My turn for a Machine Shop

waynelp

Starting my 0n30 roundhouse Machine Shop I posted on my Masonry "how to" the concrete floor and walls. Here are my latest efforts for the machines themselves. I have a place for them, but need the completed pieces to be able to place where the line shafts and belts will need to go. So.. here are a couple of my first machines.

Now I have bought a few other company metal castings and I say here I am really impressed with what quality and care that Brett puts into his castings. Aside from the very, very few smaller pieces which get damaged in handling, I have basically to just file a little and buff the rough parts. They are great.

Here is the area of the roundhouse which will house the machine shop The vertical boiler and single piston engine are already completed and located in a room to the right bottom of this picture.


The lath required a little more fitting as the resin casting was deformed slightly in the center so several changes in arrangement of metal casting was needed to make it work.




The Crank shaper was almost perfect out of the package. Not much work to be done on it.



I am almost done with the Miller. After the lath they all seem to go together much faster and easier. It took me a week for the lath, Three days for the crank shaper and just one for the miller. ( I have the time to spend hours at a time for the work being retired and all)

I already have the line shaft parts ready to install and am waiting for an extra one ordered from Brett to extend some power farther into the roundhouse.

This picture shows the work tables for mechanics between the engines. Remember here all the scenery pieces are just placed there and not installed as yet. Much has to be done for the dirty and used look I want to achieve for the roundhouse.


The Miller,



Drill Press,



Thanks for looking

dick52

Beautiful work Wayne, the machines look great .

Richard

dick52

I noticed that large vice that is on the bench, I have noticed it in Karl,s engine house and also it is used by Chuck Doan and I was wondering , is it one of Bretts or some other companys , I have never seen them before .

Richard

brownbr

I like the rust and grime accumulation on the base of the crank shaper.

That's going to be quite a structure.

admin

Looks great so far Wayne. The Shaper is wonderful.

morganhillrr

Very nice work Wayne, look forward to following along....Joe CCCModOn30

waynelp

Here is the latest work on the roundhouse. It is now 8 months into the construction of it.
The Machine shop has taken most of the time and work, and such it is the focus of this posting as it has the Sierra West products.

If anyone reads these posting instead of just looking at the pictures I have to say I did have trouble understanding the instructions for the line shaft installations and made many mistakes. Since it took me 3 months to complete what I have, I wasn't going to change it. After installation one cannot see any/most of the mistakes anyway, so what the heck I left them as they were. I am building here a working model railroad. Most of what I have to build needs to be able to stand up to the daily use of the "train set". It needs to be able to stand up to the vacuum cleaner and constant cleaning. So I am not to concerned with building a contest winner, but I do want it to look good.

One thing I will say about my mistake is when I put a template over where the machines were located and drew in the places for the live rolls I reversed them, not on purpose, when I went to the work bench and put them on the rafters I had prebuilt. So it wound up that the rollers were all backward in arrangement and did not line up with the machines already bolted(glued) to the floor. So consequently they are not where they are supposed to be and hence the belt moving rods are incorrect.

The back wall, boiler room and roof are removable to view the machine shop and the machinery located therein. The entire roof on the roundhouse will be able to lift off also.















I have much more to do on the this project. I still have some to do on the machine shop.
I have to put in drop lights, more little details parts, clean up what is there.
Have any of you built a ship in a bottle model? I haven't and I bet this is like that.

These are a few of the pictures I took for the shop. A few more can be seen here;

http://minietonrailroad.org/roundhouse_machineshop/

Now enjoy and get to work on your machine shop.

Thanks, Wayne.

waynelp

A little commentary on the above posting. If and when anyone else does a machine shop, a little instruction here. Looking at Bretts Instructions left me with a blank spot in my mind. I am sure they are good but I couldn't see it. I just could not see how to put the overhead rolls and the belt changing mechanisms together and have them come out right side up. Like I said I have reversed almost all I had built up. Not until I had put it together and started to install the belts on the machinery did I realize what was what. I learned one thing; DO NOT pull the belts tight from the machine to the overhead when gluing. Each time I did that the last machine down the line loosened the belts, they sagged and the overhead joists started sagging. Maybe I made the shop and scenery area too "busy" and tried to cram all I had into one area. I still have a few more machines to install at other places in the roundhouse. Just an observation here, a learning thingy.

Thanks.

brownbr

The machines look good installed. The structure is shaping up to be a real centerpiece.

Slimjerkins

Really fantastic work and detail on the shop machinery. The finish on the equipment is just outstanding.

One observation - Might the black/yellow warning marks along the edge of the pit be a little too modern given the era of the machinery? I'm not seeing them in some old O. Winston Link photos of the N&W shops but maybe they were used elsewhere at the time.

Bill S.

James

Fantastic work - the issues with the belts isn't apparent if that's a concern. The figures in there look great too. I did read the text (not just look at the pretty pictures. I'm slowly working towards a machine shop based on the Sierra RR layout and Bill's book, which is a very dense shop. Your comments on the line shaft are appreciated - I have no idea how I'd deal with the issue.

KKarns

Wayne, great work and all that appears to be going on in the shops, nobody is going to take you to task for any minor issues. I love the concrete floor and service pit. Great use of top of the line machinery...Ken

waynelp

Here are the pictures of the Sierra Railroad at Jamestown California, from which I am using as a real life model of some of what I hope to have modeled with the machine shop and roundhouse.

These are also good reference pictures.

This is a "working" roundhouse, the machine shop used to operated about once a year for demos, but I believe they do not do that any longer.

http://minietonrailroad.org/sierra_roundhouse/sierra.html

Enjoy.

brownbr

Thanks for the great proto photos. They will sure come in handy.

James

Thanks for the site re: Sierra RR. I hadn't seen these before. I like this one too- you can pan the photos 360 degrees:

http://360panos.com/local/railtown-1897-state-historic-park-california.php

waynelp

Greetings all,

Update for those interested the almost final roundhouse project with Sierra West machine shop.

http://minietonrailroad.org/html/enginehouse.html

brownbr

I like it. It's hard to tell from the photo, but is there access/viewing from behind? It would be a shame to have removable roofs but can't get close enough to look inside.

Geezerbill

Great workmanship on your roundhouse Wayne. I just started my machine shop build and at age 80 I find handling those little parts a challenge, not to mention poor eyesight! Sure wish I had twenty LITTLE fingers that didn't get in the way of each other. You have done a wonderful job with a very realistic result. Great build!!

admin

Looking good! Nice work...