Operating Water Tank

The inspiration for my water tank came from fellow modeler and good friend Bill Busacca who resides in Shelton, WA and models the RGS in Sn3 with MORE than a little talent! Bill subsequently wrote an article, which was published in the Narrow Gauge & Short Line Gazette in the September/October 1991 issue. If you want to see how this SHOULD be done, dig out that issue and have a look...!

The real beauty in this little project is the "Bang for the Buck": it is both relatively inexpensive and fairly simple to do. Around $20 and a morning should see it done.

The tank itself is a V&T Models kit that has been around for a number of years. The mechanism is a Switchmaster motor which is mounted to the tank floor with a RixRax bracket. I obtained the lines from a sporting goods store.

PHOTO 1 - RF View

This was taken with the camera sitting on the track, from about a foot or so away. If you look real carefully, you will spot some tubing that extends from the spout support frame through the wall of the tank. This is to prevent the lines from chafing and going fuzzy. A light application of beeswax to the lines might be a good idea as well, although I didn't think to do this myself.

PHOTO 2 - RF View - Spout going down!

This shows the spout almost all the way down. Full down position places it just above the tender deck on a C-16. Note that there are three lines that move with the spout, more about this later.

PHOTO 3 - Inside View

This shows an overview of the Switchmaster motor as mounted on a RixRax motor mount. This is attached to the tank floor support beams. The control arm attached to the motor shaft is a universal coupling that became surplus when I remotored and regeared a first generation K-37 a few years ago, similar in nature to Tom Troughton's recent project. So I know that at least Tom will have one of THESE around...! The control rod is soldered to this, and two screws extending out from the bracket serve as 'stops' to limit the desired range of motion. The spout is in the fully lowered position.

PHOTO 4 - Inside View - RHS Close-up

The spout is now in the raised position. You will note that there are small hooks adjacent to where the line leaves the tubing and enters the tank. Their purpose is to reduce any chafing of the lines on the edge of the tubing. Take a look at the third line up top. This line represents the line that goes to the control valve on the prototype tank to release or shut off the water supply. Obviously, this line has to be sufficiently long to allow the spout to fully descend. The Problem is that if this line is left sufficiently long, it bows out in a totally unrealistic manner when the spout is raised. The Solution: compromise a bit, and allow this line to retract when the spout is raised. A small nut (for weight) was attached to the end of this line, and it rises and falls inside the tank. Viewed from the outside this line is always under tension, which is NOT correct for 50% of the time.

PHOTO 5 - Inside View - Spout raised about halfway

The spout is about halfway up - or down, depending on your perspective! Note that the two lines attached to the spout are tied together, and clamped inside a small styrene block. I THINK that I cobbled this together out of some spare bits that came with the RixRax - if not, the construction is pretty basic: a pair of screws and nuts, plus some square styrene stock. The reason for tying the two lines together incidentally, is that this makes lateral alignment of the spout a WHOLE lot easier. Try it, and you'll see what I mean!

PHOTO 6 - Inside View - Close-up with spout fully lowered

In this view, the spout is fully lowered. You can see the tank valve line fully extended, with the nut used as a weight hanging off the wire loop used as a guide. Note that the two screws used as range-of-motion stops are in the RixRax guides, and you can fine tune your desired range by repositioning them along the slots.

PHOTO 7 - Close-up view - Spout Details

A close-up sure brings out details that should be fixed, doesn't it? Oh well...sigh...this view shows the tubing used to guide the various lines through the tank. Do NOT note that I have messed up the the frame at the top, splitting a chunk out of the stripwood where I drilled through for the tubing. The tank actually faces away from the aisle, so this has (obviously) not received high priority for repair...

GENERAL NOTES

The tank is powered by a 9 volt DC power supply that I already had in place to power a detection circuit. A DPDT toggle switch is used to control direction and is mounted on one of my mini-panels on the front fascia adjacent to the tank. Happy modeling! If I can be of any help to anyone, please feel free to contact me either 'On-List' or by personal email.

UPDATE - July 26, 2019

After building one of PBL's beautiful new water tank kits with the sound and animation module, it was time to upgrade! Given that the rigging was already done, this proved to be a relatively straight forward task.

PHOTO 8 - Starting point

The V&T model is a resin casting and modeled after the same size structure as the new PBL kit. I removed the old SwitchMaster motor and actuating arm assembly and just left the spout rigging loose.

PHOTO 9 - PBL sound and animation module assembly

The components for the sound and animation module were assembled as per the directions. I added a pice of 1/8" sheet styrene across the bottom to connect the two side supports and braced the joint with some 5/16" styrene angle stock which i had bought for another project

PHOTO 10 - Speaker enclosure

As you can see in Photo 8, there is no bottom in the V&T Models kit so it would have a hell of a time holding any water! From an acoustics point of view though, I decided to add a speaker enclosure to improve the sound which was a 1 1/4" ABS pipe cap. I cut a small notch in it to allow the wires to pass through.

PHOTO 11 - The finished product.

I mounted the sound and animation module, the speaker and its enclosure to the wooden framework with Aleene's Original Tacky Glue. Once everything has set up I then attached the operating threads to the spring retainer on the operating arm. The only other thing that I did was to insert a 4-pin microminiature plug + socket connector in line just under the layout to allow the structure to be removed for maintenance or protection as might be necessary.

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