Part 1: Basic Structure
All steam railroads need water towers, and the BVLC is no exception. I’d planned to have one water tower on each side of the layout, given that they depict different ends of the same line. With that in mind, I scatchbuilt and animated both of them.
I started by cutting two Pringles cans to length, to form the tank. I wanted to make the roof removable, so I used the top half of each can.
The boards around the outside were made from coffee stirrers, cut to length and stained with my usual stain. This is a mix of water and black acrylic paint. When dry, it gives the effect of weathered wood. I also built two wood platforms for the tanks to rest on, out of basswood stained the same way. At this point, I realised I’d made a bit of a mistake. Most of the prototype photos I’d collected for inspiration didn’t have a wooden platform. Instead, these tanks seemed to be mounted directly on wood frames. As such, I decided to modify my design.
I started by cutting two circles out of thick cardboard. I’d cut the coffee stirrers slightly longer than the Pringles cans, and these cardboard discs fit just inside them. After cutting a hole in the middle of each disc, I glued them in place with the plain side down. The bottom ends of the c
Looks good! This will be an interesting thread to follow.
Dave
I agree with Dave, looks great and your documentatin encourages others to give it a try.
Part 2: Spout and Mechanism
In this post, I’ll be covering how I built the mechanism for these water towers and some of the detailing. Each step was done on both water tower models at the same time.
My design called for a servo to be installed inside the tank itself, which would raise and lower the spout via a thread attached to it. To allow the thread to move smoothly, the first thing I had to do was construct a pulley for it. I had some N scale wheelsets handy, so I used the wheels from those. They were taken off the axle and drilled out to fit over a brass rod, then glued face-to-face. This rod would then fit within some brass tubing that allowed it to rotate freely.
While these were drying, I added the cross-bracing to the water tower legs. This was formed from 1mm copper wire. I drilled holes into the wood legs at the correct angle, then passed the wire through. Once the wires were in place, I soldered them together where they crossed over and filed it to shape. I’ve tried using glue on copper wire before, and that’s never really worked for me.
My next step was to put in the counterweight and support for the pulley. I decided to model it as though it were an enclosed counterweight, as I couldn’t figure out a way to make the counterweight move with the spout. Also, this helped to disguise the fact that the thread was going into the tank itself, rather than being attached to a counterweight
Your skill, creativity and techniques cross over into all scales, I contiune to admire your work and echo Dave’s sentiments, great tutorial!
Thanks & regards, Peter
Part 3: Detailing and Animation
With the mechanism built, I put the final details on the water towers.
The bands were made out of cardboard from a cereal box, painted with the same faded red that I’d used for the brass tubing into the tank. For the metal plates over the pulleys, I used styrene with NBW castings. I also painted the cross bracing between the legs and added some NBW castings over the holes I’d drilled to install the wires.
I wanted to have the roof removable, in case the servos need to be replaced in future. In order to accomplish this, I 3D printed a ‘lid’ for each water tower. Internally, they match the diameter of the Pringles can lid. To get a ‘tarpaper’ like texture on them, I built up layers of masking tape. Each piece of tape was cut to match the angle of the roof section.
Once the tape was in place, I used narrower tape to form the seams between the sections. At the top, I applied some body putty to provide a smooth peak. Once this had dried, I sanded it into shape.
Before installing the water tower on the layout, I hooked it up to an Arduino, wired up identically to how it would be installed on the layout. After testing the code I’d written, I made a couple of tweaks. The final code is as per below:
#include <Servo.h>
#include <OneButton.h>
//Below variables are for the Water Tower serv
WOW! Great work and well written tutorial!
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Thank you very much for sharing this interesting (and inspirational) project.
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-Kevin
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