Sirdouglas' O gauge

[Father Dougal]

All very impressive and coming along nicely. Always good to see a bit of model engineering. 

[Little John]

When you say "we" got a lathe , do you mean "I" got one and "you" borrowed it ? 

[sir douglas]

cabside outside or inside of the wheel arches?

[34006]

I think outside.There's little enough space on the footplate as it is.(speaking from experience).You may as well make life a little easier for the crew.

 

atb

 

Phil.

[J. S. Bach]

I would say "inside".

[Johnson044]

Inside, without a doubt! I'm sure the crew will grumble but so much more elegant.

 

[Annie]

Being a practical kind of person I'm going to say 'outside'.

[sir douglas]

thats 2 votes each so far then

 

A bunker and flywheel as planned, The bunker was quick and easy being just bits of nickel sheet cut and bent but the flywheel took a bit more work as i wanted a spoked rather than disk

 

Starting with 1mm brass sheet, cut a length 2mm wide and bent it around a pipe into a ring. Cut a square and work it into a circle to fit inside the ring.

 

To mark out the spokes, i re-used the drawing to for cutting out the yellow gear,putting the brass on the drawing, centering it and marking off the lines on the circumference.

 

The segments were cut out, the spkes filed round and this was soldered into the ring. a centre boss was cut, drilled out and soldered in

 

[34006]

I think I can only quote a friend:"Not model engineering,but minature engineering"."More like watchmaking" was my reply.A marvelouse job.

 

atb

Phil.

[J. S. Bach]

5 hours ago, sir douglas said:

thats 2 votes each so far then ...snip...

My main reasoning for "inside" is a smooth wall inside, a seat could be mounted there. If it is "outside", the wheel arches would then be inside and they look like an uncomfortable encumbrance to be avoided by the crew.  Please note that my experience/knowledge is based on US locomotive designs; I can not think of any designs (at least after 1840 or so) that had them. Even the Camelbacks' cabs (located over the drivers) were above the running boards.

 

5 hours ago, sir douglas said:

 ...snip...

Sorry, I saw the octagon and almost immediately thought of this sign in my collection:

 

[sir douglas]

8 minutes ago, J. S. Bach said:

My main reasoning for "inside" is a smooth wall inside, a seat could be mounted there. If it is "outside", the wheel arches would then be inside and they look like an uncomfortable encumbrance to be avoided by the crew.  Please note that my experience/knowledge is based on US locomotive designs; I can not think of any designs (at least after 1840 or so) that had them. Even the Camelbacks' cabs (located over the drivers) were above the running boards.

 

i'm not discounting anybody's opinions for either side, just trying to rustle up conversation

[NeilHB]

My preference would be for the cab to be outside the wheel arches Sam. 
 

The bunker and the flywheel look very good.

[Annie]

2 hours ago, J. S. Bach said:

My main reasoning for "inside" is a smooth wall inside, a seat could be mounted there. If it is "outside", the wheel arches would then be inside and they look like an uncomfortable encumbrance to be avoided by the crew.  Please note that my experience/knowledge is based on US locomotive designs; I can not think of any designs (at least after 1840 or so) that had them. Even the Camelbacks' cabs (located over the drivers) were above the running boards.

Inside wheel arches in cabs were fairly common in Uk practice, especially during the pre-grouping era.

[Johnson044]

I think inside possibly more likely, looking at precedents- Sir Vincent and Sirapite both have very narrow cabs between the splashers- must be very claustrophobic but locomotive manufacturers were not always best known for ergonomics! There's a nice one in The Chronicles of Boulton's siding- two photo's, one from each side- of a Marshall loco, which has an inside cab. Geared locos made by firms that generally made traction engines- be they built as actual railway locomotives or convertibles- generally seem to follow road locomotive practice, with cab sheeting- however rudimentary- on the inside of the driving wheels. I don't know enough about these breeds to fully understand where all the gubbins are likely to be but somewhere there may be rods and linkages for injectors, sanding etc- so these will need to go inside or outside the sheeting. Personally, I think the inside arrangement with the fully symmetrical gear train cladding and splashers exposed and the curving handrail could be very elegant. Outside sheeting perfectly possible- but maybe a later rebuilding for ergonomic reasons rather than as the manufacturer intended? I love the project- the workmanship excellent and really looking forward to seeing the loco develop.

[sir douglas]

 

[NeilHB]

Where’s the wow button when you need it - seriously excellent work Sam! 

[sir douglas]

Valve gear next, and something i wanted to do from the start is have everything fully jointed, even the reversing lever so you can change gear

 

Firstly radius link, while researching and drawing it up i know why its called radius, because the curves are drawn from the axle/crankshaft as centre, and so mine is too.

Got it all together except the holes in the eccentric rods were drilled slightly out and the U shaped bracket on the piston rod was knocking against the motion bracket, the quick and easy way out was to cut away at the motion bracket, which was a lot easier than re drilling the rods. The tube under the slide bars was replaced with a smaller diameter, which snuggly fits 1mm rod. Since the boiler and cylinder is removable from the rest of the loco, 2 of the joints are done with 14BA nut & bolt, on the tight hand side its the top of the radius link and on the left is the crank end of the reach rod.

 

This photo shows the valve gear set to mid-gear with a clip on the reach rod

 

comparison between forward and reverse, there isnt a counter weight or a lever yet so reverse has to be held on such by my finger in the photo. for general running mid-gear will be default but the option is there just for the fun of it

 

or for anybody that cant quite visualise from the photos, first video was just after fitting the radius link and you can see how the movement of it isnt right because it is rocking against the motion bracket

 

Today, with all motion on and  the cut away, everything runs better but this shows the gear change

 

[Northroader]

Very good, Sam, works a treat.

[sir douglas]

and in other news, the other day i got wheels and buffers for the recent ebay wagons and couldnt resist putting them straight on

[sir douglas]

I've had the loco stripped down to work on the pickups and decided to use slaters plunger type. after faffing to get them on at the right compression distance and soldering the wires to the tabs , one of them was a bit stiff but still worked well enough, after putting the wheels back on to test, both front pickups refuse to spring properly, ive had this the first time i used them on Highwind, they are quite delicate and will stick at the slightest provocation

[sir douglas]

Elsewhere you might have seen that i was asking for some tiny bevel gears, which i found through HO Shay spares and an RMwebber kindly sold his spare to me. These are necessary for the "thing i would like to add" that the pulley is for, it will be for a governer, e.g. the spinning balls. there is a belt drive fromt he crankshaft and then through 2 bevel gears drives the vertical rotation

https://prestonservices.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Governor_9.jpg

 

 

The shay gears with ruler for scale

 

I was away from this loco for a few days while i did some wagon things again, back to it now.  The bunker now has a brake column right hand side of the hatch and the left hand side of the firebox has a rivet punched overlay. one of the next things is deciding how the wheel arches are going to fit but be removable from the footplate because if they were fixed, it would not lift up because of the flywheel. the bit of footplate between the arches has been removed as this will be part of the arches. 

 

The back of the bunker has the tool hooks and a removable backhead with door made up this evening

 

The backhead removed showing the locating flange and a bit of the footplate comes away with it too. In other news, the errant pickups were sorted and the loco runs

[34006]

Very nice.

Phil

[sir douglas]

other little side projects, another wagon chassis is coming together from leftovers and spares and made a start on a Caledonian 7 ton

 

Ive got some old wheels which i think came off a second hand wagon which i replaced with a new set but i put these aside with the hope of using them. More recently i had another look at them and they're not course scale as they appear, they only look like that because of the wide tread but the flange is the same as slaters, this was easily fixed by parting off the excess on the lathe, the other change is turing down the ends of the axles to fit slaters bushes

 

The wheels have been reduced to 3.5mm (same as slaters) on the left while original on the right

 

tyres and centres reduced on all 4 witht he paint cleaned off the tread and flanges and starting on 1 end of an axle, they machined very easily and they are light so i assume they are aluminium but the axles are definitely steel

 

bothe ends done and a trail fit with some axleboxes fitted with bushes in the frames. these frames were leftover bits in the ebay lot, centre frame, sole bars and bufferbeams which i think were from a slaters box tar tank beacsue of brackets ont he corners of the bufferbeams, i replaced the bufferbeams instead of removing the brackets, the buffers were made up of spares

 

A start has been made on a Caledonian 7 ton "mineral bogie" mainly because i have a set of the outside W iron axleboxes

[Guest Isambarduk]

15 hours ago, sir douglas said:

Ive got some old wheels ...

They look like aluminium wheels by Alec Jackson.

 

It was very early impecunious days for me so I rebushed mine to fit on 1/8" axles and I machined up some steel tyres  but they still look quite ropey.

 

 

David

 

[sir douglas]

I was going to work on the reversing lever next but the placement of it first needs the wheel arch and cab side in place

 

 

the righ hand side still needs the gear cover

 

While working on that, the footplate needed stiffening so some angle was added underneath for strength and for fascia, The steps were added while i was there