H0e forest railways with H0 branch line

[Martijn Meerts]

So, finally got a little bit of work done on this again. I've once again started clearing out a bunch of stuff that somehow ended up on the attic the past months since I cleaned up the last time. This time though, I'm going to throw / give away a bunch of stuff I no longer need, such as some older hifi equipment, and then get some CD / DVD storage cases so I can get rid of all the jewel boxes and such. Those take up a ton of space.

 

Before continuing on the 9600 kit, I decided to first try putting together 1 of the cars of the side dumping rail cars kit I got a while ago. They are really small so it's good practice before working on the 9600. So far, I've only really built the lower frame and test-fitted the axles. I found out that the instructions were wrong, which caused me to bend / fold some parts the wrong way. Luckily I was able to fix it, and it actually runs pretty smooth.

 

I'm normally not a fan of using any kind of flux, but I've noticed that it's pretty much necessary in this case. Because even the main parts of the frame are only a few centimeters long, it's really easy to heat up the metal to the point where all previously soldered joints will melt as well. Using flux and some really small solder pellets I got from IMON makes things quite a bit easier. Just need to make sure to throw the parts into an ultrasonic cleaner or something to get rid of the flux residue 🙂

 

Didn't take any pictures, but I'll be sure to do so tomorrow and post them.

 

I've actually also looked a little at my jr-chiisai.net site / blog, I kept getting emails that files were changing and I couldn't really update anything to due the heavily customised theme. Decided to remove the site and set up a new one with a basic theme with only some CSS changes. This should mean it's easier to keep up-to-date with the latest version. I'm going to attempt once again to post semi-regularly there. That'll be the 4th time I think, so if it won't work out this time, I'll just take the whole thing down 😄

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Some pictures:

 

The parts of the frame.

 

 

Side walls soldered on

 

 

Top of the frame soldered on, and a quick test assembly with the wheels and couplers

 

 

Comparison of a car to a N-scale DD16. The frame of the side dumping car is H0e, so 1:87 scale as apposed to the loco which is 1:150 scale, so definitely small cars 😄

 

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Started working on the bucket of the first car. The bucket itself comes preformed, and you just need to solder in the side walls. Of course, the fit is pretty tight, and soldering it all can be a bit iffy. The brass sheet is rather thin and heats up real fast 😉

 

Some of the small bits and pieces are extremely fiddly to even get in place, let alone solder them there. The small solder pellets really help here, since you just put them in place, then heat them up with the soldering iron. You get the solder exactly where you want it, and you don't get too much solder. I'm still trying to figure out which pellets to use for which parts. I have 2 different sizes. The smallest ones seemed to be too small initially, but having used them a couple of times, the bigger ones seem really big all of a sudden. To give an indication, the smallest pellets are 0.6 x 0.4 x 0.5 mm, the bigger ones are 0.8 x 0.6 x 0.5 mm.

 

Top down view of the bucket and bracket. All in all there are some 10 parts. The bucket itself, the sidewall main plate, the sidewall detail plate, the bracket base and then a bunch of detail bits.

 

 

Side view of the same bucket. There are some visible seams here and there. Not sure I'm going to try to close all those with solder, or once the build is done, prime them, and then use putty to fill any gaps. Putty seems easier, and it should stick well enough once primed, even if it is plastic putty.

 

[cteno4]

Very nice work martijn!

 

jeff

[Martijn Meerts]

Completed building the first of the five cars. Overall I'm quite happy with it, especially considering there was a mistake in the instructions which had you fold certain bits and pieces the wrong way. Folding them back in the correct way caused them to break, so I had to carefully solder those back in the place. The small detail bits on the outside of the axle housing were the worst to add, since it meant up heating the parts that came off after correcting the mistake. They're quite fiddly in general actually, might just glue them on instead on the next car.

 

There are definitely spots that need attention, such as the inside of the bucket, and here and there you can see some gaps etc. On the one hand I'd like to try and fix all that, but on the other hand, these should be much used old cars, so they shouldn't be perfect. In fact, I might need to add some dents here and there to make them look more realistic and (ab)used.

 

The "finished" car. There's actually quite a lot of detail in it, especially considering it's only 27 mm long, not counting the couplers. Speaking of couplers, the ones shown here are the couplers between the 5 cars. The first and last one will have normal couplers.

 

 

Another comparison with the N-scale DD16.

 

 

[cteno4]

Great job Martijn! Really looks nice. You need to make a tiny sledge hammer to ding it up now!

 

btw dental grinding bits are perfect to go in and clean up solder bits like this they have tiny tiny tips to really get in the nitty bitty nooks and crannies. I’ll pop some in a regular letter to you, they are tiny and light. 

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Martijn Meerts]

At least the few mistakes I made, I made on one of these cars.. Once I get the other 4 done I'll probably feel comfortable enough to start working on the 9600 again, and finish a couple of the other kits. I still have quite a few to build, from a simple mail car to the 9600, and even an N-scale turntable. For most of the kits, I've been hesitant to continue because of the tiny detail and white metal parts, but I'm a bit more confident now that I won't melt them 🙂

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Well, gave the first car a run through the ultrasonic cleaner. The good news is, it's still in 1 piece. Or at least, 5 pieces really, the main body, the 2 bits that hold the axles in place, and the 2 couplers. Those parts are screwed on though, to I'll re-attach those after painting.

 

Speaking of painting, I'll likely need to do some minor fixing up to get rid of some of the rather obvious issues, after which it'll be time for another ultrasonic bath, then a metal primer, and then a coat of regular primer. Probably going for a light grey primer initially, which brings out any possible issues. Of course, since my holiday is over and I'm back to work again, weekdays won't be good for painting, but I do hope to get the metal primer done on Friday (it's a simple brush on primer), and then get the grey coat on there on Saturday. Probably going to try and prepare a couple of other things that need a coat of primer, such as several parts of a Gundam kit I've been meaning to paint for about 3 years already 😄

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Well, work happened last weekend, so didn’t have the time to get anything done with regards to painting. Just a little more of the cleaning up and sorting through hundreds of CDs and DVDs. 
 

Definitely planning on preparing the car before the weekend and get some priming done then. In the meantime I’ll do a little more cleaning and possibly work an a 2nd car or 1 of the other kits I still need to build. Need to get an H0e loco to the point where I can run it, otherwise there’s no point having H0e cars either 😄

 

[Martijn Meerts]

So, was going to paint some metal primer on my first little completed kit, but I couldn't find my Mr Metal Primer .. Ended up ordering a new jar, but won't arrive until sometime next week ...

 

In the meantime, I might continue / start on one of the other kits. really want to build the SL9600, but don't want to rush into it either, as I don't want to mess that up 🙂

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Worked a little bit on the H0j Hokutan #2 steam locomotive:

 

 

The bigger plate here is more or less a guide to make sure the pistons / cylinders are installed correctly. Of course, it's also the attachment point for some of the static parts of the whole drive rods system. To get an idea of the size, the lower of the 2 soldered on bits is about 13 mm long. It was actually rather fiddly, but it heated up nice and fast, so didn't take much.

 

 

 

Side view of the above, showing some more of the little details in the upper of the 2 rods. Interestingly, these are made of a different material that doesn't take the solder too well. Ended up having to pre-tin the tiny little tip with a good amount of heat to get it to stick. Once that was done, I managed to get them in place quite well, so only minimal adjustments (bending) should be required once installing the rest of the whole system.

 

The fun thing is, looking back at the frame of this locomotive, which I soldered together a while ago, the soldered joints look pretty nasty with lots of solder everywhere. This was before I started using flux, and more importantly, before I started using the little solder pellets. I'm still not a fan of using flux, but it definitely helps getting much cleaner joints on kits like these.

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Actually have a little question for the steam locomotive experts..

 

World Kougei classifies the Hokutan steam locomotive as "20t C". Initially I thought the 20t had something to do with weight, but after a little research it seems this is some sort of classification.

 

In the Whyte classification it'd be 0-6-0 T, but in this classification (UIC?) I can really only make sense of the C (0-6-0 part) and the t (T part). No clue what the 20 would be.

 

Normally I don't really care much about it, but I do want to attempt keeping a blog with info about the layout (again), so I want to find out a little bit of the history of the locomotive(s), so it would be nice getting the classification correctly explained as well 🙂 

 

 

Edit: After a little extra research, I did find there are similar steam locomotives that do weigh around 20t, so it could actually still be the locomotives' weight. Of course, then the question is, which ton / tonne is it ...

[Martijn Meerts]

Took a few pictures of the side dumping car with the first 2 coats of primer:

 

The main bulk of the car. There are some small areas that could use a little bit of touching up with some putty, but once painted black (which they probably will be), it won't be anywhere near as noticeable as with grey primer. I'm also not entirely sure if I should make these things look perfect considering they'd likely be heavily used and not very carefully either. The inside clearly shows all the little soldering marks since I didn't clean it up, but I was thinking of adding coal or something to these as well. The idea is that this set of 5 cars would be used to supply coal from the transfer station to the narrow gauge line, which then brings it up to the various mills, mines, houses on the mountain.

 

 

The axle pockets with some primer. It really brings out all the little details (and imperfections, but again, probably not a bad thing) of it all. For reference, the distance between the axles is somewhere around 1cm.

 

The car needs an additional coat of primer, possibly 2, before painting it. I'll also need to look into weathering and any sort of decals these things might have had. For the other 4 cars, I might also look at denting the bucket a little bit. This one only has a slightly bent frame really.

 

[marknewton]

On 1/22/2020 at 7:06 AM, Martijn Meerts said:

Actually have a little question for the steam locomotive experts..

I think I may be the nearest thing we have to that around here, so here goes...🧐

 

On 1/22/2020 at 7:06 AM, Martijn Meerts said:

World Kougei classifies the Hokutan steam locomotive as "20t C". Initially I thought the 20t had something to do with weight, but after a little research it seems this is some sort of classification.

 

Martijn, you were right the first time - the 20t refers to the nominal weight of the loco. This folio diagram shows the axle loads in metric tonnes.

 

 

 http://rail.hobidas.com/blog/natori09/hokutansyunkouzu1n.jpg

 

 

It seems to have been common practice for Japanese builders to classify locos for private/industrial buyers according to their weight. The letter "C" refers to the wheel arrangement having three coupled axles. I've never seen any reference to Japanese railways using UIC classification systems. If they did this engine would be classified "C n2" - three coupled axles, saturated, 2 cylinders.

 

Did you know that although the original loco was scrapped in the 1950s, a full-size replica exists?

 

http://rail.hobidas.com/blog/natori09/sp/archives/2008/08/post_840.html

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

 

 

[Martijn Meerts]

@marknewton That's useful info, thanks!

 

I did actually see pictures of the replica, but I didn't realise that it was actually a replica at all. It looked like the actual one. I hadn't seen the picture of the interior though, which is a very useful picture considering the World Kougei kit has no interior detailing at all. Based on the picture I can probably do a 3d model and get it 3d printed. Of course, since this is my own private little railway, it's not going to be an exact copy, for example, the green floor is definitely a no-go, I'm going to add a nice scale mahogany floor 🙂

 

Interesting also, is that the article mentions that the buffers are likely based on the manufacturer's drawings, which to me seems to mean that the real loco didn't have the buffers during operation at least. The World Kougei kit doesn't come with any buffers at least, and doesn't seem to mention anything about buffers either.

[marknewton]

That green floor look remarkably like AstroTurf to me!

 

The loco was built with buffers and hook draw gear, as shown in the builder's photo.
 

http://rail.hobidas.com/blog/natori09/hokutankisyaph1.jpg

 

JNR didn't convert to knuckle couplers until 17 July 1925*. So prior to that date private railways that they interchanged with would have needed to use buffers and hooks.

 

(* The changeover from buffers and hooks to knuckles took place on one night.)

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

Edited January 30, 2020 by marknewton

[Martijn Meerts]

That explains it. World Kougei does list which IMON coupler to use, which is a knuckle coupler.

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Ended up doing a 3rd coat of primer on the little car. I think It's pretty well covered now. After a quick check, I noticed I forget to solder a tiny little detail part, but that should be fixable without having to remove the primer. It's really just a small little bit of wire, I can glue that in.

 

I'm probably going to use a little putty to fix up a couple of the very obvious issues. And I'll possibly clean up the interior a bit as well. Mainly for experimenting / practice since I'll eventually add coal to the cars.

 

Gave it a quick test build (minus wheels):

 

 

Also arrived, the wafu 122000. Lots of detail on that thing, but I'll wait with building that until I finish a couple of the other kits. I also got a couple of really small grinding bits, great for removing solder in hard to reach places. Gave 1 of them a quick try, and looks to work quite well. They're fairly fine, so you get a good amount of control.

[Martijn Meerts]

Got some more work done on my Hokutan #2 loco. I keep jumping from 1 project to the next, but at least there's a reason behind that for a change. I tend to use the cheaper kits to experiment / practice on, and they work on the more expensive kits.

 

I used the side dumping car to experiment with using flux and the solder pellets, as well as metal primer and regular primer. Now I've moved on to the Hokutan #2 where I've used the flux / solder pellets to solder on some tiny little rods the the base piston plate (image for that earlier in the thread). I've also experimented a little bit with some scrap white metal bits and low temp solder, which worked great.

 

So, back to the Hokutan #2, I decided it was time to attach the piston cylinders to the frame. The cylinders are white metal (or, not exactly white metal I guess, since it's more of a yellow-ish colour), and the frame is your regular ... Actually, not entirely sure what metal it is, since World Kougei uses multiple types. There's the brass sheets for most of the parts, but also silver coloured sheets, usually for the frame and other structural parts (easy to solder), and also I believe stainless steel for extra fine detail bits (not easy to solder).

 

Anyway, the cylinders are fairly large blocks of white metal, and they heat up relatively slow. It took a while to get the (low melt) solder to flow well, but once it did, it started looking good. I removed the soldering iron, and pretty much let go of the cylinder since that's what I normally do, however, the cylinder just let go of the frame. Turns out, white metal cools down really slow, so it takes up to a minute for the solder to actually set. Working with the flux was also interesting, since initially I set my soldering iron to a too low temperature (110 degrees), so the flux wasn't actually do anything, upping it to 150 degrees helped.

 

Picture of the cylinders in place, not a great picture really, but it was pretty late already, and light was terrible (filename / description is also not entirely accurate, since these are cylinders, not pistons 😄 )

 

[Martijn Meerts]

I think I'm starting to get to the point where I need to start priming and painting the frame of the Hokutan #2. I've attached most of the static bits of the whole drive rods system, and the only thing remaining are some small detail bit towards the back of the frame. The moving parts are for the most part connecting using simple pins, and I know from a previous steam locomotive I did (and messed up, but that's a different story), that you really don't want to push those pins into the wheels too often.

 

So, I can either continue building it to the point where I have a rolling frame including drive rods so I can test run it. Or I can prime, paint and weather the frame before putting everything together, and then hope everything worked out.

 

While trying to figure that out, I've also been checking the shell, and what remains to be done there. Quite a bit of that is already done, but I do need to go back and clean some areas up a little bit. For example, the roof has a couple of blobs of solder that need to be removed. Other than that it's mostly just soldering parts together. A potential issue might be attaching the smoke box to the boiler. The boiler is a thing sheet of brass and the smoke box is a large piece if white metal. It fits really well, so from the outside there's not really a way to solder it, and the inside is almost impossible to reach. Also, due to the size of the smoke box, it'll heat up really slow, so not sure I should attempt to solder it, or use some superglue instead.

 

Finally, I've also been looking into installing a decoder and power pack (capacitor with some circuitry to store power and hooks up to the decoder), as well as the interior of the cab. 1 tank will fit the decoder, the other tank the board of the power pack, and the smoke box the capacitor. The problem is, once soldered together, there's no way to access the water tanks, they're completely closed off. I did however noticed from the interior shot of the loco, that the watertanks extend into the cab of the loco, so I'll make a 3d model of the tanks along with other details for the cab, and get those 3d printed. I'll make it so that the tanks at least are screwed in place so I can always remove them and hopefully be able to reach the decoder. Of course, there's still the issue of the doors being really small, so I might not be able to get the decoder out at all, something I still need to experiment with a little bit.

 

I have to say though, I'm getting a little more confident in my soldering skills. Not quite confident enough to really start working on the 9600, but I'm getting there. Probably just need to do a little work on the body of the Hokutan #2 before moving on to the 9600.

 

As for the layout itself, I've been looking at IMON's C55 and C57, and I'm really tempted to get the C55 at some point. Of course, the C55 was mostly used to haul main line (express) passenger trains, but later in its life it was also pulling shorter passenger trains. With that in mind, I've been thinking of adjusting my branch line idea a little bit. The new idea is that the transfer station (to move logs / coal / ore / whatever) from forest rail to regular rail is in a transition from branch line to double track line. It won't necessarily be a main line, but busy enough for double track. From there, the line splits into a single track branch line running alongside the mountain, and another single track going into the mountain. The track going into the mountain is in the process of getting double tracked, so there's a lot of potential interesting scenery, such as track work going on, as well as work on the tunnel itself, or possibly the creation of a 2nd tunnel, since it's probably not really doable widening a single track tunnel to double track with the existing track being in use. 

 

Of course, whether all of this is possible in the space I have might be an issue, especially since I do have all the N-scale stuff as well. I actually still wonder now and then if I shouldn't sell (part of / most of) the N-scale collection and focus on the H0e / H0j project instead....

 

[Martijn Meerts]

I'll continue my monolog for a bit 😉

 

I managed to solder the smoke box on to the boiler, it was quite interesting really. Initially I just held the boiler in place, added flux, added some low temp solder, and started heating up the metals. It looked like the solder flowed really well and everything went quicker than I thought. Even after setting, it looked like a pretty solid join, so I used a small brass brash to start cleaning off the flux residue, and the smoke box just let go of the boiler. The solder wasn't adhering to the smoke box at all. Ended up pre-tinning the smoke box (I should've done this from the start), which took quite a while, but after that was done, it was a breeze soldering the boiler on to the smoke box. It's not soldered all the way around, but it should be going anywhere.

 

Also soldered the last few detail pieces to the frame, and in the process almost melted 1 of the detail pieces. There was a tiny cylinder which was made of white metal with a lower melting point. The mounting / alignment pin started melting, but luckily the part itself was fine. The next step is the shell, for which I'll need to make some adjustments to the floor and water tanks. I need to cut out some small bits of copper from both in order to be able to slide the decoder in. Should be a fairly straight forward adjustment, I just need to determine how much I can take off before it becomes too obvious on the finished build.

 

 

Other than that, more cleaning of the hobby room (looks like a real mess right now with lots of partially unpacked boxes and whatnot ;)) Going through all the Tomix track and accessories I have. I'm not really sure what to do with them, considering I'm using Peco on my N-scale layout, and I'm very unlikely to use any of the Tomix platforms / raised station buildings / turntable / etc. Of course, all of this stuff is what was used on the last layout I built with my father, so not sure I want to sell it either.

[marknewton]

On 2/5/2020 at 7:26 PM, Martijn Meerts said:

The cylinders are white metal (or, not exactly white metal I guess, since it's more of a yellow-ish colour),

I think the cylinders are cast in brass rather than white metal. As for the loco frames, I'd suggest that at a minimum you should blacken them before you assemble the wheels and rods. I've used Birchwood Casey gun blue for this in the past. Trying to paint the frames after the wheels and rods are on is guaranteed to get you swearing, and you're likely to get paint where you don't want it. Guess how I found that out? 🤭

 

Apart from that, it sounds to me like you're making good, methodical progress, and developing your skills as well. That'll set you up nicely for when you start on the 9600.

A C55 would be an appropriate engine to use on a secondary mainline like you're proposing. I've got a Kemuri Pro book that features the C55s in their later years, and all the photos show them on secondary lines, many of them single track. And they're a very good looking engine in all their guises.
 

All the best,

 

Mark.

[Martijn Meerts]

I don't think they're brass, I have several of the N-scale World Kougei kits where they cast the bogie detail in the same type of material. When I used regular heat on the soldering iron, I was melting those casts, and I'm sure my soldering iron doesn't heat up to the melting point of brass. The melting point of these detail bits is just slight above 200 degrees. It's possible to use the 60/40 solder (melting point around 183) on them, but it's not possible to use the lead free solder (melting point around 217), as that melts the parts before the solder melts.

 

As for the frame, I'll probably give it a quick trial run without the rods and everything in place, just to test the motor and see if all the gears and wheel run freely. And also to check the minimum radius, which I'm not sure either World Kougei or IMON list on their models. After that I'll prime and paint the frame, likely just black with a tiny bit of white mixed in. I could blacken them, but considering this is supposed to be a heavily used loco with many years of service already done, the frame would likely be mostly black. Quartering the wheels will be interesting as well. The wheels come pre-attached to the axles, but they have little plastic inserts for the spokes. Of course, all the pins go into those inserts, so they need to be installed / glues with a good amount of accuracy.

 

Progress is pretty decent, if a bit slow at times, mostly due to lack of spare time, but also because I want to think ahead a bit so I solder things in the right order. I have solder with 3 different melting points now, so I can do the main structure with the lead free solder, the the detail parts with the leaded solder, and of course the white metal bits with the low melt solder. There's also still the whole decoder install which is taking a bit of extra time to figure out.

 

IMON's C55 is a beauty. They recently did another pre-built model: https://www.imon.co.jp/MODELS/GOODS375.MBR/c55

 

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Not been able to do much the past week, but I did find out that a co-worked of mine has a 3d printer and laser cutter / engraver on order. Obviously the 3d printer especially is not the best quality, but they've said I can use it, so I can do some prototyping of interior details, and once I'm happy and everything fits, I can have it printed in high quality at shapeways or some other 3d printing service.

 

As for the Hokutan #2, I've been having a look at the decoder install. Really the only place to hide the decoder / power pack pcb is in the water tanks. While the water tank is big enough for a decoder, once the tanks are soldered onto the frame, there's no way of getting to the decoders for maintenance / replacement. There is a cutout in them already, but it's just not big enough to fit a decoder. I'm looking at cutting away a little extra brass, but I'm a bit worried the cutout will get too big, and it'll be very visible. Since I'm not modelling a prototype, but rather a detailed and mostly realistic fictional railway, I can of course alter the model a bit. I could for example add some sort of small walkway in between the water tanks and the boiler, which would close off the bigger cutout. 

 

I'll have to give it a quick test build using some styrene and then take some pictures I guess 🙂

 

 

On a side note, I've recently picked up the model train database project again. In my previous attempt I actually got to a somewhat functional prototype, but it wasn't as maintainable as I wanted it to be. So, I restarted it again a while ago, partially also to experiment with some things for work. A few days ago I came across a frontend framework which allows for rapid prototyping, and then building on that to create a full site. I'll hopefully be working on that quite a bit more in the coming days / weeks as well.

[roadstar_na6]

Insane work here, hats of to that!

 

Meanwhile, I was already struggling with the replacement knuckle couplers on my Kato E851 😄