The Home Machinist!

Years ago, I started collecting Plano boxes. Menards stopped carrying these. Can find similar at Walmart in the fishing dept. These boxes are great for organizing fasteners and other parts. Get the containers with the moveable dividers...larger/longer parts can be stored in these containers as well...

By starting out small, I hope that it will increase my chances of actually finishing the locomotive, assuming that life does not get in the way too much. Life WILL get in the way! By starting small, and starting NOW (instead of some imaginary future date when you have loads of free time) you will h...

With the reversing lever coming along, I needed a spot to attach it to the chassis. The holes for the supporting bracket had been drilled in the frame years ago, and now they were finally getting used. The laser-cut reversing lever parts needed to be welded together, which was a pretty simple job. A...

Harold, I must agree. Lesson learned.

That is good to know.

While he worked on that, I used a belt sander and some files to round over the reversing lever handle portion to a more pleasing and comfortable profile too. Then, I had to assemble what we had done so far to see how it looked. Reversing Quadrant-14.JPG Then, we moved on to the reversing stand suppo...

As the valve gear progressed it became obvious that I would need to start working on the reversing lever / Johnson bar assembly. Otherwise, what would it all connect to? The reversing lever is set on a stand with two round bars at the top into which notches are cut for the lever to drop into. While ...

Wow, that is super helpful! Thanks John!

Thank you!

Excuse my ignorance please! I am building a Sweet William engine that uses Hackworth valve gear. It is being built to plans when possible, though a couple of the dimensions in the frame and such were a little "off" which means it is possible that when it comes time to connecting all the valve gear p...

Does anyone know how different the designs are between the two available model? Is Sweet William (Jack Buckler design) the same thing as the MEG (Dougal Hubner design). They look very similar. Save valve gear and such. JP I am not sure if you meant "save" and "same" in your last sentence, but as so...

It might not matter to you if you plan to use link and pin couplers, but the Allen models coupler pocket casting is for couplers with really small shanks. The Allen couplers fit their coupler pocket castings, but I don't think most other brands of couplers will unless you machine down the shanks qui...