A quick update on the Manor...
The crossheads and conn rods are now fitted... and remarkably the loco still runs well.
This doesn't look like a vast amount of progress, but there was some tricky work involved... especially for someone who has never built a steam loco before.
I found assembling the crossheads pretty tricky, largely because their final 'I' shape means that there is no obvious place to apply the soldering iron to get a good 'flow' when you get to the last stage. I did one by trying to run solder in from the edges and the other by pre-tinning the layers. Both ways worked eventually but neither was easy and I had a layer come adrift and need refixing in both cases.
It's not practical to fit the conn rods without biting the bullet and actually soldering on the washers to the front crankpins. Until these are filed flat there is not enough room for the pins to clear the conn rods... regular steam loco builders please excuse me for stating the bleeding obvious.
I used the oily Rizla paper trick to solder up the crankpin washers. This worked OK on the first crosshead pivot but I managed to solder the second one up solid by putting too much heat in. I had to dismantle the thing again (which caused one layer to come off and need resoldering), fit a new pivot pin because the previous one was nicely tinned and have another go. At the second attempt I erred on the side of less heat and solder and things were fine.
This evening I fitted the front and rear crankpin washers, all of which went well. I had to fiddle with some washers behind the coupling rods because the centre driver balance weights have a raised section and so need some clearance behind the rods. For some reason one wheel was OK with a single washer but the other side needed more room. Using two washers was too much so I had to rub a washer on some wet and dry to reduce it to 5 thou.
The conn rods are still held on with insulation sleeving so that I can take them off again.
Yesterday we had the main boards of St Ruth out to figure out the plan for signal controls. While it was out I took the opportunity to give the Manor a spin (sans crossheads). It seems to go through the points pretty well. The loco had its bogie fitted for this test and I was expecting trouble. I got some trouble but not quite what I expected. It ran fine with the bogie leading but for some reason when running tender first the bogie seems to like to derail on points and pull the rest of the loco off with it. On the whole the bogie is quite unconstrained (even more so than the Ixion original) so I'm going to put my thinking cap on and try to devise a different pivot arrangement that will impart a little weight and some guidance to the bogie.
- 15
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