Garden Railway Forum

tom_tom_go wrote: ↑Sun Aug 23, 2020 12:23 pm Lovely Dave, runs very smooth. I like the clicking noise as well.

The mechanical lubricator on my 5" gauge loco is of the clutch type which although works well I am concerned longer term it will fail and I will end up with seized cylinders!

Thanks Tom, it's a lovely project. LBSC would call it watchmaking

It's good to be able to see the winding handle going round rather than back and forth

Drive shaft and eccentric
Test pumping
Milling the ratchet wheel with homemade cutter
30T 36T 42T Ratchet wheels - hardened
Ratchet wheel and fixed pawl

Another brilliant build Dave....

Made me smile when I saw what you was using for the compressed air....

dewintondave wrote: ↑Sun Aug 23, 2020 11:18 pm ...I can see myself using these on future models

Thank you Dave, for details and all the additional photos and explanations
BTW what solder did you use to secure cylinder cover?
Mason just says "...solder to cylinder..." without elaborating whether silver solder or just soft solder.

I can see this lubricator being very useful in other small models as well - thank you for bringing it to our attention
I have looked at "miniaturising" LBSC's lubricator... but came to the conclusion that it wasn't very practical

FWLR wrote: ↑Mon Aug 24, 2020 10:03 am Another brilliant build Dave....

Made me smile when I saw what you was using for the compressed air....

Thank you Rod! I call it quiet compressed air So many use those horrid noisy air compressors

bambuko wrote: ↑Mon Aug 24, 2020 10:18 am
BTW what solder did you use to secure cylinder cover?
Mason just says "...solder to cylinder..." without elaborating whether silver solder or just soft solder.

Soft solder, same for the bushes and bearings mounted to the tank

Very, very impressive.

Regards,
Aaron

Thanks Aaron!

Well, the mechanical lubricator didn't work out. It was unreliable, so is lovingly displayed on the shelf.

The loco has run very happily with minimal oil lubrication for a long time. In fact the loco sounds best on water lubrication only. When the lubricator was working it over delivered and oil was spewed out on to the track, the exhausts and drain cock pipes were not well positioned. I have made some slip over angled pieces to redirect the pipes. Fingers crossed that it still sounds great. I'll be manually oiling the loco every lap or so through a port in the valve chest

Just had a good run of the loco with a full boiler of water. Had a 35 minute run with the water ending up still above the burner tubes

I had recently made an oil injection port with a non return valve so that I can manually pump oil in with my new 1mL syringes - thanks to eBay

Here's the new oil injection port
Lovely slim syringe body. I was pumping in 0.5 mL for the equivalent of one lap of our circuit

Thats pretty impressive Dave...