Suydam 2 Stall Engine House

[Bernd]

Thanks for sharing all the detailed postings, Bernd.

I've always been fascinated by those metal kits. I remember back in the '60s reading and re-reading my copy of HO Railroad That Grows, Linn Westcott wrote about building different sorts of kits, and Suydam's Black Bart Mine was given a bit of a how-to, which was really intriguing to me at the time.

Thanks Mark.

I also have that book. And I have that Black Bart Mine kit and will be building it sometime in the future. My first foray in to metal kits was with Suydam's sawmill kit. I had to throw it away since it actually rusted. Talk abut natural weathering. More to come on this kit build.

Bernd

[Bernd]

Continuing on. This portion will involve the use of a CNC machine. This one is called a router/engraver. I'll post a picture here of what it looks like and then post a full description and how I'll use it in the tool section of the forum.

This is the machine I bought. No longer available, but there are others. I'll fully explain in the tool section when I do the post in the tool section.



After getting the framework done, I was looking for a way to make window frames for the engine house. I've always wanted a CNC tabletop router as I have a few more ideas on what this machine may be capable of. After getting used to programming and fine tweaking the, form here on called a router, is a widow frame made from .010" thick sheet brass. The width is .030." all the way around.



I finally was successful in cutting out 12 window frames. I'll explain the learning curve along with the machine as I talked about above.

Here are the finished frames.




They still need the tabs filed down before being soldered to the engine house.

After cleaning up the window frames, I attached them to the engine house. Learned a lesson on resistance soldering. TURN DOWN THE HEAT. First two frames I soldered on warped on me do to too much heat being applied. The thin frames got annealed and wrapped where they still were hard. The second picture is of the first window. I did get it back to looking somewhat presentable. This first one is a full-on side picture with the two not so good windows on the right.



Close up of those first two windows.



This is on the other side showing a window where the temp has been turned down and I'm only soldering the corners of the frames to the building. Looks and works much better.



And of the rear of the building.



Soldering on the window frames step should have been done when the sides weren't assembled yet. It would have been easier to solder on the frames had the sides been laying down flat.

I took the shell outside in the nice warm weather and sprayed down with acetone to clean the oily residue and dirt of the metal shell. Once clean it got several light coats of Rust-toleum metal primer. Up next is getting the wooden structure painted and install along with finishing the windows.



Here is a link to the tool section on the Robo explaining how I use CNC machines for modeling.    https://modelersforum.com/index.php?topic=6810.0

Bernd

[elwoodblues]

Bernd,

That is a serious amount of work required to make those windows .  They turned out looking great.  I think I would have came up with an alternate method for the windows.  Can't wait to see what you will be making with the CNC machine.

[Bernd]

Bernd,

That is a serious amount of work required to make those windows .  They turned out looking great.  I think I would have came up with an alternate method for the windows.  Can't wait to see what you will be making with the CNC machine.

Yes it was, but it was a onetime thing. Now that the R&D work is done it'll be easier next time. I would have loved to find angle stock to make the windows, but none is available in the size that would be needed, plus it would have been very delicate.

I have quite a bit of material on using the CNC machines that I'll post in the tool section over time.

Bernd

[Bernd]

Continuing on with the build.

Here's a picture of all twelve windows soldered up. 20 pieces per window times 12 windows is 240 pieces. 38 solder joints on each window times 12 is 456 solder joints. That wouldn't have been possible without the jig to hold the wires and able to solder them in one heat. Next, they'll need a bit of clean up, then paint and the glass will need to be installed.



After cleaning up the windows from some of the access solder I washed them in a naphtha bath to get the rosin off. They are now ready for the first coat, maybe only one, of black paint. Got a rattle can of "Chalkboard Black" along with a light gray primer and a can of "Chalky grey", whatever that is, for the inside of the engine house. I just had to wait for a bit of warmer weather to do the painting.

In the meantime I was trying to figure out how to mount the roof. Problem is I already painted all the assembled parts. The roof would need to be soldered on too. But since I already painted it that was out of the question right then. So, I put the thinking cap on and came up with the idea of making it removeable. Ya right. This thing wiggles around like a limp piece of spaghetti. What to do. Maybe a wooden former. Tried those. It was tough trying to line everything up. Came up with the idea of using hot glue to temporarily hold the roof on so I can solder some brass square tubing to the roof to keep its shape. Kind of like rafters for wooden kits.

Here's a couple of shots for that process. I finally found the correct method to get everything lined up. BTW, those are the two wooden formers I made for getting the roof together at the proper angle.



And of course, you always have to mount something backwards or upside down. Notice that the roof is on upside down?



Ah, that's better.



I had to get more square tubing to do the so-called rafters. Discovered I didn't have enough. A trip to the hobby shop solved that.

I had finally figured out how I can get the roof together and make it removable. I hot glued the metal pieces together and then made four cross braces out of 1/8" square tubing to hold the bottom of the roof together. On the top I added the copula roof. It's just tack soldered for now. Plus, the windows got their final color. What a miss adventure that was.





Here it is with the windows temporarily installed by friction fit.



Noon sunlight on a shiny roof doesn't make for good side picture.



So I pop up the flash for a much brighter view of the side.



Getting close to the finish line. The long roof vent that goes the full length of the copula needs to be painted and installed. I'm also repainted the sides with a lighter primer and then an acrylic green. The inside will be painted a slate color. The window trim frame will be red and the windows black. At that time, I didn't think I'd be making any doors. I still have to install the glass in the windows. I'll make that a separate post in the tool section with a link from this thread.

I repainted the outside with Rust-Oleum Professional primer light gray. The inside got a shot of Krylon "slate" chalky finish. I like the looks of this much better.





I had also been working on the windows. After spraying them black and trying a method of using Tymia green translucent paint and Krystal Klear mixed, I had tried a couple of windows. They didn't turn out to good. Possibly to large of an opening. I didn't do any experimenting to see if I could do better. I just wanted to get this project done. So, I stripped all the paint from the windows. They now needed to be repainted. After I stripped them, I wondered how I was going to install clear styrene. My CNC router table to the rescue. Since I had built the windows in a milled jig that kept the spacing of each square in a tolerance of not more than .003" in width and height variation. I came up with the idea of making individual glass panes for each opening. Now at 16 panes per large window and 12 windows that adds up to 192 pieces. [eek] Now I'll post the procedure on how I used the ROBO CNC to make the window glass.

This link will take you to how the window frames were made. https://modelersforum.com/index.php?topic=6810.msg178611;topicseen#new

Bernd

[Bernd]

Continuing on.

After spraying the frames black and I tried using Tymia green translucent paint and Krystal Klear mixed, I had tried a couple of windows. They didn't turn out to good. Possibly to large of an opening. I didn't do an experimenting to see if I could do better. I just want to get this project done. So, I stripped all the paint from the windows. They now need to be repainted. After I stripped them, I wondered how I was going to install clear styrene. My CNC router table to the rescue. Since I had built the windows in a milled jig that made the spacing of each square not more than .003" in width and height variation. I came up with the idea of making individual glass panes for each opening. Now at 16 panes per large window and 12 windows that adds up to 192 pieces.

I again used my router to do that, but I had modified it to use a Cricut scrap cutter knife. I'll explain that in the ROBO thread later.

So I fired up the CAD program and drew up 192 individual panes.



The file was exported as DXF into my CAM (CamBam) program for the G-codes.



Once everything was set it was transferred to the cutting software on the CNC router.



And here's the result after 8 minuets of run time. Note: I'm using a different method in cutting the clear plastic. I'm using a knife instead of a milling cutter.



I didn't cut all the way through. The material is .015" thick. I set the cut depth to .010" and then finished cutting the 192 sections out with a sharp Exacto knife. Once the larger sides were cut loose from the all the little squares it was easy to just bend and snap of the pieces off.



That is one of the advantages to using equipment like this, you can do lots of parts accurately and fit them together with very little work in, what do the British like to call it, fettling?

Almost perfect fit without having to trim any of the edges. I little bit of canopy glue or Krystal Klear to glue in the windows and your all set.



While I was waiting to come up with an idea to mount the clear plastic in the individual pains I painted the beams that go inside the building.



The critters wanted to get into the picture.



Closer look at both sides frames.





This is what I used. It can be found on Amazon.



That'll do for now. More to come.

Bernd

[Bernd]

Going to see if I can wrap this project up in this last post on the Suydam Engine House.

The engine house was painted a dark green. Looks more like black under the lighting. The windows have been painted and are ready to have the glass panes installed.





I then got to work on those windows. Only 192 panes to install. Talk about a real "pane".



I had finally gotten my window making technique down to good enough. Not totally satisfied with how they came out, but it'll have to do in order to get this finished and move back to my crusher building.

Okay, here's all the material and equipment. I'm using canopy glue to glue the windows in.

Frist window on the left below was with Krystal Klear and Tymia clear green for a couple of windows and the rest was just plain Krystal Klear. The middle window was done without the jig on the right. I hadn't figure on the thickness of the frames being .032" thick and clear window material being .015" thick. I needed to shim the window so it would be in the middle of the opening. So that first attempt at doing the window was a bit frustrating. The third window was expectable. It was assembled using the jig on the right. The cross bar holds the window in place while "trying" to get the glass installed.
 


These are the 192 pieces for the window glass. They were scored on the ROBO CNC machine.



First I wanted to try another modelers method of doing windows using Kystal Klear and Timia clear green. I experimented on the first window I had soldered together without a jig. I think he was right in that trying to fill a large space might not work. It didn't work to well.



The first window done using the jig. Before I even got through installing all the glass I knew this wasn't working well. I'll explain in a minute the what and why. Also I discovered that the machine didn't cut all the glass to the same size. I think the problem here was as each cut was made the plastic flexed from the strain release with each cut. I need to come up with a method of a holding down the material on the router so this won't happen.



This window was done in the jig I made. It kept the glass from falling all the way through. Still have a problem with the glass fitting in fully of each pane. I should have made them larger and filed each one to fit better. On the next project perhaps.



This is the jig for doing 8 windows while the frame is clamped in the jig.



Here' how the jig works. Below is a cross section of one of the panes. The frame's wire thickness is .032" and the clear acetate is .015" thick. When I tried to glue in the glass on the first window the glass fell all the way through. By adding .010" shims for the glass to sit on helped hold the glass somewhat in the middle to glue it.



I'll have 11 more windows to do or 176 glass panes to install. Hope I don't break one.

Here's what the engine house looks like with at least two windows install and the louvers on the cupola installed.



An end view showing a problem that popped up after I installed the louvers. Somehow it spread the roof out. Hard to understand that it did that with the cross brace I soldered in to hold the roof at the proper angle. I'll need to cut the brace to take chunk out of it, so the roof sits on the side wall properly. You can see all the way through on the right front corner of the building. Plus, I've got five holes to fill on the roof. The four small holes were for holding the roof to a proper angle on a piece of wood for soldering the sort of "roof rafters". Which didn't work. The other hole is where the chimney pipe is supposed to come out. I figure there is no room for a boiler section in this engine house. It should be a separate building.



It's been quite an eye opener in trying to improve the looks of this kit. Didn't realize at the beginning how much work would be involved, which included buying a new CNC machine and learning how to run that to make parts.

I got finally got all 194 windows glued in. It's not the prettiest thing I've ever built, but then I went off into the weeds trying to modify it. I did learn a lot and I have two more kits like this to build one of these days. Here all the windows with their glass installed. Still need to do the arched part.



Gluing in the windows. You can on the left where I added the green glass to the arch part of the window.





The completed engine house.









So that finally wraps this project up.

I have two more of these same kits to assemble. My thought on the two kits is to combine them with interior framing to make a four-stall engine house. I learned a lot building this and have some better ideas to apply to the next kit bash.

Here's my thought on building a four stall engine house one of these days.

My idea is to use the two front and rear walls plus a right side and left side wall to make the four-stall engine house as shown in the picture below. What I'll be searching for is what a building like this looks like on the inside as far as structural beams and how the corrugated sheeting is attached. This is to make it look more plausible. I'm looking at structural steel beams. I may need to manufacture them as I'm sure it would be hard to fine prototypical sizes in HO. This project will be a "work on project" when I get bored with some of my other modeling projects and will take some time to complete. I'm actually looking at making a small diorama to set it on.



In September of 2022 it went with my friend Dan to a train show to be sold. Dan is a vendor and sells at shows, and I was interested to see if somebody would buy it. It wasn't sold. Dan is keeping it for his railroad he's building. I never asked what the price tag he put on it and I didn't care. It probably didn't sell because there were no doors made for it or he had it priced too high. I had wanted to make doors that opened and closed but didn't have the time to do that. Perhaps on the next one.

So that ends this adventure in metal kit building.

Bernd

[Mr. Critter]

This has been the Manhattan Project of engine-house builds.

[westtexjohn]

I know the two stall engine house has been a long time coming. Looks like all your hard work has paid off. Nice job my friend

John

[Zephyrus52246]

Great work on a very interesting different type of kit. 

Jeff

[deemery]

Hmmm....  I can see this corrugated sheeting over wood framing, or corrugated sheeting over a steel frame.  

dave

[Bernd]

This has been the Manhattan Project of engine-house builds.

Yes it was. Also a great learning experience for me in making ideas work. Thanks for following along.

Bernd

[Bernd]

I know the two stall engine house has been a long time coming. Looks like all your hard work has paid off. Nice job my friend

John

Thanks John. Much appreciated.

Bernd

[Bernd]

Great work on a very interesting different type of kit.

Jeff

Thanks Jeff. Much appreciated.

Bernd

[Bernd]

Hmmm....  I can see this corrugated sheeting over wood framing, or corrugated sheeting over a steel frame. 

dave

That's what I have been researching for the four stall Suydam Engine House. I've got some ideas already.

Bernd