New member from Texas thinking about a K36 (or 37)

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k36no4862002
Posts: 151
Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2009 4:27 pm
Location: Surrey, UK

Re: New member from Texas thinking about a K36 (or 37)

Post by k36no4862002 »

All,
As the builder and owner of a 2.5" scale 71/4 K36 in the UK I can confirm the following. With no water coal or driver in the engine weighs 1.5tones, y trailer is a boxed in tilt be car transporter trailer with a capacity of 2 tones. The tilt bed is handy as I can unload straight onto the ground if i need to, but I could do with a bigger winch to get it back up! I tow it behind a 2004 Nissan Navara 2.5TD with no problems.

The engine is 14 feet long, 24" wide and about 36" high I think. It will go around a 40 foot radius curve (just) and is very easy to drive, it has fully equalised leaf spring suspension to include he front and rear pony trucks. It has derailed but we can usually rerail in 10 mins by using long pry bars and blocks of wood 3 people are needed. We run it on 25mm by 12mm flat bar track with no issues and axle loadings are probably less than our passenger cars.

The loco took 4 years to build (when I was free and single) and that was maybe 5 nights a week and 1 day every weekend, the boiler construction was outsourced to a professional. The only castings on it are the cylinders, domes and stack. Everything else is fabricated from stock.

I do have some drawings but they are rough and many reworkes were needed and detail was added from photo's. It's easy to drive and very forgiving on poor firing and seems to just keep on going.

There is a good video of it here.

I was once told by someone when I started - " build what you want to build, if you build something as a test you A may never finish it and give up and B if you really want a K36 then you will have a lot more enthusiasm to build it and finish it" - so I did, I now want and Challenger - Dobwalls style so I'm building that now - should have a running chassis is 2018! The K36 was my first steam loco, because thats what I wanted.

Good Luck with whatever you choose.

Video link below, the load it's pulling in the video is a standard load, we have not yet really found it's limit, I'm sure you can find more pics on the web if you need them
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmzJpwjfC14

Paul

the loco is very easy to drive
Paul Edmonds,
Surrey, United Kingdom.
2.5" Scale D&RGW K36, 1/6" Scale Challenger 4-6-6-4 (nearly done!!)
alco2350
Posts: 37
Joined: Tue Jan 02, 2018 7:20 pm
Location: Houston, Texas

Re: New member from Texas thinking about a K36 (or 37)

Post by alco2350 »

That is a beautiful locomotive! Where did you get the drawings?

Britt
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Bill Shields
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Re: New member from Texas thinking about a K36 (or 37)

Post by Bill Shields »

There is some logic to building what you want...but then there is a long history of 'biting off more than you can chew'....especially when you don't knw what the chewing entails.
Too many things going on to bother listing them.
alco2350
Posts: 37
Joined: Tue Jan 02, 2018 7:20 pm
Location: Houston, Texas

Re: New member from Texas thinking about a K36 (or 37)

Post by alco2350 »

Kind of like eating menudo, the more you chew the bigger it gets in your mouth.

Britt

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k36no4862002
Posts: 151
Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2009 4:27 pm
Location: Surrey, UK

Re: New member from Texas thinking about a K36 (or 37)

Post by k36no4862002 »

When i build loco's i try to think of them as lots of little projects in their own right, that way the entire project does not overwhelm me and I can see my progress and keep the momentum going piece or sub assembly by sub assembly. The Challenger that I'm doing has been just like that, 10 years of drawings and parts, only last year did I get the frames and start to put pieces together, (some did not fit) and some need a bit of a rework but I had a great time in making the pumps and cylindes wheels etc etc and treated each section a a project in itself.

The drawings were from a company that went bust back in 2005 who took a Curwen loco and copied it when they had it in for a service. The drawings were not great and some of the parts needed redesigning from the beginning such as the valve gear, other areas of interest were that when I added up all the individual elements of the frame drawing, it came to more than the length of the overall frame dimension on the drawing and so on.

I might have some copies but I would need to check, I suspect that there may be a better set in the US, you can always simplify them if needed, make the loco and add the detail after, items such as frames can be quite basic and still function just as well, is does however depend on how close to the real thing you want to make it.
Paul Edmonds,
Surrey, United Kingdom.
2.5" Scale D&RGW K36, 1/6" Scale Challenger 4-6-6-4 (nearly done!!)
alco2350
Posts: 37
Joined: Tue Jan 02, 2018 7:20 pm
Location: Houston, Texas

Re: New member from Texas thinking about a K36 (or 37)

Post by alco2350 »

Thanks for the reply. There are a full set of scale drawings available, but they're way out of my price range. I choked when I saw it.

Britt

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Mountaineer
Posts: 276
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 4:45 pm
Location: Canada

Re: New member from Texas thinking about a K36 (or 37)

Post by Mountaineer »

If you're talking about Tom Miller's drawings being expensive? Yes they are, but Tom did a magnificent job on them and IMHO they are worth a good price. Esp considering the amount of time a guy would need to replicate what he's accomplished.

Mountaineer.
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