Monday 13 August 2012

That Swing Thing

It's time to put together the second prototype DZ wagon to see if the changes I've made to the position of the 'wee dangly bits' have worked.

The problem, you will recall, was two-fold. Not only were they in slightly the wrong position, they also stopped the bogies from swinging as far as I felt they needed to.

That's not necessarily a problem on Bron Hebog - the layout is so large by 009 standards that we have very easy curves - but as I am intending to sell the castings as a basic kit I need to take into account that some buyers may have much sharper bends on their layouts and the wagons need be able to cope with those.

These castings are not very challenging to put together, as you can see here.

The first stage is to attach the two sides to the floor / chassis unit which has been designed so the bottom of the sides are fixed flush with the bottom of the chassis frame.

I use rapid set epoxy resin, rather than superglue, to give myself plenty of adjusting time.


And when those are solid the end pieces can be glued on in a similar fashion.


See, I told you it was simple!

The bogies are designed to pivot on a 10BA bolt put through a hole in the floor and retained by a nut. (Apologies if this is all a bid bleedin' obvious.)


The bogies you see here are a pair of Worsley Works etches we had lying around spare, with a brass coupling shaft added on and fitted with 2mm 'top hat' brass bushes which I have filed down aggressively on the outside to maximise the angle the bogies can swing.

I think that should be quite sufficient for a wagon which is only 10cm long. Surely to goodness no one has curves tighter than that, do they?

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