It's a long way to the top.....

Well howdy all you readers out there!! 

It's been a while I know, but this time if year is always difficult, with the annual trip to holland and my own railway to run and sort out it's been a busy time, 

The workshop has been fairly busy too, engines in and out the workshop being sorted. Fixed. Played with and all that,

So what been going on..... Well... The Fowler BB1 wasn't a complete success, so it's having some love and attention, 

I've re-built the lubricator completely, went round and sorted some minor issues with bits n bobs. Sorted the injector out, and modified some pipe work. I've made a new water lifter steam cone so that now works, not as well as the one I made for the Foden which will move 4 pints a minute but it's a good start. Now I've moved on and started looking at valves and .. It's a bit of a mess in there. Someone has " tried" to make the valve ports right with a brass plate soft soldered to the port faces. And that's just as bad as the original ports and no where bear flat so new valves and new port faces are on the go.

Unlike most engines where the port face is the top of the cylinder casting, the bb1 is a little different. The port faces are a block on top of the cylinders at. 8.5 degree angle and they are pressed into the steam chest and bolted down with a gasket to the cylinder block. So stage one was to re-machine the steam chest.

 Haveing made something that's square and a known size I moved onto the valve faces. I haven't got that far just yet, I've profiled them and put. 1 exhaust port in, but that's about it. Mostly the issues is finding time on the Cnc mill to do some work but it's getting there 

Once the ports are in I shall cut the valves out the block and then put them up on the. 8.5 degree angle and mill the valve face. And then they can be shrunk into the block, I've made them about .002" bigger than the steam chest so they won't fit, until I put the steam chest in the oven and get it hot and then they should drop in and when they cool shrink on, meaning they should be a steam tight fit and stay where they need to be, then I can move into the valves.

The Burrell. Well not a lot has happened. I've finally got round to tiring the wheels,

Thy are just about ready for paint now and ill get on that as soon as I've sorted some of the other plate work so I can paint a lot of stuff in one hit,

The boiler arrived!!!  ......... And went back, it wasn't exactly what I was expecting to be honest. I was expecting a brand new professional boiler. But this one was a little ..... Messy! Plus I had problems with some of the fittings and a few other things so I sent it back to them.  They are looking at it at the moment so we shall see what they say ! I'm sure it will resolve itself sooner rather than later!

.......………PUG!

Pug well.... Pugs been back together with a few minor tweaks and has run on a couple of occasions .... And what a little beast! I had it up my railway not too long ago and the circuit is. 3/4 of a mile and I managed 2 1/2 laps before I had issues with a break bar falling off and catching the coupling rod, also for half a. Lap I was pushing a dead terrier and it's driving truck back on the up hill stretch, so I'm well I pressed with it! I need to do a few bits. The timing ain't right, and it could use some other minor tweaks but as it stands I shall be running it for a while before I get too involved in ripping it to bits again to fix things! Also ..... Pug has a new play mate! 

Hopefully ill get round to doing a bit more in here soon but things are hectic at the moment, so much going on and so little time! 

Have a fantastic day.... And rock out ... As much as possable!

Gahhh! Grumble grumble grumble!

Ok so ill try this again 

.... i have already tried to do this once and my phone had a bit of an episode and decided not to bother uploading it ... and then promptly forgot it ... geeezzzzeee thanks ... and who said modern technology was the way forward?

so .. what i was trying to do was have an up-date of things that are going on .....but now as its several days later.... i forgot what it was i was trying to show so ..... ill apologize now if i put stuff in that you already know about! so....

For once I'm on the computer ... so proper headings and such!

So... Here goes! Erm ..... First on the table realy was this ... 

Me and a friend or 2 designed and made out own quad copter. And..... It finally flys!!!! With some new carbon fibre blades and some new blade clamps that are all balenced and lovely it actully does what it's supposed to!!! So that's fairly cool right? .... It's taken many months of tinkering on and off but soo happy to finally be able to take it out and fly it around.... Makes the whole experience worth while!

...... I know I know... What's that got to do with steam engines and the like I hear you ask..... Well I'm getting there! Building up to the main event slowly like a small lion stalking a furry toy, 

Boom!!!! 

There it is! A steam engine.... To be more precise, a gwr dock tank that belongs to a friend of mine.... It came for a tune up... Or at least that's what it was supposed to be it alas the poor thing is in need of a lot more work than a quick tinker, the cyilinders are shagged and the valves don't seal and the valve chests are shot... So there has been some talk of either massive repair jobs or new cyilinders.... So that could be fun..... Not!!! Lol 

Ok so some happier news after that bit of  A downer, 

The Burrell 

Is finally getting some more attention and is starting to get big!.... But I'm haveing massive paint issues!! I just can't seem to find any real decent spray paint for this kinda thing. Halfords... That's a waste of time.... Their car paint is all water based. (Including the colour matched stuff) so that's a no-go it never goes off hard, any ash and smuts will eat into it and its horrible, also their "spray enamel" .... Well ..... That's a load of crap too, what kinda enamel paint starts breaking down when it is touched by 3 in 1 oil.... After its been drying for a MONTH! ...  B&Q is useless now. They do "valspar"..... Wich is utter shite.... Plastikote is the only stuff I found that really works and I can't seem to find it anywhere! .... Grumble grumble grumble!!!!!   Rant over!..... But anyway... I shall probily stop posting stuff about the Burrell soon. I wanna kinda keep the overall look of thing a secrect for the big reveal later when I present the finished thing to my friend ..

So anyway...

Dads new toy....

He got a BB1 to go with the superba. As a "pair" of sorts. Well we steamed it... And ... A few minor issues to sort the most annoying is the gauge glass fitting has completely de-zinked 

 We went to clean the gauge glass fittings out and it sheard off. As you can see from the picture you can see how pink the fitting is compared to the top fitting, it needs cleaning out and few bits tweaking but that should be all good!

And lastly ... I know I've been rambling on for ages now ..... But 

PUG!!!!!!!!  

Things have moved on. The blast pipes in, the feeds are in. The new oil feed is in and just needs pipeing up, as does the blower. And the new floor plates in, just needs some fire cement to seal it up, 

Also the new pump is hiding between the frames and needs pipeing up. So we have got almost there.... It's come a long way and it's the last hurdle. I got some pipe on order and so hopefully it will come together quick... Well i hope!! It should be in steam on a track Saturday!

Anyways...

That's enough for now!

Pece out!

Time for a change,

Aparently it's as good as a rest but I would still like the extra few hours in bed! 

Lubricators,,.. That's the game of the day, to be more exact the ones from my friends dock tank, ... I rebuilt them a while back but one was playing up over the weekend so they are back on the bench, so ... I decided to put up a walk through, ( mostly for Tom so he knows how to do it himself!) 

So here goes.

Remove lubricator from the loco ..... Done!!

Empty lubricator...  Check!! 

One empty and clean lubricator! Right so step 1 remove the 2 locking nuts that hold the ratchet on and remove the clack from the bottom, 

Simples!... Now you need to unscre the ratchet wheel and shaft from the piston

This is a tricky task holding the rachet paw out the way whilst holding the wheel  that drives the pump to get the ratchet wheel shaft out,  

Step 3, undo the locking nut and unscrew the brass shaft from the pump body 

 

Now remove the pump! Simples, at this point clean the inside of the tank out well, lets not sort the pump and then fill it back up with crap as soon as you re- fill it!

Next twist the pump and remove the drive wheel, and undo the nut that's holding the pump onto the body,

Now you can withdraw the ram and remove the packing gland,

Now the packing gland is made from graphite string wound with a brass wire, so be Carefull of this. If you remove it, best advice is leave well alone unless you need to replace it, clean the ram and the tiny oil hole, and the body and basicly re- assemble in the same order you took it apart apart from when the pump is back in put the non return valve on first before screwing the brass shaft back in, this was you don't try and pull the pump over to one side or make it hard later because the pump isn't lining up to the hole underneath,

Bingo!!! You can now rebuild your own lubricators, !! Easy when you know how!!!

Don't stop believing!

Hold on to that feeeeeeerllllliiiinnnnngggg! .... 

I dunno why I came out with journey there, was in actual fact listening to led Zeppelin... Ahh well

So... Time for an update!

I've finally got over this lack of enthusiasm and kicked myself hard enough to get something's done, don't know how long it will last though! 

So whilst I was on the roll I've packed a few bits in,first and foremost was a little side project that me and a friend started a year or so back. It's a quadcopter that wouldn't fly.... Well after some tweaking it's now airbourne! Apart from a want to snap blades in half and throw it at me at high speed... More tweaking required!! 

But on the steam engine front, things have gather pace too, it's started with a 7 1/4" dock tank of my mates that came in for a setup, it's not the best example out there infact it's got more problems than you can shake a stick at but it now kinda goes.... Ish

With a bit of work on lubricators and such it should go a lot better than it did! After that as in the background pug is still on the bench and I put an evening or 2 aside to crack on! 

The exhaust manifold was the part of the day and getting that sorted so 

I made the block and bolted it in, then set about getting the position right, I screwed a brass bar into the exhaust hole to use as an alignment bar to get it central before soldering the pipes in permanently ,

Then added a blast pipe, wich annoyingly is a little short, but that can be solved, the other thing to work on was the useless water pump, this time I'm taking no prisoners!

I've milled the manifold off completely and soldered a new block to it for a new one,

Now with this I may actually be able to get it to work! So the project for this week is 2 non return valves and then hopefully install it into the frames and see if it works!.... Fingers crossed!!

I know this may seem a little rushed but I wanted to try and get something done on here but haven't got too much time to do it so enjoy!

Laters

Enthusiasm!!!!!!!

I have it all!!!!!......

Right now I've made my current state of mind clear, things have been moving! The Burrell's still at a stand still, apparently there will be no kit this month.... Seems like STW need to sort their lives out and get on with it!!!! Need a boiler, and valve gear to play with!!!!

So with the new season of messing around playing trains is coming round.... Maybe a bit more slowly and somewhat wetter than I had hoped, I've turned most of my attention to pug, time to get pug up to scratch and performing like a beast!

Well we came to the conclusion that there wasn't enough steam down to the cylinders, at all. The manifold arrangement leaked and was a pain so..... Upgrade time!

Fist up was increase the size of the fees from the regulator to the header on the front of the boiler, a pain in the ass but a fairly easy job

New pipe sorted! Much bigger bore so that should help pug to breath!

Next is to get the steam out header to the cylinders.....

So new pipes from the header to new inlets, 

The vertical fitting is the new bigger inlets and the angled manifold is the new exhaust manifold.... But ill get to that later, first. Some pipe work!

I had to make 2 steam feeds. So I used the old header and added another hole for the other steam feed and started making pipe, 

It may look a little wonky at this stage but  they aren't finished yet,

 By the time they were soldered up and sorted into the header and bent to line up  the end result is a lot better,

So steam feeds are done now onto the exhausts.... Still not sure how is best to do this bit so I haven't started yet,... Still need to work out how the 2 pipes are going to come together and form the blastpipe so... Any suggestions?

Eh?

Well.... Here I am again...... I think, ok so Maybe I'm not great at doing this "organised" posting bit ...... Basically a week will roll past when I haven't got much to post about. Things still in the works for one reason or another.... And then before you know it, it's been almost a month and it's slipped my mind completely!

So where was I? Well I dunno, erm I was painting the Burrell I think? Well I found out with some invention that the shit paint problem is easily solved. Spray it and then lob it in the bottom oven of my AGA over night, carefully remove it and let it cool and the paint bakes on nicely! So it's had a first coat, must get on with that a bit more soon, get some more red for the crank and the insides of the horn plates and start getting all the bits up together, I got the latest batch of parts the other week , piston rod and some odds n'sods like a water gauge.... Not much use without a boiler!!!! So the Burrell's slowed down to a crawl at preset as I'm missing a load of rather useful  parts!

So what have I been up to?....

Well......

The next project on the bench is this 

A 2" Clayton wagon that's been hiding away getting moved around the workshop and never touched,

As a start the frames wheels engine Dan boiler are all there, so with a bit of pipework it was running on air... Just... It wasn't right! So I stripped it and had to learn about joy valve gear some what quick 

Having stripped the crank out and checked every rod I went looking for errors and found a couple, the main rods were 1mm too long and all of the valve gear holes were around10 thou wrong.... Nothing too bad there, I fixed all those problems and carried on. 

I measured the crankcase and all the holes in it that held all the motion... Nothing too far out here either .... 

Hmmmmm... Getting fed up! 

Well to cut the story short ( well shorter than the 2/3 weeks it took me find the problem and boom, the crank was 3mm odd below the c/l of the pistons.... It should be on the c/l...

So I had to re- drill all the bolt holes and move the front plate up 3mm and boom! Valve events were good. (Or as good as joy valve gear will get, it's always gunna be a little lop-sided because the design isn't great and I wasn't about to go re-designing the system! Claytons are small but go like the proverbial shit off a shovel! When you get them right, so this one will be a good little beast! Only water tank, feed and fittings to go to get it hydraulic and steam tested and then build the back for it and its done and I can sell it, With the Foden, and Moonraker in service I don't really need a 2" Clayton hanging around, It will only gather dust. So if anyone's keen for a Clayton ....???

Also in the recent news the TRIUMPHANT RETURN of....... PUG!!!!!! Yep! Pugs back in the workshop for a re-fit!! I'm completely re-doing the front end, new steam feeds and exhaust feeds to and from the regulator to the cylinders , and up to the blast pipe, a bigger void in the smokebox for more room for ash and  soot so it don't clog up fast , more steam Into them cylinders and a new axle pump and pipework to re-do all the bits that don't work as well as it should! So with luck, she should be on heavy haulage duties soon! 

So far I ain't done much but it's now got new exhaust manifolds for the cylinders, now to drill and tap em and bolt em down , so that's about it for now! 

More to follow!

Back to square one,

Well here we are again! Xmas and new year is over and we all file back to the jobs we were doing and normality is restored... Almost!

I did a grand total of .... Not a lot over the  holiday, I had great plans of getting stuck in and working my ass off on a lot of the things. But that resulted in doing ..... Very  little. I wanted to get the Burrell bits painted and sorted. And a few other bits done for the foden and the black 5, but I only managed to drum up the enthusiasm to fix a few problems on the black 5, 

Worst of all is I had made a start on the Burrell, 

I had managed to paint it (it may look a weird colour but it's not as funny looking in the daylight, just my phone seems to have issues with some colours under artificial light) I even played with the idea of some kind of lining.

It's not every tidy but it was more for an idea rather than actually doing the job

But that's where it all went down hill, the green paint I used was well.... About as much use a chocolate fire guard. Even after 2-3 weeks of "drying" you can still peel it off with a finger nail. So that was the end of that realy, back to work today and straight into the shot blaster, for a complete clean off and start again, some what depressing really having spent hours painting and priming and sorting, to have tacky soft paint after weeks of drying. It spent most of the week on the back if the AGA in a warm dry place then in the front room and finally, consigned to the back of the van so I didn't forget it

So here we are, slogging on, back to work and back into the fun of it all .... If that's what you can call it! ..... Something like that.... 

Hopefully next time ill have a bit more to be exited about so catch you then!