2" Engines

[peach james]

So, from me being young to being a bit older, here we go:

 

JPRoller80

 

The roller, finished by David Powell.  This is as originally built, with UK built boiler.  I'm ~5 in the photo...  Dad traded a 3/4" RL for the rolls, boiler and cylinder block of this engine.  It was finished in Wales, and then came to Canada with us.

 

TEmilton89 

 

The 1.5-2" Traction Engine.  So, the 2nd engine that dad finished was this, which is a nominally 1.5"/ft traction engine.  The photo is taken at Great Ontario Tractor Field Days, Ontario Agricultural Museum, Milton Ontario in 1989.  At that point, the engine had been in use for ~8 years or so, and that is dad on the flatbed behind.  (he can't ride like that any more !).  This was "my" engine, as the roller is my sisters.  Engine traded in 1991 for a part built Minnie in 1", with the sucessor engine started.

 

RollerV2 Traction

The 2nd version of the roller looked almost identical to the original, with very little external changes.  Photo is ~ 1986 or so.  This boiler suffered from dad being a numpty, and designed it with too many too small tubes, and not enough clearances on the water legs.  When it was finally cut up to make V3, the sides of the box were completely scaled up with hard scale, and the bottom row of tubes was also affected.  The too small tubes meant problems with coal burning, the eventual solution was to convert it to propane fired.

 

DSC_0007 (2)

 

(this is the boiler of the replacement 2", it has had a cylinder mounted to it, then it was traded in a mad fit of crazyness by dad, then traded back into his hands, with the horns cut off in the meantime, taking it from a functional semi portable to just a finished boiler again...dad has done a bit more on and off work on it)

 

The roller has seen very heavy rebuild 2 times, being on it's 3rd boiler.  

 

RollerV3 (1)

 

My smaller lad went for a ride behind the roller, 

 

Photos from TO

 

So, it still is around and used by Dad.  He's since bought a couple of engines, which I don't have photos of.  

 

The other 2" scale engine which he finished is here, and is a 2" scale freelance overtype wagon.  Built around a donated copper boiler that suffered an unfortunate crush injury, 

 

Small steam wagon by Peach James, on Flickr

 

There is a 2" Clayton in bits, and several other projects in the basement & shed.  I moved, I think, 3 other project engines in various states of possible, and he was looking at buying a 4th.  (or horse trading for it...)  

 

Any questions?  Please ask.

 

[peach james]

I found a couple of images of the bought in 2", the best is almost head on, rather unusual for a model photo !

 

DSCF1166 by Peach James, on Flickr

[peach james]

So, it being near the end of summer here, and having sort of rained, I pulled the wagon out, and had a play yesterday.  Today, it was delve into the gearbox to see why High didn't work- dad said "I forget" when asked about design details of it.

 

 

Is the box in total, with the mechanical pump driven off the "2nd" shaft.  The whole gearbox is held in place by 4 #10-32 Allen cap screws, but in order to get it out, it took a lot of dismantling of the wagon.  I chose to remove both rear wheels, one had been off before, the other not so much, along with the boiler/engine, and the plumbing.  The boiler/engine is easy enough to take off- it's one pipe, 6 bolts & 2 grub screws, and off it comes.   Then, rear wheels (& chains), and more plumbing- because both pumps are attached to the gearbox.  & off came the gearbox. 

 

The reason for pulling it apart is because it would engage quite solidly in low gear, but not so much in high.  I think that the 2nd shaft was about 0.200" into low, and about 0.020 into high before I started- it would "just" pass into high on the bench, but not enough to solidly transmit power.  I measured things up, and took some guestimates as to where the shaft should sit to give even engagement, and put the driven sprocket on, along with the pump eccentric.  The yellow magic marker shows the depth of engagement on the "high" side now- 

 

 

I might move things over a little more from where it is right now.  The neutral is about 0.080, and the throw of the selector is about 0.280", on gears of 0.375", so there simply isn't a lot of room to be had.  It might be possible to replace the 2nd shaft with one that is 0.020 or so longer in the square, but that would be about all to gain there.  It also might be possible to remove a bit of the low speed pinion, so that it slid further over the low speed gearwheel (just past fully engaged), but other than that, the box design is tight for space.  The rear portion contains a diff, so is what size it is to fit the gears into it.  There just simply isn't any more room or metal to be removed to gain a much more positive engagement than what is already there.  Going to more splines would hurt, not help, as the splines would need more radius than the square shaft does.  

 

James