Pennsylvania A3 Switcher (Kozo)

[Kim]

Hi KIm,

This is a labour of love. You have put so much care and precision into your build. The careful, step-by-step photography also indicates the pride and enjoyment you are getting out of this amazing construction. 

Thank you for the kind compliment John.  Your words mean a lot to me.

And I couldn't agree with Carl more!  This is true of many members of this site, especially you.  The care and detail you put into every step of your builds is inspiring.  Thanks for sharing your work with us!
Kim

[Kim]

Chapter 7.3 – Handholds

The next item to make is the front handholds.  These are railings that go at the front of the tender to use when climbing the front steps.

These are also made from the 3/16” SS rod that I used for the stair railing.  I made a mistake in one of my previous posts.  I said Kozo called for 0.090” SS rod for the railing but its actually 0.100” rod he specifies.  However, I couldn’t source 0.100” rod either, so I went with 3/32” (0.093”) which is still pretty close.  1/8”  is the next closest, easily sourced size, and that’s off by 25 thou as opposed to 7 thou.

The first thing to make for the front handholds is the lower right-angle brackets.  I made these from 3/16” square 303 stainless.

I cut two little pieces, milled them to length, then cut a notch out to make them “L” shaped.


Then I flipped them around and drilled a 1/8” deep hole to attach the railing.


Then I silver soldered the right angle bracket to the end of the railing:


I got a little ahead of myself with the silver soldering – I’d intended to do the next two steps before the soldering but forgot.  So I’ll do it now. And it probably doesn’t make much difference, really.   I needed to drill the mounting hole in the bracket to attach it to the tender frame:


And I needed to round the top side of the bracket, which I did by filing:


Now, comes the challenging part – forming the curves in the railing.  This handhold has two bends in it – very tight radius of 1/4".  To do this, I cut a 3/32” wide grove, 3/64” deep, into a 1/2" diameter piece of steel.  Then used this as a form for the bending of the rail.  This shows the 1/2" form and the piece after the first bend.

Here’s a picture of the second bend being formed. I had to be extra careful with this step – one rail had to be ‘left handed’ and the other ‘right handed’.  The direction of this bend is what made the difference!


Here are the two hand rails after forming:


And now, after silver soldering on the top mounting bracket.


This brings us up to the state of play at the moment.  Only a few more steps to go for these front handholds.

Thanks for looking in!
Kim

[J.L.]

Kim,
This is superb sequential photography that make the process so easy to follow.

Kudos!

John

[Kim]

Thank you John 
Kim

[Kim]

Finishing up the front handholds, I filed off the extra length of rail after silver soldering, then spent a good chunk of time cleaning up the handrails so they loop nice and shiny:


I drilled and tapped holes in the frame for the front handholds.


With them attached on the frame, I used the mounting plate itself as a template for the holes in the tank.


Then tapped the holes.


And attached the front handholds:


Now those two railings are done!
Kim

[Kim]

The next handhold is the rear horizontal handhold – presumably for climbing on the tender from the back.

This requires more mounting plates similar to the previous ones, but these only have a single mounting hole.  Since these are smaller, I made them from 3/8” round 303 stainless.

Here I’ve cut the stainless rod down to width:


Then drilled the holes.  The bigger one (3/32”) for the rail and the smaller one (#48) for a #1-72 mounting screw.


Then slice a few off:


I only need 4 of them, but I made a few extras for the shop gnomes.


I’m making 2 of these horizontal handholds – one will be along the rear of the tender and the other will be set aside for use on the engine later.

This is where I called it a day and came in.

Thanks for taking a look,
Kim

[Kim]

Continuing on with the rear horizontal handrail.

The last step for the mounting plates was to use some filing buttons to round off the ends.


Then it was time to silver solder them to some 3/16” SS rod:


 And then bend them to shape.


After bending, it was time to attach a mounting plate to the other side.


Here’s after soldering, but before I filed off the excess rail.


And after filing off the excess rail and some significant polishing up time to get them to shine!


Then, as  I went to mount one on the tender, things didn’t seem to be lining up correctly.  So, I checked the demotions, and said “Bummer”.  I’d carefully made the rail 5 1/4” long, but the plans clearly show 5 1/4" between the mounting holes!  So my rails were 5/16” too long!


After giving it some thought on the best way to recover, here’s what I did:
I cut off one of the mounting plates as CLOSE to the plate as I could.


Then I rebent that end so the rail was 5/16” shorter.  Like so:



Luckily, I’d made a couple of extra mounting plates, so I used those and soldered them in place on the newly shortened handhold rails.  With that done, I cleaned and polished and was back to where I thought I was 90 minutes ago.  But this time, the rails were the correct length!


Finally, I drilled and tapped mounting holes for the rail along the rear of the tender:


And here it is, all mounted in place!


It looks pretty good despite the minor mishap of that misread length 

Anyway, thanks for looking in on my build.  Always much appreciated!
Kim

[cnr6400]

Looking great Kim! 

Now those Pennsy engineers and firemen will have somewhere to rack their surfboards on the way to hang 10 at the beach   in sunny Altoona in February........ er ............maybe not. (Pennsy ran a long way west but not quite to SoCal - at least the switchers didn't  - I don't think........ )  Forget I said anything!     

[Kim]

Maybe they're going to surf the Atlantic?  Do people surf on the east coast?  I don't know

Kim

[crueby]

Maybe they're going to surf the Atlantic?  Do people surf on the east coast?  I don't know

Kim

There are definitely surfers on the east coast. Surf is nothing like the wave height in Hawaii though!

[Dave Otto]

More great progress Kim!

Dave

[Kim]

Thanks, Dave   
Kim

[Roger B]

Wonderful attention to detail    and a good recovery 

[Kim]

Thanks, Roger!
Kim

Chapter 7.4 – Handholds

This installment, we work on the last of our handholds are the vertical handholds.  We’ll be making four of these, two for the rear of the tender and two for the front of the engine. They are companions to the horizontal handholds just completed.

These vertical handholds are made from 3/8” 303 stainless rod.  They are turned to a taper with a little decorative bead on the top end and a hex shape at the base.  They are less than 3” long, but quite spindly little critters.

So, I start by turning down the part that will be tapered.


But, as one might anticipate (and as I feared) as I got the part down in size, the tool dug in and the part snapped:  (the part that broke off is sitting on the live center)


So, it was time to try again.  This time, I sharpened the tool up really good. And I decided to do more of it closer to the collet. That seemed to work.


I think the sharp tool actually made a huge difference.  It was cutting really well.  So, I extended it out to complete the length.  I had to do the taper at full length regardless.  And that worked out the way I wanted it to this time:


However, I wasn’t pleased with the little bead on the end.  I shapped this with a file, and it just didn’t come out looking very good.  It was hard to be very aggressive with the files because 1) the part was delicate and 2) I was too afraid of biting into the tapered part and it was VERY difficult to get in there.  This is quite small, in spite of how it looks in the picture (It’s a 3/32” wide bead).  The bead just doesn’t look rounded enough for me.


So, I decided to do what I should have from the start and make a form tool. I wanted to use a 3/32” ball end mill to cut the shape in the tool, but I didn’t have one.  Then I had a better idea!  I used a 3/32” straight end mill (which I DID have) and drilled a hole through the tool steel at a 7^o angle:


Then milled off half of the hole (still at the 7^o angle.


After that, I cut flats on the top and bottom of the tool and narrowed the business end of the tool a bit.


After hardening and tempering, I sharpened it up and carefully used it on the bead.  It was magical! So much better!  Well worth the effort of making the tool.


After that, I shaped the bottom portion of the handhold to make a place for the hex and the #8 threads, then moved to the mill.  Holding it with the 5C hex collet holder, I cut the hex shape:


Then I used a die to form the #8-36 threads on the end.


And we have one of the four vertical handholds completed


Only 3 more to go.  This is the output of my last 2 weekends in the shop.  It took a long time for me to mess up, make a cool tool. And then try it all again.  Hopefully, the next three will go much faster now that I have the process down!

Thanks for taking a look,
Kim

[crueby]

Beautiful result on that railing!