The Freight Elevator Project

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Neidrauer Adventures Photo Album and Blog » The Freight Elevator Project

!In Progress! It's my goal to finish my Mikado locomotive in 2010. One key milestone will be getting the locomotive out of basement. I plan to do this by fabricating my own freight elevator for the stairwell opening during the winter of 2010. H. Graham has completed the engineering, provided 16 pages of drawings and turned the fabrication over to me.

21-Nov-09 Howard had so much fun cutting the inspection hole, he kept going and opened up the rest of rough opening needed to provide vertical clearance. Demolition is so much fun!

Bill and Howard feign suprise at what the inspection hole reveals.

23-Jan-2010 Before fabrication can begin, you need the raw stock. In this case, 24 pieces of 3,4 and 5 inch widths need to be cut from this 3/8

23-Jan-10 I spend the morning fabricating a trolly for my torch since I cannot cut straight lines freehand and there is not a lot of wiggle room for error.

Operators side view of the torch trolley. Yes, that is a trailing truck for my 3/4

21-Mar-10 Dad uses a portable circular saw to rip the studs down while I hold the vacume cleaner nozzle in an attempt to contain the dust and dirt.

Completing the rip cut in the stud.

21-Mar-10 Putting 2x2 sleepers in so we can hang drywall. In a bit of recycling of our own, we reused the studs we removed from the stairwell opening.

Denis has fun with the camera and catches and action shot of dad. :)

At the end of the day Sunday, the opening is rough drywalled in!

The stairwell opening after a coat of mud.

One of the things Mom & Dad & I did while they were visiting was stopping by the steel supplier to pick up my order. Here I've laid out the cuts for the bandsaw to work on.

27-Mar-10 After probably 4 hours of band-saw time, I've got the metal stock cut and ready for machining. Also today, Brian Miller from Miller Machining stopped out at the track and dropped off the screw nuts he made for me. They fit perfectly on the acme threaded rod and I am so happy!

The 7/8

I worked on the other parts. Here I'm drilling holes for the floor mount. I'm all proud that I used a vise stop for quick locating of the other plates, making it quicker to drill the holes.

The Joist brackets are drilled using the same vise-stop arrangement.

I used a hole saw to cut the 2

I had to use the fly-cutter to finish the bore to size.

After putting threads on the other end of all four the acme rods, Bill prepares the end for a shaft extension I have to weld on. We will screw the shaft into the rod, then also weld it.

I work on the the lower bearing support bracket.

Using a hole saw to cut a 1

31-Mar-10 Using a dial indicator with a large button back to center the threaded rod in the 4-Jaw chuck. As we rotate the chuck, the indicator moves off the thread top, requiring us to move the carriage.

We have 5 feet of rod hanging off the end of the spindle. Since we don't want that to whip around bending or breaking things, Bill made a close fitting aluminum collar. It's a snug fit in the spindle, but a looser fit on the threaded rod. The collar hold the rod nicely. Unfortunately, this outboard end of the spindle is slightly bent, so the rod wobbles anyhow.

Turning down the end of the rod to take the thrust bearings using a tool holder my brother gave me.

12-May-10 Bill rough machines the screw shaft extensions. He wishes my little Clausing lathe would move the carriage and compound simultanously to produce a 45 degree cut, but the angle is more like 25 degees. He cuts the 45 degree bevel by hand.

Here's a shop tip: we want the bevel go from the 1-1/8

Here are the shaft extensions threaded onto the end of the screw, ready for welding.

The end of the screw with threaded receiver and beveled end for welding.

My solution to providing a clamp grounding point which still allows me to roll the screw.

The welding roller setup, using the boiler as a workbench.

I use a couple of bearings at the other end so the screw will roll when I turn it.

This setup turns out to be overly complex. The screw will roll with little resistance just setting in the vee-block. I end up threading a nut on the end of the screw to keep the bearings from falling off, but really a large wash would suffice.

What a SMAW (MIG) weld looks like without cover gas. Utterly terrible and unacceptable!

After I turned the gas bottle on, turned down the heat and wire feed rate, things got a lot better! The shaft extension has been welded to the screw. Next step: machine the extension to size.

24-April-10 It's not much to look at, but here is the stairwell with completed modifications and a sand-texture paint job. The ceiling is now squared off (not sloping), the sand swirl texture applied and a finish coat of

16-June-10 Bill cleans the burr off the stock

Parting off the bearing spacers

The 4 bearing spaces and the leftover stock. The spaces will be machined to final thickness in another operation.

9-June-10 Finished Lower bearing support brackets and upper bearing keepers.

19-May-10 We needed to set the length of all four screws to an equal amount, so we resorted to a 'poor mans' height gage. We scribed a line on all four screws with a HSS scriber on the top of the shelves.

Here's how we used the scriber and the line made on the shaft (inside the circle)

A closeup of the hand ground scriber

We used a blown up cutoff tool to make the scriber.

19-May-20 The big Rahn-Larmon lathe works again. Here Bill had turned down the welded portion smooth for the lower bearing seat, then cut the shoulder for the sprocket.

23-June-10 workholding clamps to weld the baseplate.

Once again, the engine/boiler stand is pressed into service to hold the 93

The base plates are tack-welded to the bottom of the pipes. It was a pain grinding the ends square so the pipes would stand up (mostly) straight.

Top shot of the upper brackets tack welded on.

A Vee-block to hold the pipe, magnet to hold the lower bearing bracket and using the screw and brearing to keep it in line with the top bearing plate.

A temporary assembly to position the upper bearing support plate for tack welding.

Here's how it looks from the bottom up. I am using a piece of 7 inch C-channel sitting on top of the boiler on the yellow engine stand as a welding table. Sure beats welding on the floor on my hands and knees!

Clearing a space around the stairs, I position the legs on the corners to see how things are shaping up.

Using a machined plug to locate the upper bearing keeper on the upper bearing plate.

7-July-10 A post with the screw temporarily assembled, put in place for show and tell later in the week.

Upper assembly

Lower assembly