Iron And Steam Industries LLC, Los Angeles, CA (2026)

02/20/2026

This is something I did not make, my wife did. I had these pieces laser cut, and she drilled and riveted each and every hole. It came out to about 200 rivets for both panels. She also trimmed the rivets to size using a fixture I made for her.

Whenever she wants to help in the shop, I find work that she can do on her own. That means I will make fixtures and tooling that makes the task repeatable and require little input from me. For example, the rivet shortening fixture allowed her to trim about 40 rivets at a time using the belt sander (second photo). There are holes drilled in the sheet metal to seat the rivets. The holes were drilled using a fixture I 3D printed.

I am fortunate my wife is willing to help out in the shop because it means I can do other work in the shop.

These are panels for the cab on my 10 wheeler locomotive. I wanted the cab to reflect the prototype. These will go over the existing cab panels. I will powder coat and put decals on these panels to reflect the prototype.

02/11/2026

Today was a day of learning. A lot of learning what not to do to be specific. I took a piece of scrap metal and cut some grooves in it with my rotary tool. This simulated cracks to be filled on the toolbox. I cut the grooves at various depths to see how the filler material would behave. I tried JB weld as well as a low melting silver solder. I found both did a fine job filling in the grooves.

This experiment was to see what performed better at filling cracks for powder coat. I will say, the silver solder is much harder to file down to blend with the parent material. It is also harder to control due to the liquid nature of it. When I did get the solder to flow, it sealed the cracks well. It is also very expensive and time consuming to prep the material.

I placed the test article in the oven after powder coat and found the JB weld sort of worked. There was a faint coating over the epoxy, but it was very visible underneath the powder. If I were to try this again, I would make the groove shallower. It was about .02” deep, and I think the thickness of the epoxy inhibits how much powder will stick to it. For surface scratches, this may be an acceptable filler.

After these tests, I decided to go the easier route and paint this toolbox. I prefer powder coat due to its robustness and relatively easy preparation, but in this case, paint won out. Also, the box is steel, and I have good luck getting paint to stick to steel. It will be more prep work, but I felt I would have to do the same amount of prep work either way since there were low spots. Since I am not familiar with the two above processes, I did not have the confidence the results would be consistent. The main advantage of painting is I could use glaze putty, which is inexpensive and forgiving to use.

I put some putty on the lid and gave it a first coat, and the results were less than stellar. For some reason a lot of crud got on the lid inside the paint booth, so it came out textured. Typing this out, I have reason to believe it may have been residual powder the fan was kicking up. Oops. There were some file marks that were deeper than I thought and the paint did not fill them. Also, some of the solder did not blend as well into the parent material as I thought. I cut my losses on that and stripped the paint off and went back to body filling and sanding.

After a bit of filling and sanding, they are ready to paint next time I am in the shop. While I did not make as much progress on this as I had hoped, I am looking at this with the perspective of lessons learned for future parts and how to go about preparing them for painting and powder coat. For welded steel parts I will probably paint them with Bondo, and brass parts will get the powder coat treatment for sure.

I did powder coat the hinge rod and nuts, so I was able to complete that!

02/03/2026

Beautiful Berkshire locmototive making its way thru the main area. During the Fall Meet 2025.

01/27/2026

Some photos I have been hoarding from the Fall Meet 2025. I really enjoyed seeing the 1" and 3/4" scale engines. There are not a ton of engines in that scale in the West Coast. That Skookum engine was a highlight at my time at the track, see first photo.

01/21/2026

Next on the docket is a toolbox. I had a sheet metal shop cut and bend up the shapes. I welded the corners up and blended them with a file and rotary tool. To maintain a consistent radius, I had a radius gauge to check my work. I was pleased with the results. I will warn those about carbide burrs, or rotary files. They leave small splinters that get everywhere, so clean thoroughly. If cutting steel, have a strong magnet to pull them out of your skin.

I had a couple low spots in the welds, so I went over them with more weld and filed the profile.

Unfortunately, some of the bends had some cracking. This is due to tight radius bends, and the grain of the sheet metal can also play a factor. If the grain runs parallel to the radius instead of perpendicular, you can get surface cracks. Some of the cracks were shallow, and filing got rid of them. There was one area that had deeper cracks, and that will require grinding, welding, and filing.

The lid was made taller to allow the brake to bend the sheet metal. I used a cutoff wheel to shorten the lid, and a mill to get the edges to a consistent height.

The hinge for the lid is a 1/8th diameter rod with 5-40 threads on either end. I cut the rod with the band saw, then took it over to the lathe and faced to length. While in the collet, I ran a die over the ends .25” on both sides.

Next, I needed some hardware. I made some nuts from allen wrench stock. I heated them up to cherry red and let it air cool. This anneals the steel and makes it machinable. This is a trick from Kozo when making model hardware. The hex stock was drilled and tapped for 5-40. I put a 30-degree chamfer to break the points and parted them off in the lathe. The nuts were then turned around in the lathe for facing and chamfering.

Next, the parts will be cleaned and prepped for powder coat.

12/15/2025

New from Iron and Steam Industries

Coupler Release Rod Stanchion

Stanchion for coupler release rod on a locomotive tender. Material is 316 stainless steel. The overall dimensions are 1.175" wide x .8" deep x 1.67" tall. This is intended for a 2.5" scale locomotive. The bore for the release rod is intended for a .188" diameter rod. The mounting holes are about .164" in diameter. This would be a great addition to any locomotive!

$18.00

https://ironandsteamindustries.org/shop/ols/products/coupler-release-rod-stanchion

11/25/2025

I'm describing my second attempt at making a filler hatch. The results are okay, I think the fixture worked better the second time, but there is room for improvement.

11/18/2025

I thought I'd add a quick video of a K-27 rolling through Los Angeles's Live Steamers Fall meet 2025

10/25/2025

The other weekend I had the opportunity to operate some full size equipment . They call it Hands on History. I was at the throttle of engine 250, a large diesel that was part of the Southern Pacific fleet. I was pulling a consist of 4 gondolas and a caboose.

This was a great opportunity to try my hand at the real deal. I learned a lot from the engineers assisting me with this experience. They were quite knowledgeable and willing to share their knowledge of the equipment and the railway. I learned about the braking system, which has been a gray spot in my knowledge of train operation.

I got there a little early and got to watch the crew put the train together and ask them about the process of getting the train ready for operation.

You take the train thru the mountains and across several crossings, and even thru tunnels! On the return trip you get a lot of experience using the automatic brakes getting the train back to the yard in a safe manner. You forget how many tons are rolling behind you until the speedometer creeps up on even the smallest of grades.

Afterwards I went to the backshop and engine shop to tour the facility. It is incredible most of the equipment has been their since the railway was operable.

I never thought I would have an opportunity to do something like this in my life, and it is great to see the museum offer this. They do have steam engines you can operate too, but at the time they were down for maintenance. I plan to go back when they are operable and try my hand at steam.

I would like to thank the Nevada Northern Railway Museum staff and the train crew for this wonderful opportunity.

10/19/2025

Today I made a handle for the tender water fill hatch. First item is making the little ears.
I did hand layout for these pieces. I measured the hole spacing and punched center marks. Next, I took a compass and traced the radius on either end of the ear and connected the radii with straight lines.
These were put on the mill and their respective holes were drilled out. After deburring they were put in a vise and hand filed to finish.
Next was the handle itself. I annealed the brass rod before moving to bending. I did some calculations on how much I needed for the handle and the bend locations and marked them on rod. I had a junk transfer punch so I made a bending die for the rod using the lathe. I also referenced this wonderful article from Chris Hollands about bending tube as well. The other end of the bending fixture is a vee block. The material was bent using the drill press as an arbor.
Because these parts are so small, silver soldering them will be a challenge. I made a fixture. I machined a groove to lock the ears in in position and I tapped some #4 threads to bolt it to the fixture plate. I fluxed the rod and the ears and I clipped some small portions of silver solder and place them around the handle.
Silver soldering did not go as well as I had hoped and I think the main problem is I had too thick of a fixture so the parts would not get hot enough to melt the silver solder. I made the unfortunate mistake to move the torch from under the angle iron onto the part and I melted the handle.
That required a new handle to be made-up, but on the plus side, the second handle came out closer to the desired dimension.
The next step will be to cut the horizontal leg of the solder fixture and thin it out so it is not a big heat sink.

Link for tube bending:https://www.chaski.org/homemachinist/viewtopic.php?t=87725&hilit=the+art+of+bending+tube

10/01/2025

I finished some polling pockets the other day. This one of them mocked up. I hope to have a more in depth discussion about them soon and on other platforms.

09/15/2025

Final coat of paint. I'm really pleased with the results. The brass trim on top is always difficult to get paint to stick to.

Iron And Steam Industries LLC

02/20/2026

02/11/2026

02/03/2026

01/27/2026

01/21/2026

12/15/2025

11/25/2025

11/18/2025

10/25/2025

10/19/2025

10/01/2025

09/15/2025

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