Iron Horseman
Well-Known Member
I buckled down yesterday and worked really hard to get the Hiawatha cars ready for their video debut on the museum layout. I decided it would be easier to do assembly line style instead of beginning to end on each car.
So carefully removed each from the boxes marking them so they could be matched back up.
Went through each car and cut the Kadee coupler pin off.
Went through each car checking wheel gauge and coupler height.
Then the hard part, started working through drilling all the holes for the hand rails.
It seemed to work really well I went through all 11 cars and approximately 300 holes (I quit doing the hand rails on the ends when I realized when the cars are coupled together no one can see them), in less than 4 hours. More remarkably I did not break a drill bit.
Start through again installing the hand rails. The hand rails just dropped in. Oh no. Normally they require a bit of pressing. I had started with the drill bit in the Dremel but noticed it was melting the plastic and making the holes too large. So I switched to the hand drill. With the too large holes I thought perhaps I was dealing with this first set of holes. That was not the case, on the 4th hand rail, I realized I had used the wrong drill bit size for all 300 holes. A #77 or even #76 bit somehow got into the slot for the #80s. So now I have a whole train set with loose and floppy, fall out hand rails.
I'm going to use some gel super glue hoping it fills the gaps. There went all the time I saved. Plus its going to be a nightmare touching up the paint. So instead of an 8 hour deal it is going to be closer to 40.
So new rule. Us the micrometer on the drill bit before using it.
So carefully removed each from the boxes marking them so they could be matched back up.
Went through each car and cut the Kadee coupler pin off.
Went through each car checking wheel gauge and coupler height.
Then the hard part, started working through drilling all the holes for the hand rails.
It seemed to work really well I went through all 11 cars and approximately 300 holes (I quit doing the hand rails on the ends when I realized when the cars are coupled together no one can see them), in less than 4 hours. More remarkably I did not break a drill bit.
Start through again installing the hand rails. The hand rails just dropped in. Oh no. Normally they require a bit of pressing. I had started with the drill bit in the Dremel but noticed it was melting the plastic and making the holes too large. So I switched to the hand drill. With the too large holes I thought perhaps I was dealing with this first set of holes. That was not the case, on the 4th hand rail, I realized I had used the wrong drill bit size for all 300 holes. A #77 or even #76 bit somehow got into the slot for the #80s. So now I have a whole train set with loose and floppy, fall out hand rails.
I'm going to use some gel super glue hoping it fills the gaps. There went all the time I saved. Plus its going to be a nightmare touching up the paint. So instead of an 8 hour deal it is going to be closer to 40.
So new rule. Us the micrometer on the drill bit before using it.
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