Garden Railway Forum

Hi folks. I have recently joined the forum and am about to set to with a Camden Ellie kit, the parts are nicely cut with no spatter and are accurate in dimension. I bought the boiler as well but may make another similar to the one featured in another thread with the 'staple' type heat exchanging pins. I will cut my own gears, to 32 dp as I cannot find any 38 dp (meccano) cutters. I will make the engine double acting, I have looked at Tony Bird's videos on You Tube but may go in a different direction and use the Camden engine frame as a starting point, I bought two in case of a disaster. The supplied port drilling jig wsa used as a basis for a 3D printed mock up of the ports and all turned out well. Next thing will be to try it on the engine frame. I am just clearing the decks in the workshop and once I have finished fitting the power feed to my lathe battle will commence....

I’m intrigued by this as I’m currently waiting for some laser cut Ellie bits in anticipation of the next project, was also toying with the idea of modifying the power plant as I’d like it to be self starting and reversible!

There is an interesting thread and a series of you tube videos by Tony Bird regarding making the engine double acting but to self start reliably I think two cylinders will be needed...

I was planning to build the engine as drawn, then go back and try to build a twin cylinder double acting one to drop in, got a vague idea of how to go about doing it in my head… out of interest how long did you laser cut bits take to turn up?

I had the lot within a couple of weeks except for the boiler, which took about 4. I got two engine frame kits so I have one to play with and one to use as an 'as drawn' version. The handy thing about having a 3D printer is that I can make a mock to check porting, alignment etc up before cutting metal.

3D printers do sound handy, unfortunately I’m going to have to do things the old fashioned way though! Looking forward to seeing how this progresses as it may well provide some inspiration for my own project!

Welcome to the forum, Nick. Looking forward to hearing more from you.

Old Man Aaron wrote: ↑Fri Sep 17, 2021 1:04 pm Welcome to the forum, Nick. Looking forward to hearing more from you.

Many thanks Adam...

I have not started the Ellie build yet, I have been reorganising my workroom and building Steve Ward's indexing unit for electronically driving my 3 inch rotary table.I have finished the indexer now so all ready to start the Ellie build proper. I am going to make the jackshaft version. I am tempted to start with the engine so I can set to making the gears but I will 'hold me watter' and start at the beginning. I will need the chassis and the engine to do the sums for the gears. I have bought an extra engine set, the plan being to join them back to back to make a twin. The tricky bit will be working out the reversing block and ascociated plumbing and porting. If it all ends up a mess at least I willl have something to throw at the neighbour's cat when it is making a racket in the middle of the night. Admin, if this thread belongs on a 'build' board please can you put it in the right place, I'm not too good with forums!

Nickclarke wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 9:38 pm Admin, if this thread belongs on a 'build' board please can you put it in the right place, I'm not too good with forums!

You're OK here Nick. Given the subject, either this board or Projects would have been fine.

Do keep up the running commentary as you go along, please.

I have arrived at a solution for converting from single acting, single cylinderto double acting twin cylinder and it is surprisingly easy. I bought the standard and reversing valve from Jerry at Clevedon Steam, it is what is used on his Virgo engine. It was almost made for the job! It will be cut on the line shown in the pictures and silversoldered between the laser cut engine frames I got from Camden Minature steam. In order to make the ports line up, I will use a 1/16 ball nose end mill to machine 1/16 deep grooves on the inside faces of the two laser cut frames/standards before silver soldering the three parts together. I will need to make a new spacer piece to accomodate the 16.5mm gap between the engine frames. The 16mm gap will just about acommodate the flywheel and drive gear, which will be pinned to the flywheel. Job done! (In theory at least!).
The following photos should explain....

That’s a clever solution, I like it! Do clevedon sell the reverser assembly on its own then? My thoughts were along similar lines but I was going to use a separate reverser block to make things easier as I don’t have access to a mill. This is a much neater way of doing it though!

Yes, Clevedon will sell the standard seperately, give Jerry a call or an email. It is a much easier solution than having a maze of pipework to deal with if a seperate reversing valve is used.
http://clevedonsteam.co.uk/index.html