The Home Machinist!

Gene, A good friend and long time restoration expert on the old Holt and Best crawler tractors shared with me one of his scecrets for replacement valve guides at an affordable cost. After a machine shop botched the job on a head rebuild job, he picked up a scrap Cummins diesel engine camshaft of the...

Good question and one that is seldom asked as many do not run their locomotives at night. Night running is a whole new experience as you need to be extra aware of what is going on around you. In full size practice, we always gave the trainee engineers some daylight experience before turning them loo...

Congratulations, making the decison to go into this hobby is a big one in itself. That decision is followed by many more decisions, many of them not so easy. Try not to make the decisions that you will live to regret later on. Once you have a good direction chosen, the decisions will become much eas...

Overflow pipe, so simple even a caveman can install one! Great idea that I plan on using in my new tender. No more wet tender tank tops. What series of stainless did you use for the tank material? Where the overflow pipe exits the tank bottom, did you disguise it to look like some sort of appliance ...

Nice job David.

Did you gas weld it or did you TIG weld the corner in?

Robert

Seeing is believing. It would be interesting to find the original factory order and see just how the engine was ordered and what degree of curve the engine was designed to operate on. Flangeless lead drivers on 4-4-0 types have been around since the 1880's and worked well or they would not have been...

Dave, Awesome presentation in bite size steps. This has served to fill in a few gaps that were never covered in foundry class at the university years ago. I have been finding out little bits here and there ever since but this has put all the pieces in the right place including where to find the mate...

James, Yes, that is the vary rare and elusive Locomotive valve pilot cam box. Few railroads used them and very few have survived on locomotives in museums. Photos do exist, and a few line drawings do exist. The big problem is no overall dimensions are included. The overall length is somewhere betwee...

Living Legend, Yes, Ed is a long time friend and mentor. I have known him since 1974 and visit his shop frequently. He too would like the information so he can put a valve pilot on his cab-forward. He has started to detail that engine after many years of running it. He does have a significant amount...

Yes, the Locomotive Cyclopedias are a wealth of information and several are in my collection of research materials. In most cases, the appliances and their respective drawings are shown with dimensioned drawings. Unfortunately, the Locomotive Valve Pilot pages are void of any dimensions. Lots of gre...

Rumor has it a Boston and Maine heavy Pacific is being restored to active service at Steamtown. This Pacific was one of the few of that type to be equipped with a Locomotive Valve Pilot. The valve pilot was a form of mechanical computer that helped the engineer operate the locomotive either for perf...

The LA area is not real user friendly for a cast iron foundry. We have one here in Modesto that moved up here from the LA area. They were able to get cheaper electric power for their big electric arc furnace and have fewer air compliance problems. Moving out of the valley into the hills where restri...