Table of contents for Issue 4705 in Model Engineer

Stirling Single Whatever the question it seems that there is always someone out there with the answer! Sometimes it works the other way round too. Jeremy Buck has written to me as follows. 'I cannot help with drawings for the Stirling single mentioned in Des Adeley's letter (M.E.4700, September 23) but it has answered a question that intrigued me for many years. You may recall that I described my own Stirling single in a series of articles about three years ago. I mentioned that its antecedent was a non- working model of ancient but unknown lineage acquired by my father in about 1957. I now know, thanks to Mr Adeley, that it was to the design of W. Martin and Co. as evidenced by the hard stamping W. M. &…

On Saturday 28 May 2022 Southampton and District Society of Model Engineers held a day to celebrate the life and achievements of long-standing member, Merlin Biddlecombe, who died in October last year. Merlin was also a member of Bournemouth and District club so members of both organisations, as well as members of Merlin's family, were present at the Riverside Park track in Southampton on a very pleasant late spring day. Merlin served in the RAF and then worked for the Hants and Dorset Bus Company at their Bedford Place workshops in the centre of Southampton. He carried out precision engineering work, such as grinding crankshafts, and was active in his spare time repairing and building miniature steam locomotives. He built a Britannia pacific to LBSC's design in the early 1950s;…

Continued from p.677 M.E. 4704, 18 November 2022 Valve glands The glands begin life as 7/16 inch diameter brass bar, reduced to 5/16 inch for the thread to fit the guides, and a narrow flange that needs to be castellated. I will be fitting 'O' rings and took the time to test fit each gland before parting off. Valve crossheads There are five crossheads to make. The outer cylinders have crossheads at both ends, one to connect to the combination lever and the other to connect to the valve connecting link. The middle cylinder, of course, is not connected to the valve gear as its motion is derived from the others through the conjugating gear. The first job was to machine the blanks ready for the crossheads. Once I was…

STEAM PLANT Continued from p.687 M.E. 4704, 18 November 2022 One of the problems with running the pipework beneath the baseboard was that the diameter of the holes in the baseboard had to be made sufficiently large enough to allow the union nuts to pass through the baseboard. The resulting larger holes would have been unsightly so I machined and painted some washers that could be run on the pipework, along with the union nuts before soldering the nipples in place. Photographs 51 and 52 show examples of how the washers cover the larger holes drilled in the baseboard. Likewise, the larger holes provided in order to drain the water from the condenser and boiler blow-down valve were obscured by removable covers (photos 53 and 54). A gas cylinder is…

I had an idea. It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words, so I considered printing two photographs and then taking the rest of the fortnight off. Readers could use the blank space to design their own locomotive, start a scurrilous rumour or commit a felony. However, Editor Martin demurred. As I have an interest, may I ask all my readers to watch Putting Up with Parkinson's - a TV programme by Jeremy Paxman, who is the usual irascible chap that we know and love. The weekend just gone saw us at Newark Hamfest, the biggest and best of the amateur radio rallies in the country. Without my Luggie, I would have lasted less than an hour, but zooming round the spacious hall and the stalls…

Buying a Christmas present for the tools and machinery fanatic in your life can be tricky! Trying to work out what they need, or what they've already got, can be a real mystery. If you're stuck for gift ideas this Christmas why not let them choose for themselves with a Machine Mart gift card or e-voucher? Machine Mart gift cards and e-vouchers can hold any value from £20 to £500 and can be used in any of Machine Mart's 65 superstores nationwide, online at www.machinemart.co.uk or over the phone by calling 0115-956-5555. Available to buy in store, you can also order them online; an E-Voucher can be sent in a personalised email style, courtesy of Machine Mart, whatever the occasion may be! To find out more about Machine Mart's gift…

Terry Dowling describes his model of a novel internal combustion engine. Every engineer is familiar with the standard internal petrol engine using the Otto cycle that has powered our cars for the past century or more. But less well known is the Atkinson engine patented by the Hampstead engineer James Atkinson in 1887. It deserves to be better known as it is the Atkinson engine rather than the engine of Nicolaus Otto that is found in an adapted form in most hybrid cars to be found on the roads today. I have always been fascinated by the Atkinson engine. For a start, it completes all four cycles intake, compression, power and exhaust - in a single revolution of the crankshaft, unlike Otto's four-stroke engine. Moreover, there's no separate camshaft and…

ELEPHANTS Continued from p.684 M.E. 4704, 18 November 2022 In Part 1 of this series, readers were introduced to Bluebell, a narrow-gauge steam locomotive destined to run on 0-gauge track, which dad and my ten-year-old self had begun to concoct from an elderly Mamod stationary engine purchased in a secondhand model shop in Tunbridge Wells; TBSITW, if you recall. We pick up the story in early 1979, her construction near complete, and the author excited for her first test run. A warning to the faint-hearted Over the years, I have come to realise there are as many different tastes as there are people and, like planetary sculptures made entirely from liquorice, it takes all sorts to make a world. For example, while I am not a fan of horror films,…

Continued from p.695 M.E. 4704,18 November 2022 Building a small locomotive with two inside cylinders and two sets of inside Stephenson's valve gear presents a few problems regarding adequate sizing of the components. Add to that, in this engine there are four slide bars per cylinder and rocking levers in the valve drive train. It all gets a bit 'busy'. Another complication was the need to provide a screw reverser in place of the steam reverser of the prototypes. The railway companies of southern England all looked after their drivers with this labour saving device, the LSWR, the LBSC and the SECR all having their own versions. Railways further north and west were generally not so sympathetic! Ray Stephens, who designed this model, was a former locomotive draughtsman himself so…

GRASSHOPPER Continued from p.699 M.E. 4704, 18 November 2022 Item 14 - Flywheel (fig 23) Ø120× 1¼ inch cast iron A visible flywheel on any engine is always a major focal point and I will always bear in mind a respected engineer I worked with saying, 'The overall standard of workmanship to which an engine has been built can best judged by how true the flywheel runs'. The flywheel and its mounting for this engine is described initially with a simple plain web between the hub and rim which is certainly fit for purpose, but the appearance of the engine is very much enhanced by an alternative version having six spokes, although demanding a little more time, along with an organised work plan. At first sight, for the beginner, the…

Surely one of those names that only a Victorian novelist could dream of, that of Sir Guilford Lindsey Molesworth s now little known. Yet in his time he was recognised as a distinguished engineer. Born in Hampshire in 1828 he lived until 1925 and enjoyed a remarkable career. Trained at the College for Civil Engineering in Putney he worked for the London and North Western Railway, the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway and for Sir William Fairbairn. He was a President of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) in 1904, advised the Government of India about railways and was consulting engineer for Ceylon Railways. Clearly a versatile man, he also wrote books about economics, decimal currency, woodworking machinery and masonry dams. As President of the ICE he had his…

December 4 North Wilts MES Public Running, Coate Water Country Park, Swindon 11:00 – Dusk. Contact: Ken Parker, 07710 515507 10 York Model Engineers Evening Talk – 7pm. See www.yorkmodelengineers.co.uk 11 Bradford MES Santa Comes to Northcliff 2022. Northcliff Railway 11:00 – 15:00. Contact: Russ Coppin, 07815 048999 11 Guildford MES SMSEG Open Meeting, Stoke Park, Guildford 14:00 – 17:00. See www.gmes.org.uk 11 North Wilts MES Public Running, Coate Water Country Park, Swindon 11:00 – Dusk. Contact: Ken Parker, 07710 515507 18 North Wilts MES Public Running, Coate Water Country Park, Swindon 11:00 – Dusk. Contact: Ken Parker, 07710 515507 21 Bristol SMEE ZOOM Meeting – Look back at the year, 19:30. Contact: secretary@bristolmodelengineers.co.uk 25 North Wilts MES Public Running, Coate Water Country Park, Swindon 11:00 – Dusk. Contact: Ken…

Continued from p.705 M.E. 4704, 18 November 2022 Performance testing I built a dynamometer to determine the power output of the motor on load (photo 50). The building of the dynamometer and obtaining the test results will be the subject of a further article, with the editor's permission (granted! – Ed.). The motor worked well – two acceptably quiet speeds and sufficient power. There was some very slight humming of the motor when running at the eight-pole speed but this was hardly noticeable and was not entirely unexpected from the information given by Appleman (ref 3 – M.E.4695, July 15) and Hildebrand (ref 12 – M.E. 4697 – August 12). I measured the performance of the motor using a 12.5μf capacitor as this was the nearest value to the calculated…