Sommaire pour Issue 4699 de Model Engineer

MARTIN EVANS Editor DIANE CARNEY Assistant Editor YVETTE GREEN Designer Model Rail Show Meridienne Exhibitions are pleased to confirm that the Midlands Garden Rail Show will be taking place on Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th March 2023 at the Warwickshire Event Centre. This event attracts nearly 2,000 enthusiasts from all over the UK and offers visitors the opportunity to see layouts in the larger gauges and scales including Gauge 1, O Gauge, G Scale and more. Once visitors have been inspired to build their own layout, they can visit nearly forty specialist suppliers at the show who are more than happy to guide them in the right direction of the best product to purchase. Save the date now to avoid disappointment and for further details on the exhibition and suppliers…

Continued from p.256M.E. 4697, 12 August 2022 Martin Gearing presents an ideal beginner’s project with great potential for the more experienced builder. General arrangement Figures 1 to 3 show the general arrangement of the grasshopper engine, seen from three directions. The numbering refers to the parts listed in table 1 (see part 1, M.E.4697, August 12). Materials pack The materials pack from Noggin End Metals (www.nogginend.com or 07375 958713) is listed in table 3 (overleaf). Each item in the list is associated with the parts made from that item. All 48 parts listed in table 1 are covered by the materials pack. Note that some of the items are the nearest larger imperial size to the required metric size. Preparing plate material blanks To make a start it would seem…

Ron Collins offers an alternative copper boiler for Luker’s Ballaarat locomotive design. The commencement of the Ballaarat locomotive series by Luker in Model Engineer created quite a lot of interest with some of the parochial Western Australian model engineers. The original Ballaarat locomotive currently is located in the Busselton Museum in the town of Busselton in Western Australia. The commencement of this series has resulted in four members of the Northern Districts Model Engineering Society in Perth starting on construction of this great little locomotive. Three of the NDMES members immediately commenced building the Ballaarat in 5 inch gauge and one member, more masochistic than the others, has decided that 7/ inch gauge was to be his choice. (He will probably paint it blue like all his other models!) All…

Oddity Dear Martin, Thank you for an interesting evening of Internet detective work. I believe that the instrument is a synchro (common brand name Selsyn) driven position indicator used to indicate the position of a Leigh light on an RAF aircraft deployed on antisubmarine duties in World War Two. This instrument has been the subject of curiosity over a number of years and has been discussed on a number of internet discussion sites. Some of these discussions apparently had access to the rear of the instrument which showed the number of wires which was helpful. My starting point was the WD stores code on the dial 5T/237. This in itself is interesting because the 5T group does not appear in the online scanned copy of Air Publications 1086 Book 1…

September 8 Cardiff Model Engineering Society Talk: Medieval Cardiff, Heath Park, Cardiff. See www.cardiffmes.co.uk 10 Bromsgrove SME Autumn Open Day, Avoncroft Museum. See www.fmes.org.uk/events 10 Cardiff Model Engineering Society Steam-up and Family Day, Heath Park, Cardiff. See www.cardiffmes.co.uk 10 Urmston and District MES Polly rally. Contact: Neil Mortimer on 07900 133201 or at neiljmortimer@gmail.com 10 York Model Engineers Evening Talk – 19:00. Contact: Bob Polley, 01653 618324 11 Ayesha Centenary Rally Rugby MES 10:00 – 17:00. See www.n25ga.org 11 Bristol SMEE Public Running, Ashton Court Railway, BS8 3PX, noon - 17:00. Contact: secretary@bristolmodelengineers.co.uk 11 North Wilts MES Public Running, Coate Water Country Park, Swindon 11:00 – 17:00. Contact: Ken Parker, 07710 515507 17 Bromsgrove SME Rob Roy Rally, Avoncroft Museum. Contact: Rex Hanman, 01980 846815 18 Bradford MES Running Day,…

Brain Baker tells the long story of the building of a Class 08 0-6-0 battery powered locomotive in 7¼ inch gauge. Back in the 1980’s, I drove a 7¼ inch gauge Class 08 shunting locomotive at a hospital fete the Canvey Railway & Model Engineering Club was involved with at Basildon Hospital. I liked the power and controllability of the locomotive and its steady running on six wheels but what impressed me most was how easy it was to pack away after the event. Now, for me, a dyed in the wool steam man, to think that… well it must have been special and I resolved to someday build one so that evening rallies at the club would be simple events to attend, instead of loading a hot, dirty steam…

Mick Knights describes the construction of a supercharged V8 internal combustion engine. Continued from p.347M.E. 4698, 26 August 2022 Time to produce the rest of the fittings starting with the two side plates. These are very thin brass channel sections machined from 1/8 inch thick plate. To prevent too much machining stress being transferred to the section I only used a 3mm diameter solid carbide cutter. I adapted the same set-up I used to produce the fins, but in this case the locating pins were removed before machining (photo 146). The first operation was to machine a pocket 0.100 inch deep and longer than required so a rectangular machining cycle could produce the finished outside faces of the channel section and also the overall length (photo 147). The outside of…

Graham Astbury learns a lot about single-phase induction motors and describes ‘The long and winding road that leads to a 2-speed singlephase motor’. Continued from p.326M.E. 4698, 26 August 2022 Discussion of data As I had no data for current drawn at either speed or the power factor, some assumptions had to be made. Similarly, there was no efficiency data so a guess had to be made. Bearing in mind the small pole pitch for the motor in 16-pole mode, the apparent efficiency is likely to be low, say around 30%. That would yield an output at the 16-pole speed at around 0.3 x 250 = 75 W. There are three ways of proceeding: 1 Adjust the windings following the general advice of Avery (ref 1 – see M.E.4695). 2…

John Billard reports from the Reading Society of Model Engineers on this year’s locomotive efficiency competition for small locomotives. The Reading Society of Model Engineers was delighted to be invited to host the 2022 Little Locomotive Efficiency Competition (LittleLEC) for the first time on 18 and 19 June. Long in the planning and delayed by the health emergency, all was set for what we hoped would be a fascinating weekend of friendly competition. RSME has a long history dating back to 1910 and the competition was held on our level, multi-gauge raised track of about 1,000 feet length. After several late changes and withdrawals, we ended up with seven drivers and eight engines; quite enough to make the event go well. We were in the interesting situation in that while…

Luker describes a simple but authentic small locomotive. Continued from p.264M.E. 4697, 12 August 2022 The steam whistle Small whistles are impossible to make; they don’t scale, the pressure is too high and steam is different from compressed air. I’ve heard it all before. Actually, some of those points are true but I don’t believe it is impossible to make a working miniature steam whistle. It’s been done before and still the detractors (normally armchair engineers) refuse to believe it can be done. Steam whistles are difficult to make (but not impossible - photo 127) and they are difficult to set. The working range is also narrower than the larger whistles, normally hidden below the running boards. A little explanation of the design and what to look out for is…

Peter Seymour-Howell builds a fine, fully detailed model of Gresley’s iconic locomotive to Don Young’s drawings. Continued from p.317M.E. 4698, 26 August 2022 Slide bar supports The base of the slide bar support needed to be 3/4 inch from the centre of the piston rod, so I centred the mill on the bore and then moved the table the appropriate distance. The inner face was machined flat and then the table was moved again and the recess for the slide bar machined equally either side of the centre of the bore. The sharp corners required for the slidebar base were then filed by hand. The last job was to machine the gland housing, which had been left oversize, to its final height, using the boring head. The process was then repeated…

Roger Backhouse finds a former slate waste dump in Mid-Wales given a new lease of life. Choosing a place for the 100th subject of this series was not easy, but with energy prices soaring, it’s definitely time to visit the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) in Mid Wales (photo 1). CAT is hard to summarise. Whereas other places featured in this series were built to make a profit or preserve engineering and railway heritage from the past, CAT was set up by idealists looking to the future. Aware of the environmental damage brought about by burning fossil fuels, they sought to research and practise alternative, environmentally friendly ways to live. Visiting in the late 1970s there was something of a ‘do-it-yourself’ ethos with homemade windmills and the Cretan style, cloth…

Geoff Theasby reports on the latest news from the Clubs. Welcome to another CN. Cyanogen? Multinational TV network? No, it’s Model Engineer’s Club News! I recently rebuilt the domestic telephone system, having had doubts about it for several months, and indeed was suspicious that all was not well from when I first moved in. Recently, Deborah was away for a few days, so the lack of a landline didn’t matter whilst I set about tracing cables and ID-ing sockets, live and redundant. For some time, I suspected that there were more cables than I could see, and so it proved. To pile Pelion upon Ossa, one cable went under the floor but the cable that subsequently emerged had different coloured wires and didn’t feed the socket I thought. So, wholesale…