Garden Railway Forum

Nearly there Dave!

That's lovely workmanship. Something I could only admire and dream about doing.

We're getting there, very slowly. Boiler feed fitted

It's starting to look finished Dave, looking forward to seeing it run.

How long do you think before first test on your line?

Nice Dave….Very good bit of engineering that.

Thank you chaps.

I'm not sure when it will be running on the line. I want to test the pumps against boiler pressure though

Pushing on with the blower. I drilled the nozzle 0.45mm diameter as my small Jacobs chuck couldn't grip anything smaller

Good trick I learned from TonyW is to fill the boiler up with water until you get about 40 PSI and then open the blower.

If you get a nice fountain shooting out the chimney you know the blower position is going to be efficient!

So true

Splendid, a working saddle tank! It gives the little loco something special..

I need to connect the to-be-built reverser to the reversing valve. eBay supplied some nice stainless 2mm Bowden cable inner that fits nicely in 1/8 K&S brass tubing it seems rigid enough for pull and push operation.

Before I can make the reverser I need to make the bodywork to see how much space is available for it. One side is now complete, the other is in progress.

The main panel is a piece of 0.6mm steel sheet bent around a 1/4" bar for the radius. The top piece is 1/4" x 1/16" strip brazed into a 90 deg angle. It's all soft soldered together

Second side completed on this hot Auckland Anniversary day

Solid work, is steel easier to soft solder than brass?

Steel solders very easily with zinc chloride flux

It was easier than soldering the copper/brass tank Tom

Very tidy work
Copper will be more difficult to solder because it conducts the heat away very well.

The bodywork is installed. I put most of the bits on the loco for the photos. It's coming together. The bodywork panels needed converting from external threaded fixings to internal threaded, due to an oversight...
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I've been working on the reverser over the last few weeks. It needs to be big to get enough throw at about halfway up the lever to swing the rotary valve through 90 degrees. 5/16" brass angle is soldered to the reverser base and screwed to the footplate. As brass has a higher coefficient of expansion than steel the base has a nice gentle bow in it

That's huge!

tom_tom_go wrote: ↑Mon Feb 18, 2019 7:58 am That's huge!

Admit it, though. You want to play with that engine.