I get disappointed when I come here and there's nothing new to read. So I thought it would be a good evening to post a "here's what I'm up to" thing. I've been working on too many things at the same time. I finally got a bogie/truck design that I'm happy with. Printing with a 3D resin printer just doesn't give the accuracy one needs so accommodations need to be made. After countless tries getting the two point wheels to spin freely by supporting them at the ends in cup-shaped cutouts, I finally realized that might be a foolish endeavor. I found that there were variances across the printer bed and the wheels were either too loose or too tight even with the same file printed on another place on the bed. So last weekend I had a brainstorm. I decided to support the wheels along the axle instead. The axles are 1mm diameter, but I had to design the the axle channel at 1.5 mm to get a consistent free spin. I'm finally satisfied with them. I'm also working on couplers because I'm old and struggle with the couplers with tweezers. I think people probably have a set of cars that they leave hooked together and don't change that up often. I'm working on something akin to the hook and ring they sell on tgauge.us. I can't go as fine as theirs, but I'm okay with where I'm headed. I am also testing a cattle car design that I found on the internet. I think it was HO scale, but when you scale it down to T, you end up having to redraw it because you lose a lot of detail. At the same time I've been working (in Fusion 360) on a Tscale model of the Texas School Book Depository as it was in November 1963. That took days and days and I probably started over from scratch three or four times because of blunders. I tried to print it and the print failed. All I got were some supports and the base. I think I need to angle the building and print it again. I have five cars and three engines that I am happy with...two boxcars, a hopper, a gondola and a flatbed. There are three EMD locos designed to fit around the available motorized carriages. I really haven't started doing much on the actual layout. It's all still at 0 elevation for testing all the other stuff. Eventually, it will be two separate tracks...one is the TandA line and the other the P&M (aka The Pizmo--"Rockin' on the Pizmo").
