Using Real Steel & Faux Metal to Fabricate Sawatzky’s Theme Park Train

Coastal Enterprises, manufacturers of Precision Board HDU, is proud to announce a series of guest blogs written by Dan Sawatzky of Imagination Corporation, posted to the Precision Board Blog each month.

This month Dan Sawatzky tells us how he created a cartoonish-looking steam-powered train out of real steel and 30lb Precision Board HDU coated to look like rusted metal for a theme park.  Dan’s work is so good that you can’t tell what’s actually metal and what is faux steel.  Read on to see why Sawatzky used a combination of metal & HDU made to look like metal for his train and how he pulled it all off.

train

In Dan Sawatzky’s own words…

I thought I’d do an article on a train I built six years ago. It was done for a mini golf park which we designed. Now, the golf park has been closed to make way for a housing development. The train and all the other features we built for the golf park have been carefully removed and will be reused in another project which is soon to be built. I had a chance to look over the features this past summer. They are holding up great – a testament to how well Precision Board holds up!

The old steam-powered locomotives have long been a personal favourite. A number of years ago, just after we got our MultiCam, I got the chance to build a slightly cartoonized version. It was challenging, but a whole lot of fun!

train

While a fair amount of the train engine would be built of welded steel, Shay locomotives have a lot of intricate details which I knew would route perfectly from 30 lb Precision Board. The router would speed things up a whole bunch and once painted with a rusting paint would be impossible to tell from the real thing.

I first did a scale concept drawing. This was approved by the customer. I would scale up the concept to create a locomotive that was about eight feet long and six feet tall. I imported the concept sketch into EnRoute to create the vector drawings I would need for the routing files.  Many of the pieces needed to be layered to get the heavy duty ‘castings’ I needed. The bulk of the bigger pieces were routed from 2” thick 30 lb Precision Board. The wheels were routed from 3” thick board. The balance of the smaller pieces were routed from 1” thick 30 lb board. Since this was to be a static display even the train rails were routed from Precision Board. There were more than a hundred pieces in all.

 

I routed the wheels first so I could begin building the frame of the train while the rest were running. I mocked up the pieces first to make sure it looked right, then when I was happy, I welded things into place securely.

The boiler of the train was made with scrap sections of pipe. The bulk of the upper portion of the train was made of steel for strength. The routed bits were fastened to this structure. Most of the train was assembled in place on the train to facilitate finishing in a logical order.

I painted the Precision Board with a reactive iron paint and with a little spritz of the activator (a mild acid) the rust quickly formed on the Precision Board pieces as well as the raw steel components I used. It was impossible to tell which was real steel and which was not.

Once each assembly was finished I moved on to the next, working my way up the train.

While I was working on the train we learned the sad news that our niece was still born. I decided to name the little locomotive in her honour. A special name plate was created and mounted on the back of the cab.

train

I had been collecting old rusty chains for quite some time and this was the perfect place to use them. The jewelry was the perfect touch to make the train look real! The smokestack was the last piece added. We had it custom-made in a local machine shop as they had the necessary equipment.

The train was numbered with the numeral two as I often do. The reason is that I am the second child in my family. This is my way of signing my work.

Once complete the train was loaded onto our little flat deck trailer and hauled to our customer’s work site. He had a giant excavator waiting and in a few minutes the train was sitting high on the trestle he had built for the purpose. I built a log car in the same fashion which was lifted up onto the trestle and placed behind the locomotive.

 

The train acted as a feature and giant sign for the golf park and served the project well for the last six years. Soon it will be re-erected in a new location to continue to delight guests for many years to come.

 

train

Sawatzky’s Imagination Corporation is a small family company that specializes in the design and creation of dimensional signs and environments. They tackle projects of any size from small signs to entire theme parks. Their work has garnered numerous national and international awards.

Dan Sawatzky is best described as a creative force and visual storyteller extraordinaire. His art career spans almost fifty years of magic. Dan’s passion is to design and create imaginative places that take people from the normal world to a setting of delight and wonder.

Coastal Enterprises manufactures Precision Board HDU, a versatile, cost-effective and eco-friendly urethane sign material that is particularly effective for making professional-looking indoor and outdoor dimensional signs.  It is a closed-cell rigid substrate that does not rot, warp or crack.  You can request free samplesget a quote or sign up for periodic newsletters packed with helpful information.

Whoa, go, whistle and ring controls

Each evening and some time on weekends I sneak back out to the shop to work on my personal project – the little rail truck for the Persnickety and Doodle Railway. Progress has been rapid of late but there’s a whole lot of pieces to fabricate and then weld in place. Cables need to be hooked up and tested, fastened permanently in place and then adjusted to work perfectly.

There have been a LOT of pieces of sheet metal and plate to cut for this project. In the picture below there are more than seventy different plasma cut pieces of steel visible. There are hundreds more custom designed pieces in the vehicle. The MultiCam CNC plasma machine has been getting a good workout!

In the first shot below I have hooked up the throttle. It was the last of the controls to be done. In the picture the throttle is the lever nearest to the pickup box. The large ratcheted handle on the running board is the Johnson bar. This controls the variable speed transmission. Pushing the bar forward moves the truck in that direction and pulling it back reverses the vehicle. The top forward lever is the brake control, complete with ratchet and T handle. Pushing it forward activates the disc brake on the rear axle. If I leave the ratchet engaged it acts as a hand brake.

On the other side of the driver’s cab is the sidecar where my little passengers will ride. Between the cockpits are two noise levers which can be easily reached by either occupant. The rear handle operates the bell. Simply pushing and pulling it swivels the bell and the more vigorously it is pumped the louder and more frequent the noise. I suspect this is going to be very popular with the little ones. The forward lever is a little harder to reach (by design). Pulling it back controls the whistle lever and activates the antique brass whistle which is powered by compressed air. The five gallon compressed air tank resides under the truck seat. It is VERY LOUD! 

With the controls now all installed and functioning it is time to design, fabricate and install the brackets for the gauges and the whistle. Stay tuned…

Published with permission from precisionboard.blogspot.com. Source.

What can’t you build?

Even though our shop has limited metal working tools there is little we can’t accomplish with a little head scratching and ingenuity. I had great fun figuring out how to design, cut and fit the many pieces together to craft the little passenger rail car. In this case I didn’t even need a sketch but instead designed as I went, imagining how it would all fit together. Once the vector drawings were done I sent the files to the MultiCam for cutting. The lower sections were cut from 1/4″ steel plate and the top seat riser was done from 1/10″ thick steel plate.

To keep things simple I used a 1/4 section of 6″ steel pipe for the back corners of the seat. It was much easier to weld those pieces in than bend up that tight a radius by far. I bent and welded a piece of 5/8″ steel rod along the top to provide strength and provide a rounded edge to make it safer. I have a few more welds and a little grinding to finish this thing off. Then it is time for a test run!

Published with permission from precisionboard.blogspot.com. Source.

Re-thionking the passenger car

With the little rail truck now substantially complete and running it is time to turn my attention to other pieces of the railroad. The truck has room for a driver and one small passenger but when we have company that is not nearly enough capacity. The truck needed to pull a vehicle that could carry more passengers.

We had previously built an ore car which seated four passengers but this was long before we had our MultiCam CNC plasma cutter. Although very functional, it looked very boxy and plain compared to the truck. It was time to rethink the whole deal.

I decided to do a total redesign. I removed the wheel sets from the ore car, took careful measurements and then drew up a whole new concept. I decided two passengers was big enough and they needed to face forward. An air tank was also necessary as the truck will soon sport a whistle which will operate on compressed air. And it needed to be completely different and act as a trailer to the little rail truck. After trying a number of ideas I settled on a tandem trailer. It would sport a swivel axle to avoid the problems I encountered with the double axle truck.

With the concept as reference I drew up the vectors for all of the components in EnRoute. There were lots of pieces! Once I had the files in hand it was a simple matter to load the step onto the machine and watch it cut the pieces perfectly.
I then did a little grinding to clean up the edges before fitting the pieces together and welding them up. The work was done in small assemblies. It looks complex but things actually went together pretty quickly. The springs, swing arms and axle hubs are non -functioning and are just for looks. working with small assemblies  made handling the pieces a whole lot easier.
Once all of the assemblies were done I fit them together and did the last welding. There’s a lot of steel in this piece and I needed the forklift to take it from the welding table and around to the track. Next up is the frame and then the body for the car. Stay tuned…

Published with permission from precisionboard.blogspot.com. Source.

Re-thinking the passenger car

With the little rail truck now substantially complete and running it is time to turn my attention to other pieces of the railroad. The truck has room for a driver and one small passenger but when we have company that is not nearly enough capacity. The truck needed to pull a vehicle that could carry more passengers.

We had previously built an ore car which seated four passengers but this was long before we had our MultiCam CNC plasma cutter. Although very functional, it looked very boxy and plain compared to the truck. It was time to rethink the whole deal.

I decided to do a total redesign. I removed the wheel sets from the ore car, took careful measurements and then drew up a whole new concept. I decided two passengers was big enough and they needed to face forward. An air tank was also necessary as the truck will soon sport a whistle which will operate on compressed air. And it needed to be completely different and act as a trailer to the little rail truck. After trying a number of ideas I settled on a tandem trailer. It would sport a swivel axle to avoid the problems I encountered with the double axle truck.

With the concept as reference I drew up the vectors for all of the components in EnRoute. There were lots of pieces! Once I had the files in hand it was a simple matter to load the step onto the machine and watch it cut the pieces perfectly.

I then did a little grinding to clean up the edges before fitting the pieces together and welding them up. The work was done in small assemblies. It looks complex but things actually went together pretty quickly. The springs, swing arms and axle hubs are non -functioning and are just for looks. working with small assemblies  made handling the pieces a whole lot easier.
Once all of the assemblies were done I fit them together and did the last welding. There’s a lot of steel in this piece and I needed the forklift to take it from the welding table and around to the track. Next up is the frame and then the body for the car. Stay tuned…

Published with permission from precisionboard.blogspot.com. Source.