The Home Machinist!

I just swept out my shop for the first time in a while. :oops: 70 pounds of swarf plus the 70 pounds of completed loco parts means mine is at 50% efficiency. :mrgreen: Get a dog. You'll be guaranteed to keep the shop floor as clean as possible. Dog paws and metal chips don't go well together!

As a related question to add to the mix, for my Allen mogul I am not using the cast aluminum smokebox, but rather a section of the pipe the boiler will be made out of. The Allen casting has the petticoat cast into it; therefore, I have no petticoat at the moment. There's probably a thousand answers ...

Specialty Tool Steel in Suwanee. Walt or Les are really helpful. Greg That's pretty close to me. Can you walk in and order over-the-counter, or do you need to call in ahead of time? It seems like it's always the case where you suddenly discover you don't have that piece of stock you thought you had.

Paul Pool, the gentleman who owns Plum Cove, is one of the nicest, outgoing, proud people I've met in the hobby. He visits our railroad twice a year and is always great to visit with. His little electric box cabs are pretty much indestructible; two of our members have bought them from him. If you ev...

Another suggestion I'd like to make would be the type of rail joiners you can use. At the old North Georgia Live Steamers track we used fish plates, bolts, and nylon lock nuts. This meant quite a bit of time to shear the fish plates themselves (they were 1/8" x 3/8" x 3 1/2" aluminum)...

Fred, The number of flues and size are the end result of conversations with Don Fite, Kevin Doe, and Bob Harpur. I went with nine 3/4" i.d. tubes because there's no real benefit of having more smaller tubes. Bob's building a locomotive right now that has three tubes, one of which is, if I remem...

To elaborate a bit on grades, radii, and track construction: It's best to invest in -- or find someone with -- a transit and "shoot" your layout before you pick up a shovel. You want to combine all of the following for your railroad: ease of construction, slightest grade, widest radius cur...

Greetings everyone. Some of you I already know, but many of you I've never met. I've been in the hobby since around 1982 when my father and I stumbled upon the North Georgia Live Steamers railroad in Duluth, Georgia. It was at this exact moment that my father completely forgot that he owned HO and O...

If you haven't machined the cylinder head yet, you could always include that "oops" area in it.

I'm wondering if you're going to have enough surface area left there for a good seal between the head and the cylinder.

Congrats, Fred. Looks fantastic! Now load her up and bring her to Canton so we can all get a closer look (and some throttle time!).