Final furlong this week. All my 3D printed parts turned up, well almost, and it was on with the bogie mods and details
Mick printed some end beams that fitted perfectly over my modified side frames. I added the brake cylinders and some air pipes.
The next bit of the job was to fit up all the brake shoes and rigging. Mick made some amazing prints for the shoes and hangers. I scratchbuilt some spring planks with their supports for the rigging. I decided that all the brake system should be soldered/glued to these supports. I scratched my head for a while and made a simple jig to support all the cross beams and allow the brass pull rods to be fitted up.
I think that the brake rigging solves the dangly Delrin chain issue....luckily!
So here it is, almost finished. I need some air tanks which hang on the inner ends of the bogies and a large auxilliary air tank (or maybe it's a water tank) between the battery boxes. They've been printed and are in the post as I type. it'll be finished by monday lunch.
The total time to build both locos was around 450 hours. This was quite a lot longer than I had imagined, it takes me about the same time to build (say) an F7 large tender loco. The pantographs took 3 weeks to make (I work 40 hr weeks) as did the bogies.
I took quite a lot of pictures of one of the spare EM2 bogies here;
EM2 bogie
and more pics of the model here;
nick dunhill