Friday, September 5, 2008

On to the Porter

I had a Grandt Line On30 8 ton porter way back before Bachmann knew what On30 was. That locomotive is long gone, but I did still have the instructions and they include scale drawings and many details. I used those Grandt line drawings to start planning my HOn30 version.

The plans were scaled to HO and then imported into AutoCAD where I basically traced over them to create artwork for etching. This was the first test etch I came up with.







The drivers are 7mm and from a N scale Atlas/Micro Ace 2-6-0. 2 of the drivers needed to be bored out to 1.5mm while the other 2 drivers were bored to 2mm for bushings. The insulator bushing were then lathed down to a 2mm od.

Here are more porter parts.








And now with the cab sides soldered together.




This is where things sit right now.

This is a pretty small locomotive at about 2" long and 1" wide. The finished locomotive will have a "tender" that is slightly smaller than a stock porter item. It will have parts from a Kato truck that will let it have 4 wheel axle point frictionless electrical pick-ups.

More later...

1 comment:

twofoot said...

Could you PLEASE share your etching knowledge? It would be a crime to keep such skill a secret. Seriously. I cannot believe what you do in N scale, and I model in On2.

Amazing.

Chris Cardinal
twofoot at comcast.net