OK y'all, here we go again!
First up for the 2012 enhancements is the project I most wanted for last year but couldn't finish. The Monorail system! OK, it's hard to call one train a system and this one won't be straddling a concrete beam so the term "monorail" isn't accurate either. But with that out of the way, it's time to have fun!
[View:http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/themes/trc/utility/:550:0]
After much prototyping, I arrived at a final workable shape which could be translated into 2 dimensional parts.
Using carbon paper, I transferred the patterns to .016 alluminum sheets from K & S.
I don't know how to solder, so I used a different method for assembly. The joints are backed by thin strips of Coca Cola can hot glued accross the joints. Works well enough. In this photo you can see the top part of the bulkhead which gives me a large flat surface for gluing the nose section to the Marx carbody. The bulkhead is made from aluminum and aside from the curved section at the top which helps close the hole left for the pivot point, follows the shape of the carbody rather than that of the nose section. It's backed by thick styrene and has a hole near the bottom for a screw to the motor.
The motor is from a Lionel 2-4-0 of the early 90's and is DC. There is a circuit board that will end up in car #2 and the tether has no problem passing between one car and the next. The side skirting comes down to just barely above the rim of the wheels though they won't be attached till final assembly after the stripping. If you look closely at the door, you can see the mounting tabs for the bulkhead. The front section is permanently mounted to the bulkhead by use of another styrene panel. On the bottom there's a screw that attaches to the motor through the bulkhead and there's one other screw topside for the motor.
All cars coupled with the paper protopattern doing the honors of the caboose. Due to size issues on the layout, and because of the need for wide curvature to keep these articulated cars on the rails, it's doubtful that the train will ever see a straight tangent in regular service. Ideally I should use O54 but I'm considering O42 which would give me more leeway. I won't know until I finish rebuilding the RealTrax Railware track diagram I lost in a computer crash back in December. Of course I'd like to give the train as long a run as possible, but the room is only so big!
So what about those rails? Well, it would be most accurate to call this an elevated track system rather than a monorail. And here's what I have in mind.
A flat platform made of luan plywood (it's what I have on hand in a large quantity) screwed into the top of a 3/8" square basswood dowell. Topside I'll use thin strips of something, maybe styrene, to help conceal the railhead and assist in derail prevention. My best guess is that this train will need to travel 8 inches off the ground and being a permanently coupled train if one part goes down the whole consist goes down! Not too good when your primary building material is paper! The bases will be covered with simple cardstock triangles but packed with clay to make the pylons as heavy as possible.
Well, that's where we're at at the moment. I'll be cutting the aluminum soon for the rear end which will need a whole different treatment than the front since that end of the train is round. Then comes the stripping and fianl assembly before a nice glossy coat of white with a red stripe down the side.
Also on the drawing board are the skyway system, bobsleds for the Matterhorn and better buildings in several key areas. I also need more people and a rigid base. Lots to do this summer!
Becky
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
Okay mistro that looks great as usual. all you do is impress us more each time you come and we enjoy it so don't take anything wrong please keep coming with this great work you do.
Life's hard, even harder if your stupid John Wayne
http://rtssite.shutterfly.com/
Very neat project, when finished could be a real conversation piece.
Bill T.
I'll admit, when you mentioned turning those cars into a "monorail" train, i couldn't picture it. But you appear to have a great plan and a great start on them :)
Can't wait to see it finished. It already looks great.
Becky,
I can't wait to see it done. SOOOOO Cool!!
Kev
Joined 1-21-2011 TCA 13-68614
Kev, From The North Bluff Above Marseilles IL.
That is just way too much fun! Looking forward to the finished product!
Regards, Roy
More construction photos:
All 5 of the cars had issues from fatal dents to fatal rusting.
The best car (not shown) is the locomotive shell while the worst (on the bottom and most heavily dented) will be the caboose. Car #2 is on top here and will receive the circuit board. Also, the top and bottom cars in the pile have the brass "trucks" I'm making to replace the original wheels. These are fast axles with their points ground off. The Marx axles went through the sides of the car so I had to remove them anyways in order to install the skirting.
Some of the nose was a bit too complex for me to fold in .019 aluminum, so I baked in some Sculpey instead. This is the nose of the caboose which I worked on today.
The pinkish track is the projected route for the Monorail. I decided after much fiddling to stick with O31. With O42 I could only do a "grand circle tour" following the steam train almost exactly, which would have looked a bit dumb. O54 and O72 couldn't fit without crossing in front of the castle, which also wouldn't do. O31 was the only radius I could adequately turn, especially inside Tomorrowland which is where the largest percentage of Monorail track is at Disneyland. It started there in 1959 after the Viewliner (57 - 58) was removed and was later extended past the Main Street Station to the Disneyland Hotel. So it made sense to have it pass the main gate (and maybe I'll build the hotel too! )
The only problem with O31 is with the side skirting. I'll have to cut it down a bit vertically to keep it above the railhead. Also, because the motor has a short wheelbase and because it's mounted ahead of center in the lead unit (on the left), there's a much larger gap between it and the rest of the cars on curves. But hey, that's why I'm working on it in April rather than October!
Well, that's all for today! One of these days I need to get my Thai layout put together that was supposed to be up by February!
looking great to me thanks for sharing
Thanks guys!
Today I added the rest of the "trucks" and did most of the metalwork for car #5, the caboose or tail car.
QUESTION: Because of my construction techniques, .019 sheet aluminum with strips of coca cola can hot glued to the seams from the rear, some small gaps will need to be filled. What should I use? Some of the gaps will be between the aluminum and the original steel carbody, but they'll be the minority, most of the gaps are just hairlines between the seams on the aluminum parts. Would modelers contour putty hold? Or should I use an automotive body filler? I've never used either, so any suggestions and guidance would be most welcome!
Looking good.
Going to be impressive when it is done.
This is very impressive. I really like how you've thought out all the details instead of using my approach and just digging into the project. I can't wait to see the end result.
As for filling the gaps, auto body filler would be my first choice. Keep each coat of filler thin though. If it is applied too thick, it will crack and fall away. It is easy to work with. The filler can be used to fill in areas that have been pitted by rust once the rust is removed.
TESTING DAY AT LAST!!! [:D]
Today I wrapped up the process of manufacturing the "add-on" parts, so it was time to see how she would fly!
As you might imagine, the first thing she actually did was derail! But the problem was easy to diagnose. She's just too light. So with the addition of some washers one at a time at key points, I finally got the weight right.
Now that she's holding the rail decently, I'll weigh up the washers, sinkers and other bits I used today on a postage scale and get some proper weights.
I also came up with a short list of proposed projects for this year:
And something I never heard of till late last year. #18. There was a tram/bus styled like a San Francisco cable car that ran between Disneyland and the Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge. So I bought a Testors 1:48 cable car kit on Ebay and I'm going to recreate this little known piece of Disneyland history too!
looking good Penny enjoy looking at all your post and work. thanks for sharing
I did some doodling today
.[View:http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/themes/trc/utility/:550:0]
Some new buildings for Tomorrowland.
Here's the Enchanted Tiki Room:
Also moving right along is the Pirates of the Carribean building:
The POTC will be an odd one. It will back up to the base of the Christmas tree so it will have a very complicated profile beyond the tower and the 2 walls shown here. The roof will come up and over the tree stand and the 2 "walls" at the corners of the curve will follow the profile of the stand. Not a good stand alone structure to say the least!
More to come!
Looking great as normal
POTC is structurally complete:
And a strange shaped building it is!
Pirates of the Caribbean finished:
I started work on the Liberty Tree today:
The Liberty Tree is a replica of the original tree in Boston where the Sons of Liberty gathered in 1765 to protest the Stamp Act. The WDW version is a Southern Live Oak over 100 years old and was transplanted from 6 miles away in 1971. It's hung with 13 lanterns to, as you may have guessed, represent the 13 original American colonies.
Making 13 paper lanterns was easy enough, but lighting them was a different story. I could have gone with 13 grain of wheat bulbs in the 14 to 18 volt range, but I decided to go with 120 volt lams instead. The string I bought has 50 bulbs on brown wire and plug into any outlet. I didn't want 50 bulbs on the small tree armature I was planning to use, so about 20 of them light up the surrounding gardens which is also a staple of Disney lanscaping. The round base will have a brick wall and benches and when I get to the craft store for some greenery the extra lights in the tree will give it a bit of extra twinkle.
Very nice work!! Love the Liberty Tree.
Becky you know in your local area anyway (and there the lucky ones) I bet you could sell your work to others (train and maybe doll or some that just do buildings) to make your self some nice money I bet. You do real good work.
Thanks again for sharing it looks great
Becky - do you mind sharing how you outlined the roof edge in the Pirates of the Caribbean? My youngest is a big Disney fan and he loves looking at these pictures and the prior ones. ("Why can't you do that, dad?" )
Doug Murphy 'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...' Henry V.
cnw1995 Becky - do you mind sharing how you outlined the roof edge in the Pirates of the Caribbean? My youngest is a big Disney fan and he loves looking at these pictures and the prior ones. ("Why can't you do that, dad?" )
I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, so I'll give you some info on how I built the whole structure. For starters, the tower was designed by Ray Keim and can be downloaded for free from his website: http://www.haunteddimensions.raykeim.com/index301.html along with all 3 Haunted Mansions and several other really cool kits!
As designed, the "Torre del Cielo" is roughly 1:64 scale. I enlarged it to 125% when I printed it for a better fit against the 1:43 (roughly) figures I'll be using around it. It's not perfectly O scale, but it looks good. In the top of the tower I backed the "clock section" with black paper and installed a light with a replacable bulb. The top of the tower also comes off to facilitate maintenance.
The walls of the building are illustration board with an enlargement of one section of the tower's stucco patern glued on. Then I used parts and pieces of the tower trim to enhance the main building's arches. On the "face wall" adjoining the tower, I drew the curving shapes by hand. Then I photocopied the uncut illustration board wall onto plain paper and used it as a template to draw the red filligree pice on a sheet of red cardstock. The parapet wall on the top was also hand drawn/measured. The tile roof is one I created a few years ago for a Germanic styled train station. I'm not 100% happy with it though, and I'll probably keep looking for a better texture to put over top.
So, by extrapolating parts from the tower kit and adding a roof texture of my own, I was able to come up with something that resembles what I was after. The "sign" came from a simple internet search and I just cut a photo someone had posted to size and backed it with black cardstock. The mast and arms are pieces of wood painted with Testors rust and the crows nest is a miniaturized version of the one from the Wicked Wench kit, which can also be downloaded for free from www.disneyexperience.com.
PS I may also add some brown gutters and downspouts just to give that extra bit of flair.
hscsltb Very nice work!! Love the Liberty Tree.
http://i1106.photobucket.com/albums/h367/beckychestney/DSCF8668x.jpg
Looking really good Becky!
You can also use JB Weld to fill in the seams. You can buy that in a much smaller quantity then bondo.
Once you figure the weights you need for the cars, you can get sticky lead weights for alloy rims, just peel and stick. If you go to a tire store and ask, they may just give them to you.
Instead of 031, have you thought of using Marx 034? That would have a lower profile rail then 031.
I researched a lot of different radii on Ebay and various webstores like Trainz and Wholesaletrains but couldn't get the fiscal appropriation. So I'll have to stick with O31 since I have boxes of the stuff. Mom is like a Roy to my Walt and helps keep my feet on the ground and under budget. Thanks for the suggestion though!
I haven't got pictures yet, (and I'm not entirely sure why I couldn't post the latest pic of the Liberty Tree) but the new Frontierland Station is done and much work has been done on new Tomorrowland buildings. I'll get those posted soon.
Here's some more pics. (Not sure why the java isn't working to insert them.)
Frontierland Station
http://i1106.photobucket.com/albums/h367/beckychestney/DSCF8703x.jpg
http://i1106.photobucket.com/albums/h367/beckychestney/DSCF8712x.jpg
Gates of Tomorrowland
http://i1106.photobucket.com/albums/h367/beckychestney/DSCF8719x.jpg
Penny Trains Here's some more pics. (Not sure why the java isn't working to insert them.) Frontierland Station Gates of Tomorrowland Becky
Great as always Becky
Time for an update.
New Tomorrowland:
http://i1106.photobucket.com/albums/h367/beckychestney/DSCF8774x.jpg
http://i1106.photobucket.com/albums/h367/beckychestney/DSCF8762x.jpg
and Small World:
http://i1106.photobucket.com/albums/h367/beckychestney/DSCF8737x.jpg
http://i1106.photobucket.com/albums/h367/beckychestney/DSCF8783x.jpg
Still don't know why I can't get the insert media tab to open....
Penny Trains Time for an update. New Tomorrowland: and Small World: Still don't know why I can't get the insert media tab to open.... Becky
Looks great as always. Hopefully, the links will show properly now.
Thanks! Maybe it's my super slow dial-up modem?
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.
Get the Classic Toy Trains newsletter delivered to your inbox twice a month