The Home Machinist!

Steve Goodbody wrote:Again, thank you and you're very welcome. I just hope that my rambling isn't too tedious.

Don't worry about that! I, for one, enjoy reading how people have built their engines and how they have overcame different difficulties and their prospectives on how to build a locomotive.

Here are another few pictures which will wrap things up for a while, they are pretty self-explanatory.

The boiler is steel with expanded copper tubes and is a heavy lump, the method used to lift it into the frames was crude but worked well. A hoist was mounted to the rafters in the basement ceiling and the lifting beam was simply some 'holey' square channel bought off-the shelf at a home improvement store. Lifting bolts were turned and threaded to fit the washout holes at the firebox end and a wooden plug fashioned to fit inside the smokebox so that the front could be lifted through the chimney (stack) hole. The many holes in the lifting beam meant that the exact fore-aft position of the beam, and the relative location of the lifting eye, could be adjusted and fine tuned to bring the whole thing into balance.

The cylinder and valve chest drains are straightforward brass taper plug cocks with phosphor-bronze plugs. The crossheads have hard brass slipper inserts with oil grooves for the slidebar bearing faces.

The expansion links are machined from ground high carbon steel. The curved slots were milled by mounting the blanks to a pivot bar, the movement of that pivot bar being controlled by the vertical slide. For any machining job it's important that everything is rigid and tightly controlled, but this is not always easy to achieve on an old and relatively light lathe. As with all such jobs the setup and jigs took several days to figure out and make yet the actual machining and finishing of the expansion links took only a few hours in total. The links were hardened and tempered after machining.

Once again, thanks to all and happy machining.
Steve

It's been a few years since I updated this post, here are a few pictures showing progress with the valves, gauges, fittings and piping to date.

The pictures of the smokebox spark arrestor may be of interest - it is held in place by a single thumbscrew at the base of the petticoat making it easy to remove for cleaning, I hope!

Spark arrestor Smokebox - steam pipe isolation valve (for pressure testing) Vacuum ejector exhaust inside petticoat pipe Spark arrestor installed Some more pictures to follow,
Best regards
Steve

Beautiful job Steve. What injector is that?
Have you run it yet?
Fred V

Hi Fred - thanks.

The injectors are self-made, the cone configurations are to the DAG Brown design and the bodies are based on my own preference and the need to have a side inlet for the water feed.

Have not test-steamed the engine yet, hopefully this year.
Best regards
Steve

OK, looks more prototypical than what I did. I just used available injectors and mounted them on the side like that.

A guy in the UK had me change the hanging point of the expansion link. He moved the point further back from the slot. That seems to be the opposite from what they are saying on the "Stephenson slide valve" thread. Mine runs like lightening so I guess it's OK.

What is the notched lever hanging down below the brake valve?

I will be very interested to hear how yours runs.

Hi Fred - I can't remember if your loco is the Milner or Don Young 4 inch scale design? I've heard that the valve gear on one of these designs can benefit from modification but can't recall which one. The valve events on the Elidir design seem good while bench-running on air, time will tell how it performs on the track however.

The notched lever is the steam brake valve - it's a modified version of the Martin Evans progressive application design for Highlander. The original design uses a rotary handle, I've modified it to a more prototypical-looking pull to apply, push to release version.

Best regards
Steve

Really the most, to say the least!
Jack

Many thanks Jack - not up to your standards but I do my best!
Best regards
Steve