Engineering in Miniature

June already, where is the year going? Welcome to the latest edition of EIM and in fact as I write it is the very start of May and I’m signing off this issue whilst trying not to think about how much of the other magazine I edit, Narrow Gauge World, I need to get done before my wife insists that I head off to Norfolk on something called a holiday - I haven’t told her yet that at least the 10¼-inch gauge Wells & Walsingham Railway, a line I’ve never yet seen, is likely to be on the itinerary for the week of ‘rest and relaxation’… Someone who clearly hasn’t been relaxed in the past few weeks is our tech ed. Before sending in his latest column – which I’m…

Because the previous owner of the Barrett 47XX kit that I purchased had left it part-built for a few years, the general condition of the tender had become very poor - inside the body looked very dirty and a little dubious. I wanted to check all the soldered joints including the inside of the spirit tank, so the top plate had to be unsoldered (Photo 26). Once it was removed it revealed a couple of problems. The head of the bolts that secure the chassis and the spirit sump are soft-soldered inside the tank and a couple were loose, so these were resoldered. However in any future kit building I do I will drill and tap these bolts in before I solder the heads - this would have saved me…

Why build an electric locomotive? That’s the first question to be answered. My good mate, fellow model engineer and co-writer of this article Julian and I both have live steam locos in 3½ and 5-inch gauge so why build electric? We both have granddaughters (not a grandson in sight), eight between us, and they all want to drive Grandad’s train. Their ages at the time of writing range from three years up to 13 years, so old enough to ride on the steam locos and the bigger ones old enough to drive them though they must be accompanied, for obvious safety reasons, at all times. I’ll state the obvious here that steam locomotives are hot, full of steam and have a fire in them so must be treated with respect.…

Last month’s episode describing my build of the part-completed 3½-inch gauge locomotive I had acquired saw me start on the boiler. Once I had brazed the two main shell components together the next step was to construct the tube bundle. I decided to make this assembly as a unit and fit it to the boiler fully soldered so that I could check the tube joints at each end from both sides, one less area for potential leaks. Photo 29 shows the jig that I devised to position the tubes in the tubeplates. The tubeplates are parallel to each other but there is a slight rise from back to front. I estimated this by eye and soldered just this one tube, then checked it in the boiler. You have to make…

I finished last month’s report with the re-roofed workshop of the Fairbourne Miniature Railway finally taking shape – the finished product is still a work in progress as I have had to start using it as soon as it was possible to begin catching up on the missed winter work! The first of these tasks was to take out excessive slop that had developed in the regulator of our 6-inch scale Darjeeling and Himalayan Railway B-Class ‘Sherpa’. This had gradually got worse over the course of last season and I wanted to sort it before putting the loco into traffic this year. The stainless steel regulator rod is connected to a bronze cross-piece that acts as the crank to then operate the valve itself - the joint between the rod…

"What we should have done was drill a small pilot hole and then work our way up gradually in drill sizes, until we reached the size for the pilot drill…” Photos by the authors Last time we assembled the body for our ride-on tender and we start this month by making the Overflow Drain. Since the rear section of the tender body, which includes the filler-tube, is entirely contained on all sides, the likelihood of it flooding exists when filling the tank with water. Other than via evaporation on a sunny day (the sun does shine occasionally on running days), there is no way for this water to dissipate and so a drain was incorporated into the design. A small hole can be seen near the back edge of the…