Sommaire pour Issue 4690 de Model Engineer

Events Highlight There’s plenty going on this summer, as a pleasant contrast to the last couple of years. Here are three that you might like to consider. Welsh Rally The Cardiff Model Engineering Society’s 30th rally will be held over the weekend of Saturday/Sunday 18/19 June. It’s been a long two years since the last full rally and there have been some significant changes on the site including a longer run on the 7¼-inch ground level track with an additional running line. There is also a raised level 3½ and 5 inch track. New signalling gantries have been erected throughout. The ever-popular tram line has been redesigned, moving the station to a passing loop at the centre. The Rally has been a popular event for many years with visitors from…

The centenary of LBSC’s famous locomotive, Ayesha perhaps provides a good pretext for looking back over his life, particularly with regard to his time as an employee of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway and his self-promoted but fictitious status as a fireman/locomotive driver on his namesake railway. The disputed matter of his date of birth, which I believe played a significant part in this fabrication, has been firmly resolved by Geoff Johnson and Ian Pollard’s exemplary genealogical detective work, Who was L.B.S.C.? (Engineering in Miniature, January 2006. pp. 211-213.). Johnson and Pollard produce conclusive evidence that LBSC was born on the 27th September 1883 as William Morris Benjamin and, after the family changed its name around 1894, became William Morris Mathieson. William Mathieson assumed the name Lillian Lawrence…

The early Industry has been traditionally fueled by coal. But what about oil? War tends to be a game changer in advances in technology and geopolitical supply issues – never more so than today. The Dreadnought battleship of 1905 was fueled by 2900 tons of coal and 1120 tons of oil. The coal was loaded by men carrying filled sacks on their backs (photo 1) or latterly using sack barrows to achieve a loading rate of 300 tons per hour. Coal consumption was about 10 tons per hour. Interestingly, whilst the ships increased in shaft horsepower by four times and doubled their speed, the fuel bunker capacity grew by just a third. Compare Dreadnought at 23,000 shp on Parsons turbines and Hood at 144,000 shp on Brown Curtis geared turbines.…

Continued from p.579 M.E. 4689, 22 April 2022 Crankshaft bore Before machining the crankshaft bore the three crankshaft bearing clamping blocks need to be machined and their locations, i.e. 1,2 and 3, stamped on the top face. They then need to be securely screwed into position, as all five of the crankshaft bearing diameters need to be line reamed to ensure concentricity. The quill travel on my mill/drill is only four inches, which means the camshaft and crankshaft bores will have to be machined initially from both ends. No matter how well both end faces are set up a hole drilled and reamed from both ends is never going to be completely true. The only way around this is to drill from both ends, machine ream the bore from one…

Continued from p.577 M.E. 4689, 22 April 2022 Now it’s time to look at the painting. In preparation I have removed the smokebox, running boards, cab and front buffers. I have cut all of the permanent running board 10BA screws to length so that they are flush with the bottom of the side valance angle. I have also made note of a few of the removable 10BA screws that are used to hold the entire running board sides (single piece) in place that I wish to also make permanent fixtures - what I mean is only a few select removable screws will be actually holding the running boards in place, fewer than 30. The other few hundred will never need to be removed and thus the paint won’t get damaged…

Now, after the vicissitudes in the last issue, to move on, I have a new smartphone so, revelling in my new computing power, “Huawei we go"! This time we start with the picture of Karoo, mentioned in M.E.4688 (photo 1). In this issue, crane gears, a broken Hipps, a source of fine hardwoods, cleaning small parts, coned wheels, a jinxed locomotive, unaccustomed exercise and a Life Membership. Stamford Model Engineering Society February Newsletter opens with the information that Keith Holderness has built a steam crane, making everything himself except the gear wheels. Don’t stop there, Keith, tell us how you did it! Editor Joe Dobson is trying to mend a Hipps electric clock. Probably made in Germany after WWII, the case is good but the movement is rubbish, he says.…

Continued from p.491 M.E. 4688, 8 April 2022 The worm drive assembly and the water pump eccentric drive The worm and wheel purchased from HPC Gears consists of a 30:1 reduction pair comprising a steel worm and a nylon wheel. The centres pitch is 9/16 inch so the first task is to mark out the pitch of the cross shaft bearings. The end view of the general arrangement in my drawing (fig 6) shows the arrangement. Here a Vernier height gauge is a very handy piece of equipment and the first measurement is taken from the top of the crankshaft at the rear of the engine. From this reading must be subtracted 3/32 inch, being the radius of the shaft, and then 9/16 inch can be added to be the…

Continued from p.586 M.E. 4689, 22 April 2022 Painting and finishing The chassis was sprayed using aerosol cans, first with grey primer and then dull black. The inside of the body and seat box are varnished to resist the inevitable water exposure. The outside of the body was brush painted with the dull finish Prussian blue of the S&DJR, to match one of the Jintys. Friend Helen did the rather conjectural lettering on the body sides, using computer cut stencils. On the track The driving truck runs smoothly on the track and is very comfortable for both the driver and a passenger, despite the lack of suspension. So far, it has only run on the Cambridge, St Neots and Hemsby railways but has held the rails perfectly. As mentioned, the…

Continued from p.558 M.E. 4689, 22 April 2022 Edges These are polished whilst holding the work in a vice. The jaws must be soft (e.g. fibre). Check that no swarf has been buried into the jaws before use – a deep indent will be frustrating to remove. Where the edge is long, for instance around the clock plates, so called emery sticks can be used. These are sold in ‘retro’ style marked by a number (0, 1,2, etc.), the lower the number, the finer the grit. I have no idea why they are not identified by grit size; it seems a quaint throwback. The abrasive paper glued around these sticks (which come in rectangular, triangular and half round shapes) usually has a ridge where the paper overlaps. This will cause…

When making models of aircraft, boats and in model engineering I have often needed a movable vertical reference edge not attached to the traditional square base. There are situations when the traditional set square cannot be used, for example when there is a projection that stops the upright edge contacting the piece to be tried. In the past, possession of a reference square, to ensure that upright items on the deck of model boats were square to the hull and deck would have been useful. Recently I was setting the cylinder block on the boiler of my 1 inch scale Minnie traction engine where the flat valve chest should be vertical. Two guides assist when fixing the position of the cylinder block on the boiler. One is a centreline scribed…

Introduction This all started when Mike asked, in The Journal of the Society of Model and Experimental Engineers, for some guidance about soft soldering tinplate to make an all-steel hull of a First World War ‘R’ Class destroyer that he was building (ref 1). Mike had been researching the building of tinplate hulled boats and found an article by Norman A. Ough who described the building of all-steel hulls in Model Maker (ref 2). Ough recommended the use of plumbers’ or tinmans’ solder as he said ‘...the cored solder used by electricians being unsuitable because it is too soft…’. He also stated that, in his opinion, Baker’s Soldering Fluid® was the best flux to use despite the corrosive nature of it but suggested ‘... This is acid and corrosive so…

One hundred years ago, on 4 May 1922, LBSC told Model Engineer readers of the first successful steaming of his legendary 2½ inch gauge Atlantic, Ayesha. The engine launched Curly Lawrence on his road to fame and set a whole new standard of performance for small scale live steam locomotives. Before Ayesha, live passenger-hauling in ½ inch scale was not considered practical. Commercial spirit-fired designs such as those by Henry Greenly for Bassett-Lowke lacked sustained power output, largely due to inefficient valve gear and boiler design. The rival, Carson’s, advertised that one of their models could pull a child but the firm ceased model production in 1913, despite its superior products (Curly always rated Carson’s highly). James Crebbin’s locomotives were successful and reliable passenger haulers at M.E. Exhibitions but he…

Continued from p.563 M.E. 4689, 22 April 2022 The clutch and shift linkage The clutch lever (fig 26) is built to the original plans except for the bottom end, where the ‘pendant lever’ (Westbury’s term) is brazed directly on to the lever. The whole assembly swivels on a fixed pivot instead of being on each end of a shaft as on the original (photo 26). Since most shops will now have some sort of milling capability, it is probably easier to machine the lever as one piece rather than fabricate it as a built-up assembly. The 3/32 inch diameter linkage rod (fig 27) is just bent to fit through the hole at the lever end. Make sure there is a ‘kink’ in the rod as shown in the drawings to…

Continued from p.491 M.E. 4688, 8 April 2022 We now come to the brake gear and for this I am afraid we do not have any castings but there are not that many castings that would be appropriate for the brake gear anyway. I am sure that you will be able to find a ring of blocks that would fit the tender wheels even if you have to use the set for the Y4 for which I made the pattern years ago. They should be available from The Steam Workshop. That really only leaves the brake hangers themselves and these are made from pieces of ⅜ x ⅛ inch bright bar. When turning the blocks, I wouldn’t try to turn the grooves in them for the hangers as it might…

At last, after over two years of waiting a real live exhibition was able to take place at the Warwickshire Event Centre over the weekend of 12/13 March 2022 where the Midlands Garden Rail show welcomed visitors to a familiar venue. Sixteen different clubs and layouts were displaying their work for every visitor to enjoy and it was so good to feel the atmosphere once again. Whilst it is not main stream model engineering there was a good selection of work and models which do feature in the model engineering world with many clubs these days having a Garden Rail element to their club’s activities. This show covers all those sections as well as the popular and nostalgic Gauge 1 tinplate layout. In addition to the clubs there was a…

May 7 Cardiff Model Engineering SocietySteam-up and Family Day, Heath Park, Cardiff.www.cardiffmes.co.uk 7 York Model EngineersEvening Talk – 19:00. Contact: Bob Polley: 01653 618324 8 North Wilts MESPublic Running, CoateWater Country Park, Swindon 11:00 – 17:00. Contact: Ken Parker, 07710 515507 15 North Wilts MESPublic Running, CoateWater Country Park, Swindon 11:00 – 17:00. Contact: Ken Parker, 07710 515507 22 Bradford MESRunning Day, Northcliff Railway 13:30 – 16:00.Contact: Russ Coppin, 07815 048999 22 North Wilts MESPublic Running, Coate Water Country Park, Swindon 11:00 – 17:00. Contact: Ken Parker, 07710 515507 22 Southport MECDiesel Day, Victoria Park 10:00 – 16:00. Contact: Gwen Baguley, gwenandderrick@yahoo.co.uk 29 North Wilts MESPublic Running, Coate Water Country Park, Swindon 11:00 – 17:00. Contact: Ken Parker, 07710 515507 29 York Model EngineersOpen Day. Contact: Bob Polley: 01653 618324…