The Home Machinist!

I tried Brian's method but the crs snapped when bent cold. Heating and bending hot worked. We built a crude jig we could use as a go-no go gauge while making the hot bends. Since then, when bending the running board brackets, I used the method Nelson Riedel describes on his wonderful site, and it wo...

Depends on your goal, minimizing cost or prototypical appearance. The railroads I've helped build have used 3" spacing because it is close to prototype spacing and is also easy to build jigs (you can use ties as spacers). It's overkill though in terms of support needed for steel rail, especiall...

http://www.themachineryworks.com/catalog/index.cfm should be the catalog page. I believe Howard is a member here.

Wonderful pics of the high line Greg, and also the full steaming bays. Greg E is right CP, just keep trying them. We were assembling and testing the bays and put a 4.75" car on one and said 'uh oh, this is sloppy as heck, how'd we miss this badly?' - then we remembered that was a 5" bay. O...

Fred, I know nothing about Hunslet front end issues, but the front end of that Morgan 3-wheeler lurking in the background is pretty darn cool.

Thanks for testing the 5" rail, Phil, it was greatly appreciated.

Someone else has posted video. The stationary engines are at around 11:00 and the highline at around 16:50.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuJ-fTGItJ8

I too look forward to this project too Mike. A couple of tablesaw safety suggestions from your photos: Putting a fingerboard on the outfeed side of the blade is going to want to close the kerf and potentially cause kickback. It seems safer to keep them on the infeed side only if you're creating an o...

People were having a great time giving Marty's loco a try at the St Croix meet, I hope a few people in the club get them to increase high line usage and hopefully maintenance. It ran all day on a single charge and easily took two adults around. H&NERY, I didn't know that was you this weekend. Br...

Biggest high line engine? Probably Jesse Kreb's narrow gauge Shay: P7084863.jpg Smallest high line engine? No question, Clayton Willcox's O scale Bassett-Lowke: P7095000.jpg By Saturday we were doing the St Croix long train thing. Matt Mason with 24 cars behind his 0-4-0 and an unseen Pennsy A3 as r...

It was surprising we were ready to go Wednesday, given we were still welding up steaming bays for the high line and then got 3" of rain in less than 3 hours Tuesday night. But a little early morning tree trimming which the neighbors could blame on the adjacent golf course meant people rolling i...

My opinion is Keith is spot-on, and unfortunately we won't have either the anti-tipping rails or the straddle cars done for this meet. There are other things that'll be undergoing trial by (coal) fire over the weekend too, we'll be looking for suggestions for improvement from attendees.

We can likely get Greg Easter to try this at the St Croix Small Scale Meet and report back. We're going to have to hand him jugs of water as he rolls by and see if he can refill his tank on the fly, as he has built an A3A with no tender.