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Ruston's Victorian Industrial locomotive scratchbuilds


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Parts for the brake gear...

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Which can't really be seen now.

 

 

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I didn't like the shade of green and so, after putting on the lining transfers, I sealed them with a coat of Tamiya yellow varnish, which has made the colour warmer.

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Almost there now. I have cheated on the cabside injectors and have put only the water feed pipe and valve on the outside and have the pipe to the clack valves coming in to the boiler from behind the cab sheet but what that's modeller's licence for you...

 

It now weighs 214g and can pull 6 wagons up the 1 in 18 bank but the bogie mount requires modification to stop it derailing as it gets over the summit, which is quite an abrupt change in gradient. Other than that, it runs well and I could just restrict it to the low level line on the Calder Vale Mineral Railway.

 

The crank pins still haven't been trimmed but I'm leaving that job for now as the wheels may yet come off and the driving axles be made to run in compensating beams. This would improve traction on changes of gradient.

 

Crew figures are on order, as are name plates, and so, with the exception of possible chassis alterations,  all that remains is some light weathering. Oh, and some oil lamps.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Manning Wardle 'Lord Ward' type 0-4-0. Scale: 4mm/OO

 

I have started another scratch build for 4mm/OO. This time it is a type that was built for the Earl of Dudley's railway, which served his various mining and iron-making interests. The first of the type was built by E.B. Wilson of Leeds, in 1856 and was named either LORD WARD, OR ALMA, depending on which source of information you choose to believe. More were built by Wilson's successor, Manning Wardle Ltd., who supplied parts for more of the type that were built in the Earl of Dudley's own Castle Mill works. The last one was built in 1872. The only other user of the type was the contractor Thomas Savin, to whom Manning Wardle supplied one for building part of the Cambrian Railways. It was absorbed into Cambrian stock.

 

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From at least 5 of which I have managed to find photos of, none were exactly the same and so as mine is intended for my fictional mineral railway, I may pick and choose certain detail features as the build progresses.

 

I have begun to make some of the patterns, to be used for cutting the brass parts. To save space I have stuck some on top of others, which also ensures that holes will be exactly in the right places on the parts that will be screwed together.

lordwardpatterns-002.jpg.b0d8891f02cdcb36dcade96a82a81e30.jpg

Edited by Ruston
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9 hours ago, Ruston said:

Manning Wardle 'Lord Ward' type 0-4-0. Scale: 4mm/OO

 

I have started another scratch build for 4mm/OO. This time it is a type that was built for the Earl of Dudley's railway, which served his various mining and iron-making interests. The first of the type was built by E.B. Wilson of Leeds, in 1856 and was named either LORD WARD, OR ALMA, depending on which source of information you choose to believe. More were built by Wilson's successor, Manning Wardle Ltd., who supplied parts for more of the type that were built in the Earl of Dudley's own Castle Mill works. The last one was built in 1872. The only other user of the type was the contractor Thomas Savin, to whom Manning Wardle supplied one for building part of the Cambrian Railways. It was absorbed into Cambrian stock.

 

EDNAM-1.jpg.f05189c0333d2a30fef53fa78fc4bc34.jpg

From at least 5 of which I have managed to find photos of, none were exactly the same and so as mine is intended for my fictional mineral railway, I may pick and choose certain detail features as the build progresses.

 

I have begun to make some of the patterns, to be used for cutting the brass parts. To save space I have stuck some on top of others, which also ensures that holes will be exactly in the right places on the parts that will be screwed together.

lordwardpatterns-002.jpg.b0d8891f02cdcb36dcade96a82a81e30.jpg

 

That's interesting - how do you proposed to do the fluted dome and valve housing?

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On 29/07/2019 at 09:44, sej said:

There are some really fascinating scratch-builds going on at the moment; looking forward to seeing how you progress and very interested in the pantograph engraving. Could you show us it in action?

 

Cheers

Simon

I suppose I'd have to video it for you to see it in ation, which would be rather difficult to do when operating it but I've taken some photos that may be of interest.

 

The patterns are clamped to the top table on the machine and the arm, with stylus, is moved around the edge of the pattern.

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At the bottom of the stylus is a roller. Different sizes are used, depending on the reduction of the pattern. Shown here are 6,8 and 12:1 rollers. Above the rollers is one of the cutters, which have a D-shape cutting head.

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The business end spins at between 2000 and 18,000 rpm. The speeds are changed by moving the drive bands on to different pulley wheels on the machine. The lowest speed is used for cutting styrene, where the fastest is used for hard cartridge brass.

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One frame plate and the footplate made so far. This is after cleaning up the burrs. The lower firebox part in the previous photo was just an experiment to see if I could mill rivet detail but, of course, I would need to make two handed frame patterns for that to actually work properly and so it has been cut out in the finished piece.

milling-4.jpg.20224e9e87ddaa7e10e7a1aac9421fd9.jpg

Edited by Ruston
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Thanks Dave, that's great.

I've recently been allowed to play on a pantograph engraved and  can agree that making a video would definately require another pair of hands! Here's the result.1291802592_P1110598(1024x536).jpg.1c2ef5cb7cd33f1e4469cd3e11e933e1.jpg

The frames are for a 4mm Hull and Barnsley 0-4-2 H1 tender loco. We used some rather ordinary brass sheet which did result in breaking a cutter, partly due to my inexperience. Do you always use hard cartridge brass?

 

Cheers

Simon

 

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2 hours ago, sej said:

Thanks Dave, that's great.

I've recently been allowed to play on a pantograph engraved and  can agree that making a video would definately require another pair of hands! Here's the result.1291802592_P1110598(1024x536).jpg.1c2ef5cb7cd33f1e4469cd3e11e933e1.jpg

The frames are for a 4mm Hull and Barnsley 0-4-2 H1 tender loco. We used some rather ordinary brass sheet which did result in breaking a cutter, partly due to my inexperience. Do you always use hard cartridge brass?

 

Cheers

Simon

 

I use the hard brass for bodywork but for frames I use engraving brass of 40 thou. (1mm) thickness. It remains straight and rigid and doesn't require bearings to be fitted. I also use it for things such as the boiler bases on the previous build. It's useful for things such as that because it's thick enough to tap, which saves faffing around soldering nuts on.

 

You need to set the machine for the fastest speed for hard brass and squirt oil on to the sheet to help cool the cutter and, of course, take it slow. What size of cutter were you using?

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15 hours ago, sej said:

I'm not sure Dave, 1mm? Thanks for the advice; where do you get your engraving brass from?

 

Cheers

Simon

No wonder the cutter broke if it was only 1mm on hard brass. I use 1.5mm for general cutting, that is to say the cutting out of parts. Anything smaller is only used for making holes and slots. I get my engraving brass from a friend and I have no idea where he gets it from. You can find it online but it's expensive.

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The frame plates, cross-members, running plate and boiler mounts and footplate have been made and fitted together. It is designed to break down into four sub-assemblies, these being frames, running plate, footplate and boiler. The cylinders will be fixed using studs and nuts and after the fitting up of the slidebars, piston rods etc. will remain fixed as part of the frame assembly.

lordwardbuild-001.jpg.f2ad46cbe8d5fbf9db8ed8afb1476d51.jpg

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2 minutes ago, Ian Major said:

Dave,

 

That is looking very good. There is one thing - unlike your previous creation all of the locomotive's weight is on the four coupled wheels! 

 

Ian.

Hi Ian. It may be more complicated than that. As there is no water tank to fill full of lead, the engine will be rather light, so plan A is to have the leading wheels of the tender being very lightly sprung and taking no weight, so some of the tender's weight will be transferred though the drawbar to the engine.

 

Plan B is to power the tender. The engine wheels are 4ft. and the tender wheels are 3ft. If I use the same type of motor in each and gear the engine to 80:1 and the tender to 60:1 then the motors ought to spin at the same r.p.m. for a given voltage and the wheels turn to give the same road speed in both the engine and tender. I know there will probably some variation in the performance of each motor and slight frictional differences in the gearboxes but it'll be as near as makes no difference and should add a great deal of tractive effort.

 

The problem may be fitting a motor and gearbox in the tender as it's rather small.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I haven't done anything with this since my last post but the domes and chimney arrived, today, so I thought I'd try them in place and put some wheels on. Putting the wheels on has revealed a cock-up, made in the drawing stage so the engine sits too high and the buffer height will not match up to everything else. I will have to make new frame plates.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I have made no progress on the above build but I have been thinking about it. I've had the idea of putting the motor in the tender and somehow connecting it to a High Level gearbox in the engine itself, using a shaft with a small Hooke's joint on each end. Before I start working out how to make that, is such a thing readily available off the shelf?

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32 minutes ago, k22009 said:

I'm not sure of the wheelbase but as the tender is a 4 wheeler you could try to fit a High Level Quad Driver http://www.highlevelkits.co.uk/quaddriverpage.html or similar and make it tender driven.

 

Dave

I had thought of that if I was going to power both tender and engine but the tender isn't large enough to be able to get anything like as much weight as it would need for haulage as tender-driven alone. The idea of putting the motor in the tender is to free up space inside the boiler so I can fill it with lead. I have a 1 in 18 bank on the layout, so every gram counts.

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1 hour ago, Ruston said:

I have made no progress on the above build but I have been thinking about it. I've had the idea of putting the motor in the tender and somehow connecting it to a High Level gearbox in the engine itself, using a shaft with a small Hooke's joint on each end. Before I start working out how to make that, is such a thing readily available off the shelf?

They are easy to make from tube and handrail pillars. Find some tube that is a fairly close fit around the ball of a handrail pillar and cut a slot in the end, wire through the hole in the pillar transmits the drive, the slot allows the cardan shaft to move lengthways. Use some more tube to connect the two ends of the shaft. Don't run it at too steep an angle or you will run into (in)constant velocity problems.

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