Dr Tony's Workbench

Thought I should start off with a photo of the bench itself, in one of its clearer moments. Was an old island kitchen bench, set up a little higher for either standing at, or sitting on my tall chairs from our old house. A re-purposed Ikea shoe rack turned upside down and set off the bench a bit. The shoe rack has pigeon holes that work well for things, soldering station, power supply, Dremel, heat gun etc. The Officeworks A4 document drawer system is great for small tools, labels on the front really help. I have the same arrangement at my other bench, the "clean room" for audio gear.
Very important to have good light, after trying lots of things the old classic "Planet" lamp is ideal, it disappears out of the way when needed and has a normal incandescent globe in it. LEDs are great, but I don't find them a great close up work light. Also important to have good sound in the room, from the Krix speakers above my head. A rug under the chair slows down the rate that dropped things disappear.

 

No beers near this bench, once beer comes out, work stops, especially precise work.
Should start putting up pictures of what I have been up to.
Firstly is my first effort with an airbrush. I somehow ended up with 2 Kato/Atlas RS3s, as they were such good runners, and one was beaten up I decided to make one into a version of the NSW 40 class. Have to close one eye to the major defect here, the RS3 is a Bo-Bo unit, not an A1A-A1A like the prototype.
Had to sand off some of the sides of the cab, as so it would fit the NSW loading gauge, removed all the handrails, filled in the steps at the buffer ends, added NSW buffers, drilled out the double headlight and put a Keroby pewter light in each end. This unit had no lights to start with. Added brass horns instead of the single horn that was there. The other model in the picture has bell. Filled in and sanded back the putty for the top windows on the cabs.
Painted in Railey Paints Tuscan Red with the airbrush. Then decalled, this was a challenge as it was my first attempt of applying decal long stripes, rather than just small signs.
Still some things to do, have to finish the red paint on the buffer beam, discovering why you shouldn't use a brush with Railey paint, very hard to get a decent finish, but it just wasn't worth getting the airbrush out for this tiny area. Then apply the numbers.
Altogether it is something that mostly looks the part and runs really well, for a fraction of the price of the still to be released RTR model. Despite its inaccuracies it gives me a lot of pleasure, in just appreciating my work on it.

 

Hi Gary,
Yes your eyes are good, that is an FO coach, just awaiting a stripe, will post a detailed picture when done. One GLX van, the other is a MLK or MLV. I have painted it red, not sure how many ended up red, but I like it that way, and it's my (well Luke's at the moment) railway and that's what matters to me. And it is a MHG shell there as well.
I do have another workbench, it is not in the garage, it is in an ensuite bathroom that was stripped out when we bought the house. My wife took the bedroom next to it for her craft room, and after a time we decided that we were not going to need a third bathroom, so I initially took it for storage, then converted it to a very small workroom, with a false floor covering the plumbing at one end and the pipe spigots cunningly hidden in shelf units. I installed shelving against the wall and made a bench from one of those cheap Bunnings solid wood benchtops. Installed power and LED strip lighting across the bottom of the shelves. This bench is primarily for audio work, I do repair on amps, build speakers and repair CD players and specialise in cassette decks and turntables, yes all the old stuff. The better soldering iron is here, making circuit board work easier.



What I have just done tonight is make a very simple circuit for DC locos to improve the lighting on basic units that usually have a single incandescent globe. In this case it was a Lima loco, which will be subject of another post itself during its refurbishment and enhancement. The circuit uses an LM334 voltage regulator, and a 4.7 ohm resistor, mounted on a tiny piece of vero-board, all easily available from Jaycar. There is a cheaper transistor, but have not been able to track it down locally yet. Just need to add some insulation to the base to avoid short-circuiting on the bogie pin. This is a fairly crude light, but is a very quick and easy thing to do.

 

Making quick, easy and removable loads.
These are made to add interest to what would be a fairly unremarkable fleet of open wagons, gondolas to some. I made a base of Knauf Board, this high density foam insulation that Bunnings sell that is often used by modellers to make base boards and scenic features to fit into these wagons. This is also lightweight, which is good for already properly weighted wagons as this won't make them too heavy. First I them down using the hand saw, which was really messy. Then sand to shape. This weekend I wanted to make a few more as the first worked quite well, but I was not looking forward to a garage full of mess. I don't have a hot wire cutter which would have been perfect for the job. Then I saw the scroll saw on the shelf.

In very little time I have a bunch of accurate blanks by which to sand later. Note very little dust as a result of the thin blade and fine tooth pattern compared to a standard woodsaw. I could also cut three out of the 50mm thickness of the board instead of 2 and some wastage.
Then I shape, my preferred method uses pieces of sandpaper (1/2 sheet) PVA glued to backing boards in each grade, use these to shape to fit the ribs of the wagon on the bottom and then round the top to whatever shape you would like.
Then find some sort of thing to fill it, my first attempt was sand from my son's sandpit and diluted PVA glue.
I am going to try some new materials, some purchased ballast material, but also some sieved material from the yard, and as my wife keeps fish, I have a regular supply of "coal" which is carbon from the filter, might be a little big, but is the actual material. Watch this space.

Save

 

Hi Cameron,
Don't do much in the way of amp repairs these days, but what I do is mostly home solid state stuff, occasional dabbles in PA, but no work in instrument or valve gear.
Do you have something that needs looking at?

Cheers

Tony

 

Finally got to experimenting with the Dullcote in the airbrush on the weekend. Finished off a lot of projects that were just hanging around on the bench. So much better than normal brushing, just need to move the cars out of the garage, which generally restricts it to daytime because of the noise of the garage doors under the bedrooms.


Then finally to some work on the board itself, should really finish scenic-ing the part that I photograph stuff on, some grass and ballast will be added shortly, need to build my static grass applicator soon, got most of the bits.
Laying kerb and gutter. Scaled from pointcloud at work, could just go down the road with a measuring tape, but I have this cool tool, so why not use it, I chose to make the kerb out of 1.5mm square styrene. 1.7mm would have been better, but they don't make it. 2mm could have been done but might make curves harder. In any case, there is no thing as a standard kerb, across Australia, or even in the same street, I should know, I have modelled hundreds of km of it and turned it into CAD drawings. As a base under the 1.5mm strip I glued 0.25mm x 1.5mm strip, this allowed continuity of the kerb and then cut the 1.5mm section for driveways, rather than sanding or carving the driveway opening out of the larger square section. This narrow bit will still follow curves. I decided not to have laybacks for the driveway crossings, modern practice is to not have them anyway. I also elected not to have a lip, just the bitumen going right up to the kerb face, also quite common practice. Next roads will also have cross-fall.
The road was an early experiment, which has mostly worked, a textured grip paint, with an acrylic grey over the top, which has come out sufficiently random, maybe a bit too textured. Will need to tone the gloss down, but maybe it just rained...
Fixed one end with a nail, then superglued and weighted my way along, all in one strip until the end of the road.


Next for driveways.

 

Keeping the weight up and the cost down.
During the week I am a surveyor, sometimes we do rail jobs, sometimes road, mostly office though at the moment. But sometimes when we survey intersections I find lots of little lead tyre weights in the gutter. I also enjoy bike riding, this too makes me look in the gutter a lot and I can see lots of these little tyre weights there.
It doesn't take long to get a decent collection in different sizes of the things. Then to make my kit-built wagons behave, I work out using the AMRA specs (the NMRA specs are quite difficult to fathom on this) what the weight of the wagon should be, put all the components together, not worried about the extra weight of the sprue, only 1 or 2 grams at most, and then play around with my collection of weights to find the right one(s).
Then Araldite them in. Ugly, but in a van, no-one sees it.
Much cheaper than using something like fishing sinkers, and I am helping clean up, getting lead out of the environment in one way or another.


This kit was quite a learning curve, an AR kits HLX van, has the normal styrene ends, roof and floor, but polyurethane sides, necessitating use of super-glue rather than cement. My favourite super-glue (if you can call it that, superglue and I don't make good friends) the Selleys stuff with the brush (the only stuff so far that I can really use more than once before it sets in the tube or the whole bottle) just wouldn't go off in the joint, days later it had not cured.
Then on some reading found out about the really thin stuff that runs into the joints just like my favourite thin cement, and the accelerator, this really works. I could almost like supeglue with this stuff, except for the smell.

 

Between going to the Castle Hill exhibition this weekend and helping set up my wife's market stall at the local school fete and then being dragged around said fete by the kids I did manage to get a little bit of modelling in. Just enough time for setting up the airbrush for a quick coat of Dullcote, finisning off an AR Kits HLX van, this was the tricky one with the polyurethane sides and the rest styrene. Did some handrails and lamp irons to this one. The van adds nicely to my collection of red NSW louvre vans. First attempt at weathering too, soot powder on the roof and a black wash on the sides.
Also another stage in a guards van, this was rescued from a very bad hand stripe paint job, stripped back to bare plastic by me and starting again. Not going to fix the door, that's a step too far, but a proper paint job with masked yellow line this time, soot/black weathered roof, flush glaze windows, my favourite blue L7 logos, under-floor detail and proper bogies should make this fairly decent. I have a pair of Train-o-rama ones but they suffer from molting parts, every time you look at them something falls off, some manufacturers try too hard I think.
And also finishing off a look-a-like wagon for the younger set to have fun with. A $5 Ozfreight Seatrain open wagon, fitted with Kadees, repainted and coded and finally with my favourite logo again, it should survive reasonably rough handling in the years to come, and it won't be the end of the world if it falls to the floor.

 

Taking a break from rolling stock building I have been recently doing a lot of scenery work on Poppy.
A project that I have been working on for some time has been a static grass applicator. It is basically a copy of Luke Towan's one with a few mods. Used the same ion generator from Oatley electronics, but used a square sistema container as the local shops seem to have dropped the round one. Since cutting into the square one I found the round ones at Spotlight. Cutting into the sistema plastic was a lot harder than the build video made out, but I got it done. I used flywire rather than cut up a perfectly good sieve. For power I used a 12V power supply from an external hard drive, we have a vast number of these at work, more than we will ever need. I don't like those cheap slider switches, plus the little toggle switch I used only requires a round hole, not 2 holes and a rectangular hole.
Works quite well, now just got to find time to use it.

 

Wasn't what I wanted to do tonight, wanted to start scratch-building some backyard fences, or playing with the static grass applicator, but I do have to keep the peace and keep the little ones happy. Well at least it is model trains of a sort, toys really!


My son's play-group had been given a bunch of old Tomy Thomas and Friends to add to their fairly vast collection of track and trains, enough already to fill a 100 litre box.
As it is known that I like trains, well, the broken ones came my way to the "mender's yard"
My wife tracked down replacement couplers off the net, so Annie (who groans with a spring rubbing off quite a convoluted gear train), Clarabelle, Henritetta, Toad, 2 troublesome trucks and one milk tanker were readily back on the rails. There are a couple of crane wagons that need serious work, plus an incomplete Cranky the Crane, if he can't be fixed his face is going on an old Hornby wagon for the real trains. Then there are the locos. These things cop a lot of abuse, it's surprising how well they do stand up to the kids after all this time, the Tomy stuff has not been made for many years now.
Some of the problems are just like proper small trains. Toby has a motor that works, but like a Mainline steam loco, the centre of the wheel is chewed out so it slips and will not drive. Additionally the centre gear, once again, just like a Mainline, Bachmann (early HO) or Train-o-rama 44 class, has split and rotates on the axle. There is the remains of a Bill (or Ben) this may yield the parts required. Duck has a good drive system and gear box, motor is no go, that looks much easier, they are just a simple cheap common motor.
Hopefully I will get back to normal programming soon.