Llewellyn Loco Works #1

[IanC]

I respect Guy's interests and I like his TV programs. I also like football (and cricket, and cycling, and motor racing) and I have a season ticket for a North West team. Please don't judge me too harshly.

Ian

[Hydrostatic Dazza]

I'd like to mention, I have no offense or judgement felt inside of me if one likes to follow a sport. I just do not know how one finds the time to devote to it. Maybe it is because I had an intense life with it for many years, but it now has left my system and for my remaining years I want to learn new metal working skills and explore new stuff.
That saying be careful for what you wish for is ringing in me. When Cycle Racing was a fringe sport that was followed, enjoyed and absorbed by the devotees we all dreamed of when it would be come mainstream, thanking that would be just wonderful. Whoops. Now that it has become mainstream, it is crass, over commercialised and the trendy coffee shop riders boast about their 6kg bikes they did the Brisbane river loop on. Corporations run it at all levels. I have to sigh when Sports people are lauded as heroes and role models and then when they fail at some of the basic decency of living an honorable life, many feel sorry for them. Nah, they are losers just like the rest of us when we mess up. When I posted the Guy Martin quote, I was aware I might rattle a few chains, being some times in a cheeky mood, I ran with it.
Now back on your bike and ride it hard.

[Hydrostatic Dazza]

Oh oh, I feel a sneeze coming on. Fear, fear of losing the evenings work on the Myford and Cowells. A pair of eccentric rod to links pins. Just the R/H e rod to do and then I see if this all will work as hoped.

[Hydrostatic Dazza]

The other eccentric rod was completed this week.







.50mm Oil holes are next. They are just for kicks and giggles but they make the rod bosses look the business.



Carbide PCB drill trick

[Hydrostatic Dazza]

I got DAG Brown's injector book out. Looked at his method of making olives etc. I decided to try this in a reduced size rather than the compression fittings that Brian Wilson mentions. There are also mistakes with the steam T in the book and much vagueness with the 1/8 steam supply tube, I drew up some olive fittings to try out and then to the Red Room I go. When these are completed I can finish setting up the motion and give the test run on air. It is all a bit stiff. It might be Kero lubrication till all runs as it should. Fingers crossed. I have never been here before.
These are the first olive steam connections I have ever made.
Ground a piece of HSS for the parting of the olive and a silver steel 60 degree D bit for the cone.





Silver braze the parts.













A couple of more nuts and I am done here.

[Hydrostatic Dazza]

Last Wednesday I took the day off, drove up to Gympie and with two others I started my RM2000 driver training. The happy snap is some of the Mary Valley Rattler staff and volunteers and three of us RM2000 pupils. These railmotors are 50 years old now and I think they are marvelous. I grew up riding these up down the Ferny Grove line on weekend services and even back in the 70's a cab ride from Gympie to Brisbane. ( Kind driver) Who would have thought 45 years later I would be learning to drive these for trips down the Mary Valley branch. A long way to go, I have just started the basics of the familiarisation with the units and cold and hot starts etc. Lots of unique things to learn.
Some love these units, some detest them, I am falling in love.
One lives for this stuff !

[tom_tom_go]

Brilliant work, is there anything you cannot make?!

[Hydrostatic Dazza]

Brilliant work, is there anything you cannot make?!

Thank you for the compliments, however I am yet to complete my 5" gauge Loco, my 1/24 scale Airfix Spitfire, let alone this loco for the 32mm garden railway, so I have not made many completed projects. I reckon I am 20% through on this build. Considering the wet leg boiler and fittings, tender with Slomo installation and keeping the drawings up to date, proven as I build each part, (have I mentioned recently my frustrations with drawing mistakes, omissions and resultant vagueness to let the designer off the hook this week? )then the whole painting caper. I detest painting and that alone will take me a lot of effort by me to do properly. I have started some experiments with air brushing with my Sweet Sixteen kits. They are half done with paint at this time. Not very good! After nearly 12 hours in the bike workshop yesterday I did not have any Red Room time last night. I am really only following the words and music of others, the making of tools and methods are all that has and is done by thousands before me. I have subscribed to Model Engineer magazine since 1986 but it is only these last few years that from the urging of MAM that I set up the Red Room and so I can enjoy the need to try and make stuff. I must admit, this loco build is giving much enjoyment. I am also learning techniques that I have read many times before, tooling up, stocking up on materials.The intention is to bring this little loco to the UK for perhaps the Peterborough show and visits to some railways. At the current rate of progress this will be 2020. (I intend to volunteer for a couple of weeks at the Boston Lodge during that trip, just once before I die) Besides completing the Potters Orchid Railway. (The Red Room absorbs time and also full size heritage railway training)
Then one day I will make my Magnum Opus, the Queensland Railways C17 class #253 as delivered in 1921. All this is preparation for this project. I am not very interested in planting my bum on the riding car or tender of a 5" or 7 1/4" train and doing lap and laps ( a wee bit is OK, when families/children are having fun riding), I hope to sate that on the full size stuff most of the time, but it is the making I enjoy. To be honest , I find it hard to comprehend how many men retire and their life has a void left by leaving the work force. If I could, I would quit making bicycles today and fill, challenge and sate my days with Model Engineering, full size choo choos and gardening, and bush camping with MAM. I cannot wait for another 10 years to roll by so I can retire.

[Hydrostatic Dazza]

Last night I completed the two nuts that squeeze up against the Viton rings. I must admit to apprehension, it is now time to complete the assembly and see if I can make it run on air. Maybe this weekend.
Then for a break I complete the wet leg boiler design and start on that and the tender with Slomo installation and back to the signalling for the POR. It has taken 14 months from first hole drilled in the frame plates to this. This is not counting the time I spent with the drawings before cutting metal. It was supposed to be a quick project. HA. I reckon another two to three years at this rate when the testing and painting is completed.

[Peter Butler]

I have to admit I can understand very little of this and am totally incapable of emulating any of it but I am glued to the process and progress and can only admire what you have done. I know how frustrating it can be with so little free time and a business to keep going too, life can seem short but boring...... never!

[Hydrostatic Dazza]

I have to admit I can understand very little of this and am totally incapable of emulating any of it but I am glued to the process and progress and can only admire what you have done. I know how frustrating it can be with so little free time and a business to keep going too, life can seem short but boring...... never!

Thanks, it encourages me to keep posting the pics of the journey of this loco build.

As the late Douglas Adams said,

The chances of finding out what’s really going on in the universe are so remote, the only thing to do is hang the sense of it and keep yourself occupied

while I mention Mr Adams, I like this one as well

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

[Hydrostatic Dazza]

Working up my boiler drawings to take to Mr Inspector. The usual 3D then to 2D working drawings.
I am blind in one eye and I cannot see out the other, but going over the AMBSC Cade Part 3 Issue 2.00- 2017 Sub- Miniature Boilers ,
I cannot find a mention at all about barrel wall thickness. Only part 2.3.2 which mentions Max diameter 63.50m . No mention of wall thickness to comply with.

I will be using 1.60mm wall, 50.80mm diameter. The original drawing which was in the May/June Issue of Australian Model Engineering has a barrel wall of 1.20mm.

[11thHour]

Hanging out for the next installment
Tim

[Hydrostatic Dazza]

Hanging out for the next installment
Tim

Tim, the next installment should be the final erection of the locos motion by the Llewellyn Workshop crew, and said with apprehension, testing on air.

[FWLR]

Looking forward to it.

[Hydrostatic Dazza]

Eccentric rods are on, and all goes around, a wee tight, set the valves, all seems to be in order, the covers to go on tonight.

[IanC]

That's really impressive. I wish I'd learned more workshop skills in my life. Too late now to teach an old dog new tricks.

I'm also looking forward to seeing it run on air.

Ian

[tom_tom_go]

Looks great, looking forward to seeing it all move.

[Hydrostatic Dazza]

Looks great, looking forward to seeing it all move.

I hope it moves. I am genuinely apprehensive. So far, it all is going together OK, I did pay a lot of attention to accuracy so I hope that has a pay off. I am not trying to rush this stage.
I used Loctite Flange goo for the chest to cylinder and the back cover, but to give easy pull down if required I am intending to use the good old oiled brown paper for the steam chest cover and front cylinder cover.
I hope it all pays off. It might be Kero lube for a while as it gets a good running in.

[FWLR]

Looking great Dazza…

You can’t go wrong with the old oiled brown paper though.