouth Mad]

That particular car was weathered by a pro weatherer,

Yes I have a couple of weathered MTH HiCubes with a similar little plate underneath like yours' has. Got to be the same chap, and yes his work is superb!! Just glad he kept away from glue with my boxcars!!

 

[Stephen]

Similar to the car I recently copied. Except I missed that bolster detail altogether!!
View attachment 268787

View attachment 268788

I do very much like that livery….

Cheers,

Stephen