1/29 Baldwin Shark B Unit Kit
- Thread starter g-bits
- Start date
Sorry to have gone 'dark' for a while, I have to admit some frustrations in the background - but people should still be receiving the first batch of units in April, it's just most of the leeway I built into the schedule has been used up.
The production versions are all engineered and drawn up, with maybe minor tweaking needed as feedback from the test-builds of the different options. That's all gone to plan.
We also now have sources for all the various metal bits - steps, grilles, etc - made to the original specs as per the A-unit.
Unfortunately some manufacturing kit here has been delayed. Basically in the new year I ordered a new cutter - not absolutely necessary for the B-units, but definitely making them easier and faster to build repeatably. I allowed a month from delivery to get it working, and was then comprehensively let down by the wholesaler. I'm not going to wash the relevant dirty laundry in public, suffice to say it's been two months and only in the last 48 hours have a I got results that I consider acceptable. Even then I'm still chasing non-delivered and broken parts.
But it's now running, and I should be able to continue the show and tell in the next couple of days, starting with the bits that weren't done for the prototype shell.
Jonathan
g-bits
PS : That ??? & Lake Shore looks like neat job. Belongs on the varnish, as long as the teeth don't frighten the passengers.
Here's the first pre-production part, the fuel tank / battery box assembly. Strictly this is an 'RF15'/RF16 type unit, first order DR4-41500's had something a bit different, but this is the same type as Rob did for the A-unit, and I'm guessing it's going to be the most popular B-unit option.
Just assembled at the moment, needs a pass with fill and primer to finish.
It's taller than the A-unit equivalent, but the extra bit will be up inside the loco shell once assembled - it's there so the fuel tank bolt straight onto the chassis without spacers - and the chassis height is pre-determined by the pivot height on the Aristo trucks.. Doing the chassis in parallel has some advantages, and not only does it bolt up in the right place (only), but I've spaced the fixing holes differently at each end, so it'll only fit the right way round - in this case, the radiator end of the loco is on the left.
Jonathan
g-bits
[edited to clear up a left/right end mistake which had me double checking the prototype vs model drawings ar 11pm to make sure the undergear wasn't on backwards. It ain't, post above was wrong, now corrected..)
Just assembled at the moment, needs a pass with fill and primer to finish.
It's taller than the A-unit equivalent, but the extra bit will be up inside the loco shell once assembled - it's there so the fuel tank bolt straight onto the chassis without spacers - and the chassis height is pre-determined by the pivot height on the Aristo trucks.. Doing the chassis in parallel has some advantages, and not only does it bolt up in the right place (only), but I've spaced the fixing holes differently at each end, so it'll only fit the right way round - in this case, the radiator end of the loco is on the left.
Jonathan
g-bits
[edited to clear up a left/right end mistake which had me double checking the prototype vs model drawings ar 11pm to make sure the undergear wasn't on backwards. It ain't, post above was wrong, now corrected..)
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PhilP
G Scale, 7/8th's, Electronics
And there was me thinking they were speaker mounting holes..
Now, if you made the hole in the strengthening member 'right' for a standard speaker, and perhaps three fixing points??
Though not sure how many people would stump-up for a second sound unit? - Though a speaker feed from the A unit could be arranged..
Now, if you made the hole in the strengthening member 'right' for a standard speaker, and perhaps three fixing points??
Though not sure how many people would stump-up for a second sound unit? - Though a speaker feed from the A unit could be arranged..
Question, I have a spare set of FA power trucks so I was looking to power this unit. I have the two A units controlled by a single Crest Revo 15amp trackside unit. Pulling 50+ cars on the 3% grade the most it pulls is 5.5 amps so there is room to power the B unit with this unit also. You show in your pictures regular freight trucks. The chassis should easily fit the FA trucks same as the A unit does?? Jack
OK, I'll answer the easy one first.
YES, the kit is specifically designed to accept Aristo trucks of the type used in the FA (also FB, U25B, etc etc.). These will plug straight into the chassis plate without modification to either them or it - I'm just waiting for the metal bits to come in, then I'll post photos of an assembled chassis. The original posting showed a shell on freight trucks purely because there was no chassis at that stage, and it looked better than sitting on the floor. If I'd had some scale size sawhorses to hand, I might have shown it on them instead.
YES/NO....
In the case of the specific hole you're looking at, this area of the loco is both 'tight' dimensionally, and the first thing that's going to hit the ground after any cat/snail/etc. type collisions - so the need for accurate mounting and strength trumps sound here.
BUT, that big round hole is intended to let sound out, and above it you'll find a grille in the chassis. Any speaker up to about 3inch OD, maybe 3.5inch, has plenty of room above that and is protected from the environment a bit. I don't want to combine the mountings in a great long vertical stack, it'd start to look a bit much like a BL long-bolt engine, super-efficient until you had to take it apart. So I'll supply a speaker mount box to go above the chassis (over the grille, with separate mountings to the fuel tank.), into which people can fit the speaker of the their choice. . If you tell me what holes you need in your mount to suit the speaker, I'll cut them for you before despatch. For those as don't want sound there'll be an alternative blanking plate that goes over the top grille and stops dirt getting in.
(By 'alternative' I mean both with be supplied as standard and you can choose which to fit.)
Jonathan
g-bits
YES, the kit is specifically designed to accept Aristo trucks of the type used in the FA (also FB, U25B, etc etc.). These will plug straight into the chassis plate without modification to either them or it - I'm just waiting for the metal bits to come in, then I'll post photos of an assembled chassis. The original posting showed a shell on freight trucks purely because there was no chassis at that stage, and it looked better than sitting on the floor. If I'd had some scale size sawhorses to hand, I might have shown it on them instead.
YES/NO....
In the case of the specific hole you're looking at, this area of the loco is both 'tight' dimensionally, and the first thing that's going to hit the ground after any cat/snail/etc. type collisions - so the need for accurate mounting and strength trumps sound here.
BUT, that big round hole is intended to let sound out, and above it you'll find a grille in the chassis. Any speaker up to about 3inch OD, maybe 3.5inch, has plenty of room above that and is protected from the environment a bit. I don't want to combine the mountings in a great long vertical stack, it'd start to look a bit much like a BL long-bolt engine, super-efficient until you had to take it apart. So I'll supply a speaker mount box to go above the chassis (over the grille, with separate mountings to the fuel tank.), into which people can fit the speaker of the their choice. . If you tell me what holes you need in your mount to suit the speaker, I'll cut them for you before despatch. For those as don't want sound there'll be an alternative blanking plate that goes over the top grille and stops dirt getting in.
(By 'alternative' I mean both with be supplied as standard and you can choose which to fit.)
Jonathan
g-bits
Finally got my hands on some prototype metal bits...
Here's the 'bones' of the chassis, a 1.5mm (touch under 1/16th inch) thick stainless steel plate, water-jet cut to suit with all the mounting holes etc already the right size and position. Obviously that's the speaker grille in the middle. The steel forms the core of the main chassis and will be overplated in styrene on all sides - there won't be any exposed metal on the finished item. Thick styrene would probably have been 'good enough' for the chassis, but this means there's plenty of built in strength to take the drag of any length train and no need to transmit loads through the bodyshell.
Family commitments mean I'm about to have a shark-free long weekend, so the next update will be next week.
Jonathan
[Note to self - buy some black velvet to use as a background for future stainless steel photography...)
Here's the 'bones' of the chassis, a 1.5mm (touch under 1/16th inch) thick stainless steel plate, water-jet cut to suit with all the mounting holes etc already the right size and position. Obviously that's the speaker grille in the middle. The steel forms the core of the main chassis and will be overplated in styrene on all sides - there won't be any exposed metal on the finished item. Thick styrene would probably have been 'good enough' for the chassis, but this means there's plenty of built in strength to take the drag of any length train and no need to transmit loads through the bodyshell.
Family commitments mean I'm about to have a shark-free long weekend, so the next update will be next week.
Jonathan
[Note to self - buy some black velvet to use as a background for future stainless steel photography...)
ISH. There's no problem making extras, I can even make them a bit longer and with one end pointy to suit the A-unit. But they won't be a bolt-in job the way the chassis is on the B-unit.
Reason for this is that the floor heights are different on A and B.
On the A-unit Rob basically set the floor ( = top of chassis ) at the machinery room floor level and then worked down. That means there's relatively little vertical space - the aristo trucks are quite tall - so to get the right standing height he had to use quite thin plate and shave the truck bolsters down.
I knew I wanted to use this kind of laminated plate chassis on the B, so I worked up from the top of the trucks, added the 4.5mm chassis thickness on top of that, and the combined total determined my floor height - it actually works out at about ankle level scale wise but that's OK because the doors don't open anyway.
We're obviously talking low numbers here and this kind of chassis is most economical when all the bought in parts are nice simple flat sheet - no precision bends and difficult vertical alignment to jack the price up.
To work in the A unit I'd need to make a version with a vertical offset between the body and truck mounting points. Or have some kind of jig to allow people to cut down the existing bodywork internals to suit a flat plate at the same level as the B has. I'll have a think.
In the meantime can we have a straw pole to see how many people might be interested in A-unit chassis? Assume for the sake of argument that they're in the £50 area and that you'll need to use a dremel or similar to relievethe body's existing bulkheads, but that I can find a way to make it bolt to the existing mounts without needing them dressing down. I'm conscious that most people will be dealing with painted shells they don't want to damage the outsides off, so I'll try to keep this kind of work to a minimum.
Jonathan
g-bits
Jon, the thin sheet that I have is what I don't like. With what I have invested in the two A units, time, RC unit, sound units, trucks and finishing plus what the total of what the B unit will be, close to $2200 total for the A- B - A lash-up. Yes put me down for 2. Should be easy to cut down the A floor mount tabs with a dremel using a guide. Side note with the thin floors that I have have flexed enough that there are spider cracks around the mounting holes which I expect will only get worse over time. So by cutting them doun will get fresh meat to screw into. Jack
Yup. Here's a picture of the production test builds for two of the three bodyshell options. I actually took the shot at about the same time you posted your message, but it was dumb o'clock in the morning on this side of the Atlantic and I went to bed after that.
Clearly, they're not quite done yet, but everything from this point on is going to be done exactly the same way as on the very first red one, so I don't see any real risks. They also need their dose of filler, sanding and primer. The third bodyshell type isn't there yet, but isn't much of a stretch mechanically - basically it's 6mm shorter, the cant rail grilles move along a bit and the vertical strapping is in different positions.
I'm hoping that in a couple of days time I'll have enough in hand to post up more photos explaining the various options kit buyers will be able to choose from.
In the meantime, what we can see in this image....
The core of the unit is a double layer laminated box of 60thou black styrene, which carries all the mechanical loads and provides a bit of light proofing (the original is all white material under the paint and I found it a bit more see through than I expected). This is then skinned in (usually two) thickness of 30thou white. The main exception to that is the ends which have no white overskin to keep the thickness down and stop couplers having to be mounted too far back under the shell. On the unit that's lying on it's side you can see the eight mounting bolts that'll form that attachment to the chassi - they line up perfectly.
The result is nice and robust, and complete bodyshell weighs about 750g - a generous pound and a half. I estimate the chassis will be about 900g with the fuel tank (two pounds). Add the pair of aristocraft trucks that'll be doing the actual work, and it'll be a reasonably heavy loco even without a sound system or any additional weight.
That weight does have one downside, which is shipping. I can't see a properly packed kit coming in at less that 2kg, and as soon as you go over 2kg, you're into a world of hurt financially. For reasons that pass all understanding, it's significantly cheaper to post 2x2kg parcels from UK to USA than 1x3kg. Go figure. So US deliveries will probably come as two boxes, one with the shell and one with the chassis. Looks dumb but actually cheaper and therefore fits in the price I first estimated.
Eagle-eyed viewers will spot that the chassis plate hasn't been decently clad in stryene as planned. That's because although the holes are exactly where I told them to put them, and the body-mount ones line up nicely, the fuel tanks ones are 5mm too far towards their respective ends, all because of a slip up on my part - draft drawing rather than beta.. This bit of plate won't go to waste, I can redrill them in the right places and use it on one of my own, but for prototype purposes it's more sensible to go back and get a representative one to work with. Then the production run can just be a bunch of exact copies.
I think that's about in on the B-unit front for now.
A-unit News :
Chassis : So far Mr Garry is the only person to express an interest in replacement A-unit chassis. Jack, you'll get an email in due course when I've collected my thoughts and done some scribbling.
A-unit kit : I have one (1) of the original A-units kits here that I've decided to sell. This is my own, not g-bits (so no VAT advantage for export), and it one of a pair I bought of Mr Spock when they made the original run. I subsequently also bought Rob's demo-build, which came ready-painted in exactly the livery I wanted, so now I have one and half sets. I really don't need three, so the unbuilt kit is up for grabs.
I'm looking for £250, and to sweeten the deal I'll chuck in one of whatever kind of A-unit chassis I wind up doing for Jack, including any surgery needed to make it a bolt in job. (I realise that's essentially a private sale in the wrong forum area, but it fits best here, so hopefully the Mods don't mind)
Jonathan
RDE
Jerry Barnes
Garden Railways, Live Steam, Jukeboxes, Record Col
Jonathan I want one of the B units to go with my A. Guess my message did not get to you. Let me know the total, with shipping to the USA and I will use Paypal. juking@atcjet.net
Zerogee
Clencher's Bogleman
Jonathan,
For shipping these out to the US (or indeed anywhere else) can I suggest that you look at UPS or Fedex delivery booked through Interparcel.com - I use them for all my parcels to the US that go over 2kg (and sometimes they are even competitive for sub-2kg ones too) - not only are they quite reasonable on price, they are also completely trackable and MUCH faster than using Royal Mail services. I have no connection with them other than as a satisfied customer, but they are definitely worth a look. FedEx Priority parcels get collected from my door and delivered to the customer in the US within 36 hours.
Do note that the shipping costs can vary according to exactly where in the USA the destination is - it's not a flat rate to anywhere, it seems to vary according to how far it has to travel internally in the US (ie: how far it is from one of the International hubs) - for this reason, sometimes UPS will be cheaper, sometimes FedEx, but I've found the service from both to be equally good.
Jon.
Hi Jerry, I got your email and replied, must be lost in the ether. People have build-slots reserved in the queue in the order they've asked for them, but I haven't been willing to take anyone's money up to this point in case something went terminally wrong - I built a couple of spare months into the schedule and lost the lot to malfunctioning machinery, makes me seem pessimistic, but sometimes that's the safe side of the fence.
Development is basically done now, so my next post will be a list of pics and options so customers can define the build spec's of their individual units. Then I'll bill/receipt you with that spec.
If I get a clear run at it this evening, that posting should be in the next 24hours. Here's hoping.
Thank you, I've personal bad experience recently with UPS, but I'll look into FedEx when the time comes. I know it can be done by RM if I have to, so that's there as an backup and all FedEx have to do is be cheaper and trustworthy..
Jonathan
g-bits
Zerogee
Clencher's Bogleman
No problem, just offering advice based on my own experience. The key to the pricing is to go via Interparcel - with the bulk deals they have with the couriers, they offer MUCH cheaper prices than you can get by going direct to the courier as a private customer. If you ask FedEx directly for a shipping quote, it will be something horrific - but through Interparcel it will be halved or better.....
Sorry to hear you've had a bad experience with UPS - so far maybe I've been lucky, I've had nothing but good service from them. Was yours a UK delivery or an international one?
Jon.
A couple of quick asides before the main post...
International. To be fair it was to a country well-known for almost universal corruption, and the local UPS staff not only made no attempt whatsoever to deliver the consignment, they also held it to ranson for a three figure sum, payable in cash. Given the local environment something like that wasn't entirely unexpected, but UPS's attitude here was simply "get lost", they wouldn't even discuss the problem.
Some of my incoming domestic deliveries here in the UK do come UPS, and I've never had a problem there, but the previous international job makes me shy of spending my own money with them.
Jack, I'll have at least two to paint, so I'll definitely be interested, particularly if you can get more than one.
Jonathan
g-bits
International. To be fair it was to a country well-known for almost universal corruption, and the local UPS staff not only made no attempt whatsoever to deliver the consignment, they also held it to ranson for a three figure sum, payable in cash. Given the local environment something like that wasn't entirely unexpected, but UPS's attitude here was simply "get lost", they wouldn't even discuss the problem.
Some of my incoming domestic deliveries here in the UK do come UPS, and I've never had a problem there, but the previous international job makes me shy of spending my own money with them.
Jack, I'll have at least two to paint, so I'll definitely be interested, particularly if you can get more than one.
Jonathan
g-bits