2-6-6-4 "Bulgar" Steam Locomotive by Dan Vadas - Modelik - 1:25 - CARD - FINISHED

[Dan Vadas]

21 hours ago, Canute said:

Yes, looks like you could fire it up and operate the mechanism. Extremely nice work, Danny.

Ken - fire up a paper model ????? I don't think that will end well  .

 

I'm going backwards in the following posts to show some of the construction involved in the earlier post of my progress.

 

Quite a bit of work in building the two steam cylinders. I had a few re-does with these, as I didn't understand the basic principles of how they actually worked. Thanks to a couple of other build logs, Stephan and Lothar on German Paper Modelling sites, I eventually got them together the right way up and also WORKING  . In these next pics I've cut apart one of my early failures. I actually managed to save every part and rebuilt the little section :

The shaft should have gone right through the piece. I had added a paper roll to glue the legs to - wrong :

Sometimes a single-edged razor blade works better than a scalpel for cutting parts off as it's about half the thickness :

Some of the parts for the end plates etc :

How I keep multiple pieces aligned on an otherwise difficult part :

These two little pieces were very difficult to roll due to the cutouts in the middle. They turned out quite well  :

Some finished sub-sections :

Lots of laser-cut bolt heads and how I cut them off the sheet :

These name plaques turned out really well. They are laser-engraved, the gold colour was applied with a Pitt Pen :

The finished cylinders. I'll put the name plaques on near the end of the build :

Danny

[Canute]

Put an electric motor in it and watch the mechanism go through the motions. I realize you can't "fire" it up.  Great build, Danny.

[thibaultron]

Well, you can "fire" it up, but just once!

[popeye the sailor]

!WOW!  awesome job Danny....look'in great  

[Dan Vadas]

Thank you all for the Likes and comments. These are one thing that is keeping me going with this build - another is that I'm thoroughly enjoying it  .

 

The two compressed air tanks. The ends are slightly domed. I cut some scrap paper roughly to shape to prevent any crushing later. The skin is only glued along it's edge :

I've fitted all the main wheels and finished the brake mechanism for them. The brake shoes needed a little sanding to bed them in properly :

To hold the wheels into the tube axles I mushroomed the ends of some tight fitting styrene rod with a small soldering iron and filed them as flat as possible :

The drive axle needs to be a solid fit as the two wheels have to turn in synchronisation. The crank pins are offset by 90 degrees from each other so that one wheel is vertical while the other is horizontal. This keeps the drive going without any stopping. To make sure they don't slip on the axle I made a keyway for each and also used CA glue to hold them to the axle :

Danny

[vulcanbomber]

Looks brilliant Danny.

 

I've made paper model aircraft, but inspired by your build, I've only gone an ordered a loco to try. A Modelik T448P diesel in 1:25. Ordered the laser cut wheels, frames and grating with it as well!

[PopDavid]

This build looks like more effort than building from metal parts.  Really great work!  Just one small observation.  Under the Whyte classification system it is a 2-12-4.  Only one set of cylinders.  Under what seems to be an European system only one side is counted, thus the package reads 1-6-2.  🚆  My other hat.

[Dan Vadas]

On 11/28/2019 at 4:16 AM, vulcanbomber said:

Looks brilliant Danny.

 

I've made paper model aircraft, but inspired by your build, I've only gone an ordered a loco to try. A Modelik T448P diesel in 1:25. Ordered the laser cut wheels, frames and grating with it as well!

Good luck with that model Caroline, it looks a reasonably "easy" one to try as a first loco (if any are actually easy  ). I think you'll find the Modelik kit to be quite a good one, detailing is nice and the instruction diagrams are understandable. It seems you've avoided a kit with a couple of thousand rivets, instead you have a couple of hundred louvres to cut   .

 

Take a look through THESE PICS of a finished model of one. They may come in useful for your build.

 

P.S. A laser-cut Rail set is also available, makes a nice "stand" for the loco.

 

Cheers, Danny

[vulcanbomber]

Thanks for the pics, they will be helpful.

 

I chose the model as I am hoping a diesel will be an easier introduction than a steamy to loco's! I will have a look at the rails you mention. It will be displayed on top of our son's Hornby engine display cabinet (when finished (hopefully!!))

[popeye the sailor]

that's a sweet looking model.........I hope you will post it  

[Moab]

OMG! Breathtaking!!!!...Moab

[FriedClams]

Just found this build log Danny, and I am very impressed with your construction of it and the look of the model in general.  I am always amazed by how realistic these card constructions can be - and how detailed and complex.  Very nice work indeed and I look forward to future updates.

 

Gary

[Dan Vadas]

Welcome to my build Gary. Paper modelling has it's own challenges, the solutions to some of which I've been fortunate to pick up from other MSW members and others from European Paper modellers. The medium is huge over there, probably as big as wood or plastic modelling  .

 

1 hour ago, Moab said:

OMG! Breathtaking!!!!...Moab

In the words of Bachmann Turner Overdrive - "You ain't seen nuthin' yet"  .

 

The crank pins are dealt with in similar fashion to the axles, using 2.0mm brass tubing and 1.6mm styrene rod which I heated with a small soldering iron to mushroom the end. It was then cleaned up and filed as flat as possible with a diamond-coated needle file :

Once the axles were all installed I made some "hubcaps" from scrap paper. In my opinion they look better than the bare axle, which is actually the "correct" way on the original :

The crank pins are also covered, I punched out some 0.5mm paper and glued them to the back of the printed parts to give them enough clearance :

Danny

 

 

[Dan Vadas]

Getting the crank mechanisms to actually work took some thought, as the kit makes no provision for this - it's simply all glued together.

 

I made every joint moveable (too many actually - the valve control mechanism is separate from the drive cranks and didn't really need doing) by punching and pinning every one. Most joints are held together with paper "nuts" which are the only parts of the joints that are glued. Here is the slide for the upper shaft which also needs to pivot :

Some close-ups of all the right-hand side crank mechanisms :

With everything now in place the crank movement has really improved. It will get close to perfect once the drive wheels actually touch down - at the moment they are in mid-air as they don't have a flange like the other wheels.

 

I've started making the boilers. More progress updates will follow as I have something to show.

 

Cheers, Danny

[vulcanbomber]

Wow, you made the driving cranks and rods so they actually work 

 

 

You should put a video up to show it all moving, that is something I would love to see as all those moving parts always fascinates me when I see it all working on a full size version!  

 

[Jim Lad]

You're going to have to put some nice black grease on those parts to make it look 100% realistic, Danny! 

 

John

[Dan Vadas]

On 11/30/2019 at 7:53 AM, vulcanbomber said:

You should put a video up to show it all moving, that is something I would love to see

Hopefully I can remember how to take one on my old camera - it's been about 10 years since I last did  .

 

The firebox. There were laser-cut support frames for this and the boilers. I added some extra 10mm wide strips that just touch inside the sides to prevent any crushing, and also to stabilise the whole unit :

The cabin end has a rolled edge. I filled in the rounded part to give me something to work to :

Filling in that edge really helped a lot to make a nice even roll without any "wobbles". The lighting makes it look a bit uneven in the pics - in reality it's turned out close to perfect  . I glued each tab one at a time to give me time to push it into place properly :

The slots between four of the tabs wasn't drawn correctly, and I finished up with gaps in them when I glued it up. I filled the gaps with some scrap paper. They are nearly impossible to pick with the naked eye :

The skin was a beautiful fit, no adjustment necessary :

The ash box was a rather fiddly thing to glue up, but I'm more than happy with the result :

I glued some tapered card around the inside of the edges to stop any bowing while gluing the ash box to the fire box :

The result was pretty good  :

Danny

[Dan Vadas]

Next job was the two boilers. It only took me a day and a half to make them both, and the finished result was really good - some of the best pieces I've ever made  .

 

Once again I added extra card strips to prevent any crushing - it's a lot easier to crush a beer can barehanded than to do the same to these  :

Once the frames were finished I rolled and glued the skins. These were then slipped over the frames from one end and glued to them :

The front of the boiler has a domed end. I sanded the shape into some extra card pieces before skinning it :

I just had to take a couple of pics of my overall progress. The boilers and firebox are only sitting in place, it's a lot easier to add all the extras to them in smaller units :

Danny

[Edwardkenway]

Amazing work Danny. 

[druxey]

Dan; you wrote: "It's a lot easier to crush a beer can barehanded than to do the same to these." I hope you did not test the boiler to destruction! Nice work on those compound curves.

[michael mott]

Hi Danny, very nice and yes the intricacy of your model is amazing. It might be possible with a bit of trickery to make the model work on air. A better option that firing her up!

 

Michael 

[popeye the sailor]

look'in better and better Danny   

[Dan Vadas]

Thanks for dropping in again guys  .

 

"It might be possible with a bit of trickery to make the model work on air."

Michael, none of my models are "powered" by anything more than my hand or fingers. I'm not about to start now   . Electric (battery) power would be the only option I would consider, but I'm way past the stage of installing anything like that.

 

The sandboxes and safety valves on top of the boilers. These have domed tops which came out well thanks in part to the preparation work I did. The rounded part of the extra card infill was first cut almost to shape with a scalpel (right) before final sanding with a sanding stick (left) :

At a quick glance the ends of the tabs on the skins looked straight - they weren't  :

The boxes fitted to the two boiler sections :

This next piece - the compressor - took me two full days to make. There are 28 separate sections in the fins alone :

A jig made alignment a little easier :

The glued fin section before any final finishing :

Some of the fins were very slightly larger or smaller than others (I'm talking 0.2mm at worst) but the differences were noticeable so I cut and filed them all to the same size :

It still needed a bit of cleaning up with a tapered piece of wood :

The finished compressor :

The start of thousands of 0.8mm rivets :

 

Danny

[druxey]

Very compressive - I mean impressive, Dan!

[GrandpaPhil]

Simply amazing!

[Dan Vadas]

And thank you David and Phil  .

 

The plumbing is made from 3 sizes of brass rod - 2.0mm, 1.5mm and 1.0mm. I annealed it before attempting to make the bends. The most complex bend took me over an hour to get it ready for blackening with Birchwood-Casey Brass Black. I installed these pieces now before fitting the sections of boiler together :

Some type of safety blow-off valve perhaps ?

Also before fitting the boiler sections together I finished off as much of the front plate as I could :

Danny

[vulcanbomber]

Wow - Just.... wow!

[Dan Vadas]

Thanks Caroline  .

 

Now I could fit the two forward sections of the boilers together. The join is behind one of the black "real" joining strips. They lined up perfectly  :

The next step will be the start of the cabin.

 

Danny

[mtaylor]

Nice plumbing work, Danny.   The loco is really coming together wonderfully.

[Moab]

It just keeps getting better and better...Moab