Garden Railway Forum

That certainly puts me in mind of the Portstewart tramway - very nice!

I have had some opportunity to do a little more; I blanked the union with a 5/32" ball with some PTFE tape spread across the union body. It held tight on air-under-water at about 30 psi. I have had the whole loco together, the radio control connected and tried it yesterday afternoon with mixed ...

Progress has been affected by a family bereavement, so please don't think that I am ignoring you if I don't give much in the way of response for a few days.

I am going to try and eliminate the weight/angle question by taking my airbrush compressor outside and seeing how she runs with a long air hose. I will time how long the compressor is on load for vs time off and try and work out how much air the loco is drawing - once I dig out the spec for the comp...

After today's experience I am certainly going to switch the gas tank arrangements; the easiest thing to do is put another bush in the top of the tank and take the gas from there. Today the burner wouldn't stay alight for more than a minute at a time and there were surges which brought orange flames ...

I got the new O rings yesterday and was able to give the new arrangements a better trial. I filled the tank until liquid came out of the vent at the top, opened the needle valve and lit the burner; it is so quiet that the ambient noise outside made it hard to tell whether it was burning, and in the ...

Charles, As the mesh shouldn't be in the flame, I suppose that it wouldn't have to be from anything special like Inconel - what are you using? I finally have some progress to report; as the old burner was made from 1/2" copper tube, and the holes and locations in the external firebox were made ...

Graeme,
Thank you; that saves me going and trying to get some tube! I will go for bar and try making a simple drilling jig for the tiny holes.

Thanks very much - I will make a start when I can get hold of a suitable piece of tube. I found some good pictures of a Millie burner, rather than a real one, so I will use your sizes as a starting point and keep you posted on the results.

Graeme, Thank you for a most informative and comprehensive reply. I had suspected that the slots were too big, they may have always been so, but some of them are larger now than they were before. Having made everything apart from the handrail knobs, dome cover, feed check valve, fasteners and radio ...

To work out whether the problem is the burner proper or the supply I made a temporary connection direct to a canister of gas; it was nearly empty, so not much liquid to make its orientation very important, but I kept it pointing generally uphill. There was still some inconsistency in burning, but it...

That was the advice when I made it, and the pipe round the firebox is to ensure that it all vaporises. It has occurred to me that one thing is different from previous runs; because I didn't have much gas, the tank wasn't completely full of liquid. The fire has been the most troublesome part of this ...

I have been overhauling the 16mm 2-6-4 tank engine I made 30 years ago but which hasn't run for 20 years. She hadn't been touched in all that time and something had seized so I ended up dismantling everything above the frames to get at the trouble and then much of the valve gear to be able to sort i...

Thank you, though I am sure that the scale of notches extends beyond this. The installation is now complete, though the operating linkages are temporary. The picture shows the installation and what may become the line's longest loco running clearance trials

If space is a significant consideration then Y points at each end will save you a bit, as the lines will diverge to the required distance more rapidly. I planned mine using Microsoft Train Simulator (building a 3D model of my garden 19.05 times full size) but that was because I had the software and ...

As another newcomer, welcome! I was surprised how much longer my loop had to be than the length of my longest train when I seriously sat down to plan it. Just how much will depend on the radius of your points and the distance between the tracks. I use 8'-0" radius points and just under 6" ...

All those I have done so far have been turned from brass bar, or O gauge gunmetal castings, but I am thinking about 3D printing, as the bit that I have found hardest is getting the flare at the bottom to meet the boiler curve. If your boiler and smokebox are of a diameter where commercial stuff will...

Thanks to some generous help from Peter Butler the points are now complete and I am in the process of installing them

Those are exactly what I need! I think that I can manage with 4, if that is possible - thank you.

In the 1990s I made a drilling jig for 8'-0" radius points using Tenmille chairs, and last year I used it again to make a couple of points for the loop of the revived line. Slide chairs seemed to be out of stock everywhere, but I found a pack on Ebay and used them. Now I want to add some siding...