On September 26,1998 I started on the project of my life, a 3-3/4" scale 7-1/2" gauge 2-6-0 mogul.
It all started one dark a dreary windswept night... but that's a different story. It really started at our (OCME) fall meet when Tom Gazsi mentioned he had a set of castings for a 3-3/4" mogul in his garage and was wondering if anyone was interested in buying them. Tom has the 0-4-2T pictured on the equipment roster. So I went over to Tom's house one night, just to take a look at what was being offered. Well let me tell you. As soon as I picked up one of the 20# 10" drivers, the 10" dia. steam dome, and attempted to move the 100# plus pilot beam, I was hooked. I had to have this engine. Here was an engine that was equal to my heavy-handed 'adjustments' and caresses. The bottom line is that I bought it.
This is the engine that is advertised in the September '98 issue of Modeltec on page 33.
My first offical sub-project. Document what I bought. This is a photo of all the parts the were included in the "kit" with the exception of the tender wheels and journal boxes
Picked up the sideframes from the fabricator today and they look great. They were flame cut out of 1-1/8" thick steel, blanchard ground to 1" and fully annealed. The annealing was neccessary so I can machine the journals to size and drill lotsa holes to mount stuff with the least amount of fighting. The weight as shown is 90 lbs each. If your wondering who that handsome fellow is holding up the sideframe, it is I. I'm in the photo to give a sense of size to this engine (not me). I'm 72" tall and the frames are 75". When I start to assemble this beast I'll be very happy I built a gantry crane a few months ago.
Bought a used kiln last week for the express purpose of normalizing all the cast iron parts for the engine, or others. The internal dimensions of the kiln are 18" dia X 22" deep with a maximum temperature of 2300F. I test fired it today with the brakeshoe ring as my sacrificial piece, in case something went awry. The kiln controller uses pieces of plastic (I think), called cones to determine when the desired temperature has been reached. These cones come in various temperatures. I used 1800F cones for my test firing. It took about 2 hours from start until shut off at 1800F. It has now been 8 hours cooling down and the piece is still too hot to touch. I did notice that the piece is black. I mean really BLACK. I think every grain of carbon has been pulled to the surface. I don't know if this is good or bad yet.
I couldn't wait any longer. I just had to machine a piece of cooked cast to see if I was doing any good. I put one of the steam chests in the mill vise, a 1" high-speed un-coated end mill in the collet and turned it on. I set up to take a .010 cut to verify that the cooking was worth the effort or not. The end mill was an old one so if the experiment failed there would be nothing lost. Engaged the power feed and stepped back to watch. As the cutter entered the casting all I could hear was a low pitched murmur, more like a purr, as it spewed chips and carbon dust all over the place. Needless to say that the experiment was a resounding success. The casting completely cleaned up with that one .010 pass and was flat and smooth. I'd be hard pressed to machine another piece of cast iron without annealing it first.
DISASTER. Today I had my first set back. I was cooking another batch of iron and somehow fouled the trip mechanism so that when it got to temperature it failed to release and shut off the furnace. When I realised that something was wrong, the temperature was approaching 2000F. Iron melts at about 2100F. On the bottom of the stack was the Smoke Box Ring and Door. These two items have a fairly thin cross section. When I retrieved them from the furnacce my heart dropped like a lead brick. These two pieces had gotten so hot that they had reached the plastic state and sagged about 1/2" between the 3 spacers. They looked like a pie crust with all the ripples and scallops. Now what? After the initial shock and self recriminations were over, and a lot of help and advice from a friend, I put the pieces back in the oven with 6 instead supports of 3 and re-heated them. Better. Now I 6 waves instead of three. This is progress? Put them back in with the Smoke Box Ring on the bottom on a circle of touching spacers. Placed the Smoke Box Door on the ring in its final assembly position figuring that if they warp, they will warp the same amount in the same direction and still at least seal. Success. Everything came out fine with only a 1/32" ripple and I can machine that off.
Bought a piece of 10" OD. 1" wall pipe today to make tires for the engine. Last month during out clubs regular run wekend, one of the members hit an obstruction in a frog and derailed. Other than getting a hot K4 back on the track, the only damage was to the lead truck and that was bad enough. Thew impact, or the subsequent grounding, broke the flanges off the two lead wheels. I was originally considering steel tires for the increased wearability. This event finally swayed me into putting steel tires on the drivers and now on the pony truck also.
