BR 52 - Kriegsdampflokomotive 1 - 1:35 Kit

[Blaubar]

Hi together, 

 

as I am in the middle of the build, I will post a few shots from the current progress of my build. I have been on this for the last year, on and off. In the last while I have done quite some extensive progress, but I have still not even come close to starting the interior of the cabin or so. It took me a very long time to build the tender, as I build the whole thing anew, as the Trumpeter dimensions and pars are just mostly too inaccurate, simple and wrong. I mean the kit is nice as it is, but if you want to represent a real BR 52 (war time) then the kit is more wrong than correct. Many people encountered issues and here are a few 52 builds on here, which I will have to go through later. I am curious as to the fitting of the wheels and all that, since this will be the next task.

 

The diorama idea of the train inside a repair shack in Eberswalde in 1945 during the March defence of the schwere Panzerabwerabteilung with the 4 to 6 Waffentraeger that had been built by Feb 23 1945:

 

The research pile:

 

As of now the engine looks like this (it will later include a full interior, including smoke pipes, a working ash pan (already done the one for a BR 50, I yet need to build a second one for this here), tender interior, smoke box interior and much more - It is already so heavy now, I need metal axles or the thing will collapse...: A lot of sanding at kind of all parts is needed, I am doing this along the way. The smoke box got glued some time 2 weeks ago or so and the gap of the misalignes kitparts needs to be fixed, I have not tried doing that yet.

 

 

 

 

I will start however, with a few progress shots from the tender. For info, ideas, hints comments, well, just punch in your stuff below, haha.

The tender:

 

 

Painted interior (at least the part one could theoretically see through the open repair and water hatch). The bolts and nuts yet need to be added down below.

 

To adjust the side lengths and the wrong size of the insulation plating, I added copper plates all around. They do also allow for a better depiction of used and slightly hammered/used/bent steel plates.

 

The tender roof tiling does now resemble this:

 

As for the size of this thing... The in progress Waffentrager in comparison

 

The frame was so poor, I rebuilt the whole thing. I used the brakes and the redesigned and modified lateral frame support anchors. I might use the kit wheels.

 

 

 

 

Before the copper fitting I did a quick dry fitting test to take some measurements and I broke the lateral coal bunker support beam

Now the tender is smashed to pieces though... I struck it with a baseball in anger a few days ago. Not sure if I can repair it...

And for the lolz, a parked Sonderanhaender in the coal bunker, a long time ago though...

Will do an engine update, of the modifications needed and problems with the kit later, if people are interested. Now on to read your stuff on here.

 

/Stefan

 

Edited October 5, 2017 by Blaubar
Replacing Photobucket

[Blaubar]

If you plan on building this engine, there are a few things to decide before beginning (additional to the general "how much detail do you want").

 

1) Building this thing OOB (being an inaccurate depiction, but a quick build)

2) A post war macheine, or even a Reko version (major modifications)

3) A war-time machine, (early and late = major modification, mid mediocre modifications)

4) Interior (smoke box, boiler fire box) or not? 

 

As for my construction, it will represent a later war time production. All features of the peace time BR 50 (the basis of the war-time BR 52 before simplification) will not be present any more and many pipes and additions the trumpeter kit has, are wrong for the war time machines. As I had no clue about engines and trains when i started the build, I was going to doe an OOB, but soon discovered that photos would differ significantly form what Trumpeter sold me. So I began researching, and more and more and in the end, I guess I will end up using less than 20% of the kit. If anyone needs spare parts, I will have oplenty for sure.

 

First of all, the alignment of the smoke box and rear boiler is wrong, the front of the bend, needs to be extended by a few mm I think it was 7mm, to form a vertical line with the front end of the caps of the cleaning openings. All "detail" must be removed and sanded away, get rod of everything that is on this part. ( I did not do this and it cost me dearly later on as I added copper and detail...)

Because of you don't, you will run into trouble... Again, I build quite a bit as an OOB before I changed my mind, so it was really not a cool thing to modify thereafter...

If you are not planning on adding the interior of the fire box, then you might add the boiler immediately (as the instructions tell you), else, start work on the fire box and inside the boiler for the smoke box!

The basic layout of the heat (small) and smoke (big - 2 missing up top) pipes.

The blue electricity rods are the superheater pipes, running into, and back out of the smoke pipes. Mind in the real thing, they run all the way to the fire box back, forth and back again before sending the dried and superheated steam to the cylinders!

Adding the heat pipes (I have used cotton ear bud sticks). The cotton will be used for the insulation (glass whool) of the water pipes and the tender walls later.

 

Next up, the cylinders...

 

 

For the denting effect of the heat protection of the superheated steam pipe to the xylinders, copper needs to be cut and then placed... I used paper to design the part, CA glued it to the copper, then cut the copper and bend it around it... The right cylinder has already got the copper cover partially in place. The two grease box covers are also ready to be added and laying on top of the cylinders.

And here place in place for reference.

 

Next up, the ash pan. (This is the BR 50 one, which is different) It does open all air and ash outlets...

 

Then on to the fire box.

You need to cut more than a hundred of these little buggars, and glue them in paris of two.

 

Hans -anyway I call him so,  (from a 1943 WW2 propaganda "documentary", Kriegslokomotiven - fnd the video on youtube: Kriegslokomotiven) shows the interior well...

(Need to make a cut now)

...

Edited November 15, 2016 by Blaubar

[Blaubar]

You need stuff to cover the whole floor panel fo the fire box!

And through the firebox hole (which needs to be increased in size substantially, it looks like this in the end:

Time to add the walls:

You can go crazy here and add all the 1200 rivets they used to increase the surface and heat that would be transferred to the water... I did not include them, will not be seen andway, and as such, I left out the rear ash stuff on the floor. (Only did the front half :D) Then it is time to add a rounded clay shield (prevents large chunks of ash, wood and alike to be sucked into the smoke box in the front. at 1300 degrees, you dont want those parts to hit the forest, fields or anything around, it would ignite a fire wherever it hits the ground I guess. So the clay thing helps to prevent it and funnels "mostly smoke only" to the exhaust in the front.

 

 

You can now add the ash pan and put it into the housing. Now we need to go back to the long boiler and the smoke box. We need to finish the interior before we can continue. To do this, the front section on one side, needs to be CUT AWAY. (Does not matter, the proportionsa re wrong anyway and will be covered later.

It should then look like this. The steam pipe is being fitted, the attachment bolts and structure is added to the super heater...

 

Prime it in black, then dark brown, then I use harvested rust from the roof (I always place metals of all sorts there for rust harvesting).

Then it is time to add the smoke shield. (Funkenfänger). If stuff reaches the front, the Funkengänger will prevent it from leaving the smoke box. The floor of the smoke box is rherefore covered with clay (to prevent the metal and steel from deforming form the heat in front there). 

Agzer heavy dark brown and first dark rust coats it will look like this...

After many more layers of paint, mine looked like this. The seams will need to be fixed and the clay added to the floor and then painted. Once that is done, the last asreas without the real colour (on the Funnkenfänger) will also be treaterd! After this, i will put ash inside which will cover most paint. The arrow to the right shows a moulding error that I forgot to get rid of. Sucks. but too late now.

 

Now, as it glued together, the boiler needs to be modified. Sand and cut everything away, which is attached to the boiler. It is all not needed.

Then new measures and plating was prepared. I sanded down the whole boiler, lengthwise, by a bit... this was during the process (and I had to take off all stuff, I had added before).

 

After many hours of sanding and cutting, it looked like this. (The first boiler brace is slightly off) I will redo and adjust its position. The front part was mich thicker than the rear (heat deformation prevention and so on) and had to be adjusted with an extra layer of styrene sheet and then copper. and then smppthing it with filler. I dented it by mistake, but the front was smooth and round, so filler alarm.

 

Next, the sand dome had to be fiexed. It got a dented look and the roof plating, which stood over o both sides, was adjusted.

The chimney needs some fixing to adjust to the diameter change.

Next up the water injectors and water pipes. The LZ model parts (the additional resin parts) are way off here, the pipes too tick, wrong dimensions (only partially legit for post-war machines!). They were added under the outer laywe of steel plating, and thus had to be cut into the frame...

 

Then the water pipes were added

Received the clamping

And the automated lubrication system for the running gear got prepared. Since I will have the inspection box open, I only added the pipes there, it is useless to add them like the water pipes, they are all covered under the insulation stuff...

 

 

And on the other side the Knorr compressor was modified. (I have got the original construction papers from an archive, if anyone needs them)

 

Well, wnough blabla for now.

Hope you enjoy the read, if not, also ok. Maybe it will help someone build it in the future, or maybe some people have additional or other ideas to add.

 

 

 

Edited November 15, 2016 by Blaubar

[Ozzy]

Nice scratch building, looks fantastic.

[Blaubar]

Thanks Ozzy,

I saw you, well him, live at Graspop festival this year^^.

It's quite a work to get this right, the kit parts are mostly so scheisse, even an OOB would take ages, with all the flash and misalignments...Will add info about the fraame and cabin floor progress tomorrow, quite a bit more to come.

/Stefan

[Madhatter]

Nice to see you sphere Stefan. I've been watching you bring this together on MM and have been seriously impressed

ive built this kit myself but didn't put nearly as much effort into it as you have done here. Great stuff all round

looking forward to seeing more 

Si 

[Blaubar]

Haha, Si that's you. Crazy thing, but your engine blog made me buy mine, though urs was not done by then. You need to expand and get more info/help along the way, I guess so I ventured here, plus I always iked the site.

(It's raining here and I forgot my rain coat, so my lunch break will be at the office table , lol)

As to your train, and your weird scenario, it could have been so much simpler. The last war-time BR-52s were really strange machines. In an effort to confuse allies (pretty sure this did not matter to a spitfire, typhoon or p51 pilot at  sevel hundred km/h seeing smoke), they misaligned the steel plating along the engines fire box (as is my copper stuff) they painted the engine with weird colours and shemes and did all kinds of weird things to "fool" the enemy). So you dont even need the forest meeting to explain your plan^^ it could have also been a brand new one^^ In the end they fooled themselves by wasting resources, I'd assume.

 

Cheers,

/Stefan

[Madhatter]

it's quite funny really - my whole "back story" for mine never quite matched the end result. I was going to paint the front part black or something, but in the end, I felt the all over camo looked better. However, as it turned out, no one else (ie: judges at Model Expo) thought the same and it got no where in placings. But that's all good - not everyone shares my tastes and I can live with that

After seeing your efforts here, I would almost consider buying another one of these kits and having another crack at it but seeing as I know how crap it is, I'll settle for watching yours and thinking to myself - "why didn't I think of that?" or "Where the bloody hell did you find pictures of those parts!!?"

[Blaubar]

Actually,

There are many museums with them on display here,  I traveled around to visit every single one of them. Then, Meiningen, a prime workshop for steam locomotives, does lead to many german "repair and refurbishment"sites. Searching in English, Mr. Google will hide all this from you. And then there are all the books and archives... it just took two years to collect the data. Therefore I has to redo stiff after I had already begun, as new sources popped out.

I can send you my kit left overs^^ you could go from there. Plenty of kit parts for you to take measurements. With the stuff from edited and lz models it would be a nice project. Haha.

/Stefan

 

As to the expo: they love overdone rust.... if you don't go berserk with stupid chipping and rust, you lost. (Not sth you want to achieve!)

 

[goggsy]

Impressive, some inspired scratch building there.

[Badder]

It never ceases to amaze me just how far some people will go when converting a poor model into an accurate and detailed one. I wonder why they don't just scratchbuild the whole thing. Because surely they are mad to start off with and that extra bit of work won't make them any madder!

Amazing work Blaubar! 

 

Rearguards,

Badder

[Blaubar]

Had this prepared but fell asleep, back from the office I can now copy from word the frame update.

 

Cheers,

The frame is a difficult matter as it is blatently wrong. I wish I would have never bought the kit, as building it all by myself would heave been simpler in the end. At first I thought it was an awesome kit, but after sanding all the kit parts, filling holes (Trumpeter tried to save plastic by having holes in ALL PARTS). It really is a shame. 

Just a quick one, with not even all mistakes on there (no more space to show more):

Well, you get what I mean. How can you screw up the leaf spring mountings like this? I am really wondering what happened there, would be interesting if there is one engine (I have hundreds of BR 52 photos, none has the kit frame features - neither do the, Czech CSD 555.0, Russian T3 8XXX, Polish PKP Ty2 , Turkish TCDD 56.5, Bulgarian BDZ.... conversions), but would be interested to receive the info.

Then the side panels had enforced frame parts... also missing. The rivets might not be 100% perfectly aligned, it is just to small for me, but I am pretty happy with my first ever rivet addition.

 

 

The support beams and lateral supports are also quite crude and off. Major reworking and new assembly are a must do.

All boiler supports are two sidedly bolted onto the vertical lateral beams. The kit has a solid block for this. You can keep it, or modify it, won't make much of a difference.

 

 

And more frame bashing: Remove all what is inside of the frame, you wont need anything of it. (leave the square wheel parts off, untill u filed everything away). had i not glued them on when I still wanted to do an OOB, then i would have done them myself too, it was too late to do so though. I broke frame parts off, trying to do this so it is not possible to chnage this. Dont glue the top parts where the instructions tell you, best thing to do with the frame? Burn the instruction pages for the frame and do it yourself, you will not need them.

The support structire for the drivers cabin during construction...

and the wooden deck to go on top of it:

 

 

Then the preparation of the wheels needs to be started.

Drilling first at .8mm, then 2.0mm and at last with a 3.0mm using the power drill. I used fridge-cooled oil to cool it, if you drill at low speeds, the plastic will melt, so be careful. As all parts, extensive filling and corrections must be made. Oh boy, what a shitty painting again...

 

Be careful when drilling, (The whole thing needs to be quatered). Never knew this term, Tim on Milmod told me, but in essence, this is commen sense. All opposing parts and adjecent ones need exactly the same distances and angles, else it cannot move due to the connection rod running along all five wheels on both sides.

I measured many times and it all works, I tried it, but just to be sure, on the second and fourth axle, I increased the diametre by .5mm. So in the end those two axles coudl handle any misalignments that could come up when this thing starts moving. (all these connection rods need to be drilled and modified as well in order for this thing to be able move)

 

And for the laughts, some maths, triangulation and all kind of stuff to get the dimensions of the smoke box...Some are BR 52.80 REKOs, the thing up top is a Mischvorwärmer, (A preheater or sth alike) installed after the war. A uni professor would fail me, but this is as good as it could get, I did quite many more than these few here, this is just to show the process. I tried reducing the measuring error and stuff with quantity^^.

 

/Stefan

 

@goggsyProst, thx.

@BadderYeah, doing it from scratch would have been better, but I began this thing, thiinking it would be an easy OOB build Maybe I will need to relocate to the madhous^^

 

[Blaubar]

A secondlast fitting (to get the dimensions and location for the air pressure pipes in relation to the boiler. (Really boring and time consuming stuff) - mind the different sizes of the tanks, one is way too long in the kit.

All interior rivets along the frame wall have been added. it is at this stage that this section needs to be painted, else I cannot continue, so the air pressure tanks and their frame section received the frist coat of black primer. (later)

Quick assessment of the holes drilled and aligning a few of the pressure pipes and drilling some holes and adjusting the wrong size of the second pressure pipe. It is way beyond the limits, like 2cms too long. They were standardized and both the same size. All photos show this, not ficticiously different sized things.

RAL7005 alarm. Will coat it in RAL 7021 at last and then assemble it. On some engines the second pressure tank was welded to the frame, on others it was stripped to it like the left one with the PE parts. I think I am going with the welded version, the photos are not good enough to show the mountings of the strips or whatever they are called, I hope you know what I mean. After the paint had dried over night, this is what it looked like. Need to cut and arrange all the pressure pipes now, then I can add the grey colour and then glue ti together.

And a quick cabin shot that was somewhere in my photbucket.

Olé, paint forward.

Have a great evening. Thanks for watching

/Stefan

[Blaubar]

Ok, done.

I fixedall tender parts this night/morning. Had to reassembe the brake system, could not find all parts, some are probably in the vaccum cleaner, so redid them. A few bits are yet missing. the in and outisde are in RAL 7005 (3 layers) the interior is already partially covered in RAL 7021 (4 layers).

The pressure tank is still damaged (the baseball stuck it. I kept it as a reminder against anger. The frame might be slightly not straight now...

Tonight, when i get back form the museum, I will paint the hideous corners and edges that are yet to be covered in RAL 7021.

Not sure, when i will ad the feed water pipes. Might paint them tonight, once I paint the details and intricate parts and the outisde of the tender in RAL 7021.

Sitting on the water tank. The water collecotrs and a few copper sheets had to be added again as well as the coal bunker, which needed major fixing.

Have no paint brush, well I left the generator in Leipzig, so I need to be dry brushing it all.no Not sure if it ok like this, will be my first model in my life I ever primed and paint in different layers, lol.

Olé-

You all have a great Sunday, cheers!

/Stefan

[Carius]

Excellent big scratch indeed.

 

Cheers

 

 

[Madhatter]

seriously Stefan - that is insane. And people say I'm mad.... 

I wish I had those drawings when I was doing mine. Oh well, I made do with what I had, and TBH, I'm not sure I would have gone to quite the 'fixing up' extent you have.

Are you using the LZ Kompressor upgrade? I thought about it but in the end modified the kit one. I was a little disappointed in some of the LZ stuff - a few things being very over scaled and the lack of instructions were annoying - especially when you have no idea where some of the things are meant to go

I was not a train buff

Anyways, I am enjoying you work your magic Stefan!

Si

[Blaubar]

Morning Si,

It is the LZ compressor. It needs to be fixed and modified though as, as you said, some parts are wrong and overscaled. Same goes with the pre-war prussian copper whistle (which was not used after early 1943 to save 30kg on copper) and some other parts.

LZ models is quite a bummer, I have tried communiccating with them, but my attempts ended unanswered. Sad, I like their moulding and quality in general.

 

Build another one! I can send you all the research. You can then do everything right from the beginning... We will finally have a correct and perfect Kriegslok from the start. 

 

/Stefan

[Blaubar]

Painting has continued, at least a bit...

A major error with the kit is the location of the pressure tanks. Not only were they wrong, but also place in a wrong way. They are level with the outermost side of the wheels on the right hand side (lookinf forwards) and end just before the boiler and walkway support beams end. Sorry for the slight misalignment, they are not glued yet^^.

I am waiting for reference materials from, amongst others, the Bundesbahn archives... Might need to add some things to the frame, but was not sure about this yet, so I need to wait.

I am also drawing the plans for the automated greasing system at the moment. The before quoted propaganda movie has a 2 second sequence showing them. Luckily I discovered it^^. As the wheel is turning, so are these lower metal bars and changin the rotating motion into an forward/backward movement (2), the connector (3) which leads to the grease box at the top, stirs the stuff around and is stirring it out of the box into the pipes. This only worked when it was warm, as it got really cold the pipes froze (diametre was smaller than the russian ones), the engines broke down due to malgreasing of the axles (they got so hot that they dented and melted). 

Cheers,

/Stefan

 

[Blaubar]

Morning all,

Well did a bit more work with the tender. I will need one more layer of the grey, then I will go to the rusting and stuff. On some flat floor surfaces that would have been exposed to water and vapour I applied a bit of a thicker and quite uneven paint layer ^*1) (as paint and rust lift the surface a bit before "exploding" and I will try to add this effect. Not sure if it works or looks bad. Also were many workers used to build and paint them forced labourers (German regime enemies as well as left wing party members, Frenchmen and many Russians [probably many more, but I am not that far with the research yet and thus will not state assumptions with respect to this]), you must never forget/neglect this, and many of them were peobably trained in a different profession. As Gottwald writes, many finished engines were criticised for bad paint jobs, missing tenders (YES!!!)  and shitty sand dome welding, as sand just dripped out of it.^*1) This was mostly the case, because the "Abnahmeverordnung" of June 1^st 1942,declared that the producers of steam engines were obliged to do final product acceptance themselves instead of the Reichsbahn Zentralamt (RZA), which had done it previously (Samsung has not learned from this). Another factor was price pressure. In 1939 the BR 50 raked around 179,000RM to the producers, whereas the first BR 52 yet were rewarded with 153,000 RM without tax claims, 160,000 with future tax claims and in 1943 the price had dropped to as low as 90,000 RM. Cost cutting (despite forced labour) resulted in lower quality... blabla. The two different numbers above arise form the different production group pricing models within the economy of the Third Reich.

Gruppe I - Price without taxed due at the end of the fiscal year H1 42 153,000 RM vs H1 43 150,000 RM

Gruppe II -  Price received, but taxed due at the end of the fiscal year H1 42 160,000 RM vs H1 43 155,000 RM

Gruppe III - Extremely intense and difficult assemblies (steam engines did not qualify for this group)

Assuming that there are not many economists like me out here, I'm leaving aside the detail unless demanded. This also applies to the economics behind resource allowances to the Reichsbahn vs the Wehrmacht pre 1943 and post 1943 as well as change of the Reichsbahn's rank and importance within the organigramm of the Reich in terms of resources, labour and financing it received.

 *1) Alfred B. Gottwald - Deutsche Kriegslokomotiven 1939-1945, page 66

Now to the photos...

Thats as much as there is to post. I am still in the realm of research.

I found this:

A book from 1923, the ecyclopedia of railroading. It has, what feels like endless sketches, technical drawings and blabla about anything they knew about steam engines back then^^. Enough for me, as this is the sand dome system (maybe a predecessor with the same style) used with the BR-52: The "Sandtreppe" (sandstairs) were designed and developed by Borsig, the ones of this sketch anyway, they had probably modified them but I have not found an exact type description for the 52 yet. Basically the right number 2 air pressure jet will whirl around the sand (coming in from the right above number 4) and the left most number 2 air pressure jet will shoot the air down down the pipe (5). This creates a low air pressure thingy and sucks the sand onto the pipe and throws it between wheel and tracks. This is needed for better traction.

*2) Dr. Freiherr von Röll - Enzyklopädie des Eisenbahnwesens **LINK**

 

I have also found the original Bosch manual of the oil pump used to grease all major running gear parts automatically. This manual is form 1940 and was used on many 51s, not all though. This thing is quite interesting. Bild 8 shows the tip and the main handles (9) which control the amount of oil pushed into the pipes. This can be between 0mm and 8mm per stroke. It can be cranked by hand when the engine is not runnign or automatically, with those weird wheel attachments (see my paint picture below). Besides each handle is a litttle glass showing the level of oil allowed into the system (25). Each handle controls 2 oil valves, to ensure equal amounts to parts needing two greasing intakes (cylinders and so forth). If a pipe is not needed, it can be switched to 0 and done. I won't bore you more, this is the basic concept, there is much more to it, but I do not want to responsible if you fall asleep before setting the alarm laugh

*3) Bosch - Lokomotivölpumpe LHA (Hochdruckschmierpumpe) - https://archive.org/

 

I have also been granted special access to the Sinsheim Technikmuseum to visit the BR-52 there next Monday. This will lead to a massive boost in research and photographs of the interior and any parts usually hidden to the visitor's eyes (as mine last time I was there)

 

Have a great week,

/Stefan

Edited December 7, 2016 by Blaubar

[Blaubar]

Progress won't be posted here anymore, lack of interest/help here leads to termination.

Still looking and enjoying ur stuff though, all recent and future developments will be on militarymodelling.

[Madhatter]

Hi Stefan

I came here to check in on your progress as I realised you hadn't posted anything in a while and now I see why.

 

Don't be put off the lack of replies - trust me, there are many people out there who read a thread like this and can not contribute anything other than "good job" etc for nothing other than a lack of knowledge of the subject.

I knew nothing about the BR-52 when I built mine (and still don't really), so I had no where near the amount of reference material that you have, so the mods your making are new news to me and to others (I'm sure) and will be of good reference to others when they go to build their 52's.

 

If I hadn't have already built one, this would be a massive source of reference to me

 

I know that a lack of responses can be discouraging - trust me, I have almost given up on some of my WIP threads on numerous occasions because of the lack of view counts or comments but then I was told once by someone far wiser than me that not everyone who reads these threads and become inspired by them are members, therefore - cannot post comments or suggestions. Your only on the first page and not even up to page 2 yet, so keep on going. Once people see the amazing work that your doing, you watch - the view count will rise and you'll feel like it was worth taking the time it does to upload photos etc

 

Regardless of the others here, I would love to see you continue this thread here. At least you can count on one person who is genuinely interested in it!

Regards

Simon

.

Edited March 4, 2017 by Madhatter

[Etienne]

1 hour ago, Madhatter said:

Don't be put off the lack of replies - trust me, there are many people out there who read a thread like this and can not contribute anything other than "good job" etc for nothing other than a lack of knowledge of the subject.

Regardless of the others here, I would love to see you continue this thread here. At least you can count on one person who is genuinely interested in it.

 

I can only agree with that ... I am a total ignorant of steam locomotives but all the scratchbuilding shown here is amazing 

 

E

[Churchill]

I'd second Etienne's and Mad Hatter's comments - I'd ratherlike to know how this turns out. If you won't post any more here, perhaps you could post a link to the thread on the Military Modeller site?

[Blaubar]

Guys,

I just did not want to spam the forum with stuff that would not be of interest to many which it seemed to be. I copied some preogress below for you:

 

In December I was invited to the Sinsheim museum to inspect their BR52 with a special grant to enter the engine.

After the visit to the museum, I wanted to hand out a big thanks to the guys at Sinsheim museum! They took great care of me and allowed special entry to two friends and myself. We could climb around the engine, look into hidden cupboards and play around with hinges, wheels and cylinder covers. It was quite impressive.

I am setting up a Flickr Album for all the photos, which I am currently naming and organizing. A few shots for now for those who are interested.

Lol, climbing along on the side of the driver's cabin in order to get to the side's walkway.

(I have written a paper on the history of the railway development and could add the lala here if you are interested.)

Other than that, I have torn apart the old fire box and redesignes the whole thing. The first esign turned out to be wrong, which I noticed after the visit to the BR52 in Sinsheim. (I was actually allowed to go into the firebox) The new rear of the fire box (notice the massive space around it for water...)

Though u will not see much at all through the little fire door....I have not drilled all tube holes as they will be hidden behind the fire/ash cover roof.

In the meantime (during the skiing season here I was waxing and preparing my skis for the weekends in the snowy Alps...) It takes a while but I can harvest good paraffine wax which I will use for the ash in the ash pan and such.

I have collected quite a bit during DEC and JAN and will hopefully be able to use it later this year.

Back to hot steam and steel though. The fire box is troublesome. It's such a nasty and complex thing, it is utterly annoying.

As for the diagram below: Yellow indicates relevant frame parts. The red markings are the vectors needed for the fire box support structure. (All is missing and the one part included is wrong in the kit). The front support rests within the frame and only two little blocks (left and right) stick out on top. (Trumpete has a massive bar on to all the way across). My first photo from the engine at Sinsheim shows this. (The feature is the same with BAR and PLATE-frames. The blue painting I did within my photo indicates the lateral support frame which was used with the plate frame, but not the bar frame (Sinsheim engine), but it can be clearly seen on the technical drawing below and other photos. It is important to keep all these support sections at a slight angle, as the fre box itself is tilted towards the front also. The bos rests, without welding, nothing, between those two rods in the front and 2 in the rear. This allows it to expand and contract (Heat differences male it grow and shrink and in addition the engine is shaking when running and thus it needs a bit of "Spiel".

Sources: 1 , 2 , 3

The basic design of this guy...Notice how much more work is needed inside the frame. I will also need to add the L angles to the sides and the bottom of the transverse support thingy. I wish I had not used the kit part!

The part outside of the frame, on my basic calculation and adjustmen paper which is at 1:35 scale. The grey part in the background is the trumpeter part (which they put almost 1cm too high up)

The rear support differes significantly between plate and bar frames, ans as such, Sinsheim pictures are useless for this part. I got flckr photos, but cant include them in here for some reasons. The above technical drawing shows all needed things though (except for the sparings arrangement :D)

Placed within the frame, the two little sponsons/blocks will be added later. The firebox will rest 3.5mm above the wooden floor after all parts are added. Then the plating around it will be added and this will cover it all down to the floor.

And a shot from the rear.

As the old one is in a wrong shape, I have started cutting the basic plates and will later add them together with miliput. 

And here comes the fire box. Primed and ready to be rusted...

Did not manage to get a better shot inside. but as you can see, not much is visible insider there.

 

As previously mentioned, the kit firebox cover is not eligible for use as

 - much too short and verical part at bottom too small
 - 3mm too low and 5mm too thin
 - all holes at wrong locations
 - the vertical edge is too low (1mm) and the base is 4mm too short
That's enough for the start, there is more faults to be added later during the build. Se the comparison to two real engines, A) The propaganda one from 1943 and the one at Sinsheim, they match exactly with all features.

A) 

 

Also notice the bent/slanted door, the kit one is flat and straight...The lowest circle to the bottom is for a support beam below the fire box door to prevent coal from falling down onto the wooden floor. The circle to the left shows the Bosch automatische Schmierpumpe LHA (also visible in the 1943 propaganda train on the bottom right photo).

So, as I won't need those parts, I have decided to build the cabin with them, keep all shut and add it to the diorama later (inside the shed..., where you will only be able to see the rear side of the cabin, without tender. Beside the partially constructed old cabin, arises the new one, in a yet very bad stat^^.

Some Milliput, Greenstuff and plastic card later.... the crude box is ready.

As the box door is lower than the rest and integrated to the water support metal frame, plastic is added accordingly to raise the surrroundings. (later all will be covered by copper!

That's with the door, though I will build another one,a s we found out that it is wrong. I will use t for the cabin only kit.

Modified the roof sturcture of the fire box interior, as the top side corners were edged. and a lot of dust from sanding is visible^^.

It took ages doing all the measurements and preparing all parts and getting it together as there are so many different parts needed to be fit in the cabin later, it is really difficult, for me at least. (Firebox interior, cabin floor, cabin walls, ash pan, steam and water pipes and the boiler, they all need to merge at the front wall of the cabin and meet exactly... I am scared of that. However it does look like this at the moment:

However I have cut apart the front part of the frame again as it is all wrong. It needs major modifications.

I will add this some other day. (This is mostly copied from the milmod blog but due to work the project was idle during JAN and FEB)

/Stefan

[Blaubar]

Here the flickr album of the Sinsheim engine. It should be of great help to any BR 52 modeller, but bear in mind that it is a bar frame and not a plate frame as the Trumpeter kit!

 

BR 52 Walk aroundGeneral stuff:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/145866163@N06/albumsFlickr

And a few sample shots...

4 - Führerhaus Panorama 1 by Blaubar, auf Flickr

6 - Gang Fahrerseite 31 by Blaubar, auf Flickr

9 - Feuerbox 4 by Blaubar, auf Flickr

7 - Gang Heizerseite 13 by Blaubar, auf Flickr

 

Edited March 5, 2017 by Blaubar