Garden Railway Forum

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.

Just as Stephen King linked the novels "Delores Claiborne" and "Gerald's Game" I have linked the live diesel and this loco by using a 3/16" bronze ball on a control lever

The blower pipe needed a gentle detour out of the way of the mechanism...

Nice and smooth Dave.

"An engine isn't an engine without a whistle". So I'm starting on the whistle. Being time rich, I love using up scraps of material. I had a nice piece of brass just right for the whistle end caps, but far too short to chuck. So I drilled it though and sliver brazed it to a long piece of brass rod. Instead of filing a flat to channel steam over the mouth of the whistle tube I'm racking a lathe tool on its side as per the picture indexing the chuck by hand. I used this method on the large De Winton's whistle.

When you hear your loco's voice for the first time

Not a bad effort that Dave.

Getting back in to it now! I've been working on a gas burner to slot-in instead of the grate. Had some success in the end lighting it inside the firebox.



Burner without end caps When I made the steam powered diesel I made a nifty jig for drilling the 4 cross holes in the thin tube, I copied the jet holder too

Brilliant job there Dave. Well done...

Thank you lads. When I built the steam diesel I bought a wide selection of gas jets that are spare parts for camping stoves from our local big box store. They range from 0.11mm to 0.23mm, the steam diesel is using the 0.23mm jets
Yesterday I was testing this new burner with a 0.17mm jet and it wouldn't light at all outside. I tried it in the firebox and got a great big backfire (Mrs B thought it was from out on the street) I swapped the jet for the 0.11mm and it lit easily as seen on the video.

Todays testing the burner with this same jet outside of the firebox showed some interesting results. It doesn't matter how far in the burner the tube is, the result is the same. But when I flipped the burner tube around to use the wrong end for the jet holder the flame was much better. For this burner having the entrainment holes further than usual from the jet helped.