Garden Railway Forum

It’s been a (very) long time since the little Mamod made an appearance on the workbench. Other projects have taken priority but one result of lock down has been extra time spent crossing things off the ‘to do’ list and now I can get back to the interesting stuff! Rather than working with the origina...

I have been considering 7/8 for my patio railway. It's early days yet, my Mamod restoration is going slowly and could be adapted to various scales. I have gathered enough used Peco SM32 track to lay a reasonable sized oval, but when I mentioned track side buildings to the local planning department s...

Update from the engine shed: The cab front and side tanks have been completely stripped back to bare metal. Minor dents have been knocked out and the parts of the side tanks that form the cab floor have been folded back down to their original position alongside the main frames. The parts have receiv...

Hi Interesting stuff about the two types of lubricators. I can see pros and cons with each type. With the dead leg one I would guess steam that condenses in the connecting pipe will just drain back into the steam pipe and get sent off to the cylinders. Only steam that reaches the body of the unit wi...

Still too cold to do much restoration work in the garage, but I have been sorting through the very nice selection of goodies that Greg (Narrow Minded) put together for me at a very reasonable price. http://www.solent-art.co.uk/misc/railway/mamod11.jpg This has provided me with a number of items that...

Chris Thanks for confirming the thread size. I was wondering about the size in case I wanted to make a modified steam dome. I’ve got a M12 x 1 tap but obviously couldn’t screw it into the boiler fitting with the internal pipe in place. I think Ian (spooner) is right about the new/old mix of parts. I...

An interesting post Chris. Looking at the group picture of the 4 rotary valves I get the impression that the first two are designed to start opening the exhaust passage first and then progressively open the inlet port using the pointed end of the curved channel for a controlled opening. The PPS one ...

Hi Thanks for the advice. I think the front connection may have been stressed a little already. If you look at the close up of the safety valve in place you can see that it isn't sitting straight compared to the steam dome. http://www.solent-art.co.uk/misc/railway/mamod10.jpg I carefully put a 5/16&...

Didn't have much time to work on the project over the weekend (DIY and decorating time) but with a bit of a rearrange in the garage I have liberated the lathe from the surrounding clutter and had a go at making up an adaptor to attach the pressure gauge for testing the boiler. I found a short length...

Hi Laurance, Thanks for the words of encouragement, your SL3 looks a smart loco. Here is a close-up of the boiler bottom steam pipe connection – not a lot of solder showing here, but only a pressure test will show if there's a problem. http://www.solent-art.co.uk/misc/railway/mamod7.jpg Following on...

Many thanks for the tip off about the chimney. It looks like I will need to carefully reshape the bottom of the chimney where the square punch has been used to get the saddle ring off as it's still a tight fit. I'll strip the black paint off the wheels and look at rebuilding them with the Loctite 60...

Thanks for your comments so far. Stripping down the loco was pretty straight forward apart from the massive 4mm pop rivets that had been used to re-attach the Smoke box\Boiler\Side Tank assembly. I have to admit Mamod used some interesting techniques to reduce the part count and simplify the constru...

Hello Folks Yesterday I said hello as a new user in the Introduction section and I'm now going to post some information about my Mamod loco restoration project. I have a background in Mechanical Engineering and I'm fortunate enough to have a small lathe somewhere in the garage, but I will need to mo...