Märklin Mikado Update to NP Class W-3 Mike

rray May 7, 2022

  1. CNE1899

    CNE1899 TrainBoard Member

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    Rob,
    Excellent! Nice work.

    Scott
     
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  2. CNE1899

    CNE1899 TrainBoard Member

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    Rob,
    I just ordered some stanchions, for the H4 and future builds, from Tom's Modelworks. I also ordered some vertical ladders for the locomotive works.
    Thanks for the link.

    Scott
     
  3. rray

    rray Staff Member

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    Those stanchions are tiny, but they work. I tried several methods of soldering, and found the easiest was to support the wire horizontal in the air, dab on flux, clean iron tip and apply tiny amount of solder to the tip, then touch the tip on the fluxed stanchion and the solder will migrate from the iron tip to the stanchion eyelet and make a nice joint. Then drag the iron tip straight down the stanchion which will leave the stanchion hanging straight down.

    It's a bit of a technique, but it works surprisingly well, way better than having everything laying flat on a table because if any adjacent stanchions joint melts, the stanchion will still hang straight down instead of tilting right ot left as when soldering while laying on a flat surface.
     
  4. rray

    rray Staff Member

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    A little bit more progress, I applied the number boards, steam whistles and boiler steps to the sandbox. and gave it a shot of Engine Black:

    27.jpg

    Then I masked off and painted the smokebox and firebox silver, and the roof brown. The roof was a disaster because my Roof Brown paint had coagulated and spattered and clogged the airbrush, so I had to scrape the roof paint off. I ended up brush painting the roof. Then I mixed a drop of Engine Black in 1/4 oz of Dio-Sol to make a wash, and airbrushed the wash to tone down the silver. After that I glued on an N Scale steam bell:
    28.jpg

    Tomorrow I will to start drawing up decals, and start building the final rev doghouse tender, as this one don't have all the details I made. This one is the test fit parts prototype, and I think the final version will look much better. Oh, and one more thing, I need top deal with that funny trailing truck, and I will use JoeS' plan to fix it.
    29.jpg
     
  5. JoeS

    JoeS TrainBoard Member

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    Fantastic! Just fantastic! Are you gonna be able to print numbers for number boards? And are you gonna paint headlight black? Or were they silver?
     
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  6. CNE1899

    CNE1899 TrainBoard Member

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    Rob,
    Just keeps getting better! Huge improvement!

    Scott
     
  7. rray

    rray Staff Member

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    I want to match the prototype closely, so I am researching photos closely now. I have not picked a specific loco number yet, but it's from this batch of W-3 class Mikes. that means I have to do whitewall tires and white pinstriping. This is the best shot of the headlights I can find, and it's hard to tell, but I think it's a silver headlight with black mini number board.
    1776.JPG
     
  8. JoeS

    JoeS TrainBoard Member

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    I found this on george Elwood fallen flags. It’s a railroad picture site very good picture is by Bill Navari it literally looks like two shades of silver. Or should I say one grey. Face silver. Hope this helps
    0D79F5DD-985B-4341-9E86-9E8DE44F9393.jpeg
     
  9. JoeS

    JoeS TrainBoard Member

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  10. rray

    rray Staff Member

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    Wow Joe, it looks like the headlight was black and had numbers on both the top front and sides. Also shown is the window panes were red, as I suspected. Cool!
     
  11. rray

    rray Staff Member

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    I drew up the decals, and printed them today, and could not wait so I slapped them on! I also drew up some red window frames, thanks to Joe's photo, and I think it makes a big improvement in the looks! I also used Joe's idea for a fix to the trailing truck and it seemed to work out just fine. I made the trailing truck to sit on the truck drawbar, and hang in front of the truck. There is still too much shine on the loco, but I have to let the decal overcoat cure a day or 2 before I can apply any powders top kill the shine. So I still have to deal with the headlight, tender light, and tender grab irons, but it's really starting to look like a Northern Pacific:
    30.jpg
     
  12. Moose2013

    Moose2013 TrainBoard Member

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    @rray

    That is one handsome steam locomotive, good sir! :)

    Still cannot believe it's z-scale... o_O
     
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  13. rray

    rray Staff Member

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    It's actually very tiny when you are looking at it, but the photos make it look much larger.
     
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  14. JoeS

    JoeS TrainBoard Member

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    Oh it definitely looks fantastic! I doubt anything could come from a factory any better! Would love to see a video of it running!
    Are gonna dare to paint the white on wheels? That seems almost impossible by hand.
     
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  15. rray

    rray Staff Member

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    I'm still thinking about the whitewall tires. If I made them as decals they would not stick cause, if I paint them I might mess up, maybe I can laser cut some scotch tape, spray the tape white, and stick them on? Still thinking.
     
  16. CNE1899

    CNE1899 TrainBoard Member

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    Rob,
    Fantastic! It is a beauty! Can we have a close-up of the trailing truck?

    Scott
     
  17. rray

    rray Staff Member

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    When you zoom in you can see all the flaws! You are looking at 1.5" wide section of the loco, so the thin decal film is actually a scale inch thick or so.

    Trailing Truck.JPG

    [​IMG]
     
  18. CNE1899

    CNE1899 TrainBoard Member

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    Rob,
    Looks pretty damn good to me! Besides, it looks like it has had some wear. The decal looks like it's on a raised panel.
    The truck turned out nice.

    Scott
     
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  19. rray

    rray Staff Member

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    So I wired in two 1K resistors to the Marklin light board, then soldered on two polarity opposed 0604 LED's, one too each resistor. This is in effect a DCC power indicator, with each LED receiving half wave track power. I did this for a headlight because I programmed the headlight function to be firebox flicker.

    01 Headlight.JPG


    I CA glued two orange 0402 LED's in parallel, one glued to each side of the bottom of the coreless motor, and soldered to the reprogrammed F0 (Digitrax DZ126 CV49=33) headlight function to represent firebox flicker.
    02 Firebox Flicker.JPG


    Next I ran a warm white LED to the rear of the tender and soldered it to the reverse F1 function of the decoder, leaving it programmed for reverse.
    03 Tender Reverse Light.JPG

    I swapped the motor wires, so the red motor wire goes to the gray terminal and the black motor wire goes to the orange motor terminal on the decoder. I have really honed my soldering skills too, because I can solder 3 wires on the blue positive terminal of this tiny decoder.
    04 Decoder.JPG

    I did a bit of light chalk weathering to the loco.
    05 weathered.JPG

    And wanted to see what it looks like in a train of all scratchbuilt NP cars:
    06 train.JPG

    And of course, I put a scratchbuilt NP depot in the background for effect!
    07 train.JPG

    And here is a quick test under DCC showing the firebox flicker effect:
     
  20. JoeS

    JoeS TrainBoard Member

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    Rob that is a slam dunk! The chalks made details pop even more! The video is great! I don’t know if you consider this your best work. But it might just be! Masterpiece!
     

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