HOn2½ Box Cabs - "The Twins"

The individual doors were then clamped in a vice and tapped down with a hammer to the line on the drawing. Then a file was used to file down to that line which when you hit the jaws of the vice you knew you were on the line.

Next to be cut out were the window sections. A hole was drilled to feed the fret saw blade through and the window was cutout.

One finished door is soldered to the model on the left.
The one on the right still needs a door added.

Up next was the design of a radiator grill. You need one of those for cooling the diesel engine. The CNC mill came in handy for doing that. A CAD drawing was made for the CAM (computer aided manufacture) that converted all the numbers to a G-code to run the machine.

Two of them were made. One for each engine.

The idea for mounting a radiator grill on the side
came from the one and only 3-foot gauge doodle bug.
The East Broad Tops M-1.

The radiator grill is mounted on the left side of the engine.

Up next was fitting some tanks. Since these are small engines and they don't have very much if any room. The best place to mount the fuel and air tanks was on the roof. The two smaller ones are the fuel tanks and the two larger ones will be the air tanks.

To power these I am using the trucks from an N scale DD40 engine. The original came with two motors. The motors were to small for my needs so I modified each truck for a larger motor. I first started out with a friction drive. This idea came from a British modeler who sells products for small scale and narrow-gauge builders. These are all the parts for the friction drive.

The assembled drive.