Florence Locomotive Works

Proper Russian iron is made by heating sandwiches of iron sheets with carbon powder in between them to cherry red, where they are then hammered extensively under a steam hammer. This is done maybe a dozen times, and then the whole thing is heated up to cherry again and quenched in very pure water. For reasons that nobody understood at the time, when hammered and quenched the iron took on a glue green color, and was resistant to high heat and corrosion. Currently there are only two people alive today who are able to successfully produce the stuff in any quantity but it is incredibly expensive.

Yes that is the same stuff, I think that’s the only English locomotive that used Russian Iron for boiler cladding. Lots of textile mill engines and waterworks engines used it though for cylinder cladding. Kempton Park in London retains all of its original iron.

Two posts within a month of each other! About two days after my last post, I made a very significant (and expensive) purchase. I’d been wanting one of these for several years, but had either not been able to afford one or the ones for sale were not in very good condition. And what is this thing of which I speak? A live steam overtype stationary engine, made by Joseph Falk of Nuremberg. Bore: 3/8th inch Stroke: 1 inch Boiler OD: 3 inches Working pressure: 30 psi estimated IHP: 0.0062 The engine was made around 1899, and from what we can piece together came over to America in the same year and spent its life amusing the members of a wealthy New York family who also had a property in Florida as many Edwardian Americans did. Somehow it managed to stay in Florida, which is where I got it from via the Bay of E. It arrived looking very, very sorry for itself although mechanically perfect. It had lived in a pipe smokers house for many years and had accumulated a thick layer of tobacco on all surfaces, and the boiler had never been cleaned of soot. After a lot of cleaning up, the result seen above was reached. The more keen eyed if you may note that the cylinder cladding is a funny glue green color. This is actually genuine Russian iron, a mysterious material that many early American locomotives were clad in as it is highly resistant to heat and corrosion. This has been painted over some time in the past so I gently removed all the paint and to my surprise the Blue finish was still intact. The engine steams very very well, and currently I have it belted up to a modern Meccano motor functioning as a DC dynamo making around 1.2 volts. Here’s a photo of me during a dusk steam up taking the rpm reading using my 1884 Schaeffer & Budenberg tachometer made for exactly this job. Douglas PS: I hope we are all doing well.

Hello all, Tis I, returned once more. (a disappointed murmur was heard). Been away for a while as the summer has not been an easy one. Parents decided they needed a fairly permanent break from living under the same roof if you know what I mean, which ind of put a damper on things. However towards the end of July having completed the Side Lever Engine in mid June, i got another burst of modelling energy. Sadly it isn;t railway related, but it is steam! I've begun scratchbuilding this 1/80th model of a 1000 hp Corliss engine made by Messrs Hick Hargreaves & Co of Bolton in 1880 for the Whetley Spinning Mills of Daniel Illingworth & Sons of Bradford.* As I am still bereft of a mill the model isn't live steam, however this has its advantages. It means that I can add a great deal more detail than would normally be possible on a live steam model, for example the condenser wet air pump (that thing under the floor) can actually be included and be driven from the crosshead like the full size. The model is certainly the most complicated thing I've ever made, and is maybe 60% of the way towards being done. I am working to a set of drawings that were published in "A treatise on the Steam Engine" by Daniel Kinnear Clark (former HR CME) in 1891. While these drawings are very good, they don't quite show everything. I then tunred to google in hopes of finding some pictures of the engine, however this was in vain. Eventually I emailed the Northern Mill Engine Society, who kindly sent me 4 very nice black and white photos of the engine taken in 1905, sadly I am not at liberty to reproduce them. Here are some photos of the engine. Now, its not an exact model, but it's as close as I can get with the machinery available to me, which is a lathe, drill press and files. The cylinder side main bearing, trunk guide and main frame are all made from the same piece of brass, and the cylinder is a press fit into the trunk guide making for a very rigid engine. The valves once finished will be "driven" off the crankshaft using bevel gears as on the full size, which drive a pair of eccentrics right behind the cylinder. It was cheaper than making massive eccentric rods back in the day. Due to the fact that friction does scale down very well, the valves wont actually rotate but will look the part. The rest of the motion works very well though. The ornate looking cast brass thing with the date stamped on it is a gift from a family friend who owned a brass foundry at one point. The part is actually the top 1/6 of a push plate for the dining room door of a stately home. The pattern was made in the 1790s in france. Need to fix that wonky oiler. Here's a shot of the motion drive shaft coming along the side of the engine. The eccentrics go on behind that cone shaped looking gear on the same shaft. It's an odd design but seems to have worked well, the engine only being scrapped in 1930. All the bevel gears were cut using a deep knurling tool. The plan is to have the engine being driven off the flywheel by a rather nice 1880s German clockwork mechanism I have, at a sensible speed. It will also be mated with a scale model of a Lancashire boiler that will have a door of sorts in the boiler barrel showing the internal tubes, similar to this one in the Science Museum Collection. That's actually a Galloways type Lancashire boiler meaning it has crosstubes in the flues, which is far harder to make than a standard one which just has the to flues running the length of the barrel into an economizer and then up the chimney. That's all for now. Douglas

Some say it was written eons ago that I said I would be posting more. I guess I forgot. Anyways here I am with another update on my Side Lever marine engine. It’s come a long way since May, and the engine is nearly finished. All it needs are the valve chests and spindles. Work since the last update includes the connecting rods, condenser wet air pump, eccentric plus associated motion, valve rocker shaft, and the condenser return pipes to boiler seen sticking out the side like cannons. I think it’s safe to say that it’s my nicest work so far, and I’m rather pleased with it. Gives hours of fun sitting on my desk where it can be turned over at will, like in the video here. And it even bears more than a passing resemblance to the real thing! Here’s a drawing of a similar engine I have in a book from 1854. Douglas

School is out for the summer, so I shall be posting more regularly now. (Is that the hippo I hear muttering?) Thought we might like to see my latest project, marine type side lever engine. These are more or less inverted beam engines suitable for paddle steamers, and were widely adopted during the mid 19th century, with the last one being installed in RMS Scotia. My model is based loosely off the one that Maudslay, Sons & Field of Lambeth built for HMS Dee in 1829, as an exact scale model was built of it by James Nasmyth (who later invented the steam hammer and the shaper) when he was Maudslay’s assistant. And it now survives in the Science Museum London, with a 3d scan of it being available online. Now as I don’t have a the ability (yet!) to make castings, I could not model all the lovely gothic detail of the original, but I have managed to to capture the basic outline out of brass plate using ye olde jewelers saw. This is where I started out in early March… And after loads of work this is where we are as of today. Now the big question: is it live steam? Well, despite the left hand cylinder being off a Stuart oscillating engine, no it is not as I don’t have a milling machine so I cannot make the necessary ports in the cylinders. The last Rivett milling attachment that would’ve fit my lathe sold for $2700 so that is out of the question as well. However, the cylinders are a totally separate unit so when I eventually get a mill new ones will be made and the engine will be live steam. All the other bits are designed to be run on steam as well. Douglas

The Good Doctor mentioned he was want of an Orrery. https://www.dorotheum.com/en/l/8467843/ Douglas

Morning all, The spring rains have arrived from the north. Today is our first day of sun since Monday, with it raining more or less constantly since then. Not complaining it was needed! Work continues on the press. Last weekend I made the center stubby column and the height adjustment spindle, meaning a wheelset can now be placed inside to give an idea of how it works. Douglas Drowning in French pastry’s

Afternoon all, Dad and I have been busy making the platforms for Pwllheli. The intention was to make them from mdf, and so a trip to Lowe’s was undertaken in my Land Rover (only vehicle big enough) and some 8 foot by 10 inch mdf trim boards were acquired. Keyword trim, meaning they were painted white. However, after making the first cuts with the Skilsaw, it appears that Lowes’ definition of mdf is actually pine planks glued together. Either way it worked by sadly the main platform was warped which needed a lot of work to fix. But here was the finished product! Douglas

Evening all, Another busy day at school, made infinitely better by the arrival of a rather nice package marked “Par Avion” with Reuter address to Sheffield. It is a particularly excellent piece of miniature engineering executed to the highest order, and is a credit to everyone involved. I was very surprised to see that Dapol managed to engineer a full gap in the frames to enable all of the Stephensons link reversing motion to be depicted. Some very crafty person could even make it move when the engine changed direction! The sound is also very good for the limited size of the tender. Overall a very very good engine. Douglas

Afternoon all, Been busy lately. I took the ACT yesterday, (the real one, not a drill!) and went fairly well. I will learn my scores within a few months. I have also been in the garage messing about with the Rivett getting the press made, and it’s going quite well so far. The D class is still stuck in customs in Chicago, now on day 6. Apparently the Chicago IPS has a history of labor issues, in that said labor does not labor. Oh well, nowt I can do. Douglas

I’ve got another year…

It was very nice I can sure you.

Here you are.

I’ll see what I can do.

I must beg the indulgence of the hippo, he will surely be pleased to see the completion of track laying in Pwllheli station. Douglas

You learn all sorts of stuff like that in my line of work. Speaking of that, there has been a change of occupation. I am now an antique tool and scientific instruments dealer, having made a significant number of contacts through my work with the Plumier Foundation. It earns me probably 5x what your average 17 year old earns!

Not if you want access to them. The public set in stone measurements are on I think the south facing wall of Greenwich observatory, for the use of all folk in the land. However the really nice ones from the 19th century are in the basement of the Royal Society and are sometimes put on display in the Palace of Westminster.

On the subject of the nicer the street name the worse the people, in America it depends. For example, O block and 63rd Chicago is one of the worst bits of civilization west of Detroit, and it sounds like a coordinate out of a dystopian novel. Compton in LA doesn’t sound to nice either, and neither do the Bronx Projects in New York City. I can confirm the last one, I’ve driven through them at night. In Tulsa we have the fairly low homicide rate of 1 per week, almost all of them occurring in the northern side of town. To the outside observer north Tulsa looks like east Atlanta, and is a prime example of the poorly designed 1950s neighborhoods cheaply built to house the black family’s displaced by building the highways, with little to no employment possibilities. Since the 1980s significant cocaine operations in the area have made it very, very dangerous. All of the street names seem nice though!

Evening all, I is returned. Somewhat. As a few may have seen I’m back messing about with OO gauge as there has finally been a push to get Pwllheli up and running, and also because I finally bought a Dapol D class. Now some may remember several eons ago when I were but a young lad of 15 I posted about how dad has a Hornby Fowler tank with a stripped internal gear, a common problem with this model. The fix for this will be to cut new gears out of brass, but before that the wheels need removing from the center wheelset. To do this I set about designing a wheel press, with a few added embellishments. The basic design follows that of the full size presses made by Niles Bement Pond & Co in the USA, but instead of a hydraulic ram there is 0 BA screw with crank. And here is the rough outline. Obviously it’s rather ornate, and owes a lot to the work of George Adams, (1750-1795) instrument maker to King George III. I’m a great believer in making functional objects look excellent, as was he. Some of his work can be viewed Here. I shall leave the details for the next post. Douglas

Those do work, but the color is not very controllable. For small components like these the best method is to blue them using a brass plate and heat, so you can control the color and keep the finish constant over the surface.

Hello all, Rotations around the sun were made. Lathes were bought. Watchmaker training was undergone. A new job was found. But all this has now put me in the position to come back to this blog, or at least the SE&CR. Not long after the last entry in June 2021 I cancelled my order with Rails of Sheffield for a D class as I needed the money for other stuff, so the project stalled, and eventually all the engines were sold out. That was until Saturday morning when I opened my inbox to find to my shock that several of the Locomotion editions had been found in the dark passages of the Rails warehouse. And I thought to myself, well, there's no getting out of this! Needless to say I placed an order. Now, I'm not planning on actually finishing this layout as between school and work I haven't got the time. However during my apprenticeship as a watch and clockmaker I learned the art of making very very small metal parts by hand, and to make them look really nice as well. So the intention is I'll do a post or maybe a few of fitting more detail to Ye Olde Wainwright. I'll be starting with remaking the linkage under the Westinghouse pump. This will be made from steel as the original would've been, and highly polished using abrasive stones and ruby's. Here is the linkage in question, rather plastic looking in my opinion. The linkage will be colored to match the coupling rods as well, through a process called bluing. As these are small components I'll be bluing them using brass rather than oil quenching. I'll explain in much greater detail later when we get to that stage. Metal draw hooks are also to be made. updates are to follow soon. Douglas

Yes, though they are less trumpet sales close up. The top 1/3 is decorated in the Doric order, matching the columns on the engine and the silver injector valves which are made from English silver assayed in 1854!

Well a lot has been done in recent past, so much so that I completely forgot to post it on here! Firstly construction of the tender frames began in late January, made in the same manner as the engine frames; steel outlined and then cut out with a jewelers saw before final finishing with needle files. The wheels and axles were turned on the lathe, while the bearings are brass round bar with slots cut on either side to run in the horn guides, with holes drill in the middle for the journals. Next came the tender body. This is made from the same piece of Cherry* as the cab sides, giving the look that the cherry flows along the engine, capped by brass on both sides. The tender deck is a solid brass plate that will have the various details soldered onto it. And now we are up to the present, who sing the nearly competed tender. The current take is fitting up all the springs, six in all with twelve support columns, six of which are seen in place on the running board. And yes the workbench changed a bit in the last photo. *I originally thought it was dark cypress however after a lot of research it’s Cherry Douglas

Progress, it is being made. Yes, that is working inside motion. Douglas