Table of contents for Issue 4724 in Model Engineer

Mother and Daughter Tram Sarah and Rebecca Brightman have become the first mother and daughter tram crew at Crich Tramway Village, home to the National Tramway Museum, since daughter, Rebecca, passed out as a tram conductor recently, at the age of 16. Both women have a keen interest in social history and transport, with Sarah volunteering at Crich Tramway Village since she was 17 years old, becoming a conductor at 18 and going on to become a tram driver in 2001. As a result, Sarah passed on her enthusiasm to Rebecca, who has been visiting the museum since she was five weeks old. Sarah and Rebecca share the fact that their first solo conducting trips at Crich were on Sheffield 74 tramcar. While Rebecca is about to begin an Applied…

This is a simple, quick device that I made out of odds and ends for just one job – but I soon realised that it had other uses. I was helping a friend to build a model boat. When it came to making the deck planking we saw that wood scored with a scriber or Stanley knife looked like wood that had been scored with a scriber or knife. On top of that, whatever you are using for a straight edge is just bound to slip or the scriber will follow the wood grain resulting in a ‘plank’ line that goes everywhere except where you want it to go! This is a simple plane running between fixed guides which holds the wood and guarantees a straight line of exactly the…

We will make a start on the combination lever (fig 95) and this needs a kink machining in it. It is no earthly use thinking you will try to put the bend in it afterwards as all this will do is to introduce an error straight away. You will need to make a start with two pieces of at least 7/16 × 9/16 so there is quite a lot of machining to do on them. I would begin by drilling and reaming the holes and then machining the outside profile. I have tried to include some photographs which show the kink in the top of the combination lever and I think photo 191 shows this to advantage. One thing that you do need to notice though is the fact combination…

Modellers in the smaller scales frequently ‘weather’ their efforts in the quest for realism. This process is rare indeed in the larger scales, particularly with regard to tramcars. The description that follows is therefore of a different and arguably more realistic approach (photo 1). I am now ‘getting on a bit’ and belong to that diminishing group able to recall the last days of the first generation of tramways in Britain. Obviously, these recollections came from a time when we were young and impressionable and, as such, remain vivid to this day. For me, all the earliest memorable experiences of trams concerned the final years of the once large network in South Lancashire and in particular Bolton Corporation Tramways. I was at an impressionable age, becoming captivated by tramways from…

Some notes on the valve gear The valve gear is of course the Stephenson valve gear which was the latest and greatest at the time. The fact that the lifting link was below the expansion link has confused more than a few Internet locomotive ‘experts’. When designing the linkage based on the original locomotive, a couple of interesting facts came to light. For one, you would expect the very short lifting link to cause considerable die slip but the long eccentric rods combined with the rocker proportions dampened some of this geometric delinquency. The original locomotive had the lifting link pivot on the centre line of the expansion link, which I moved slightly to further improve die slip. One notable outcome of the valve gear proportions is that ‘back notching’…

August 24 Newton Abbot and District MES Track evening at club site. See nadmes.org.uk 24 Sutton MEC Afternoon run from 12 noon. Contact: Paul Harding, 0208 254 9749 26 Brandon and District SME Running/family day, Weeting track. See www.brandonanddistrictsme.com 27 Canterbury MES Public running. Contact: ginapearson@btopenworld.com 27 Warrington and District MES Running day at the club track. See www.wdmes.org.uk/events 27/28 Bristol SMEE Public running at the Ashton Court Railway BS8 3PX, noon17:00. Contact: secretary@bristolmodelengineers.co.uk 27/28 North Wilts MES Public running at the Coate Water Railway, 11:00-17:00. See www.nwmes.info 31 Guildford MES Open day, 10:00-13:00. See www.gmes.org.uk September 2 Bromsgrove SME Open Day – all gauges welcomed, 5, 3½, 2½, G1 and 16mm. See www.bromsgrove.co.uk Contact: Doug Collins, 01527 874666 2 Tiverton and District MES Running day at Rackenford track. Contact:…

The Ken Hawley collection and Sheffield made tools Ken Hawley (1927-2014) was a remarkable collector. He owned a tool shop in Sheffield but besides selling tools he was fascinated by their making and makers. Sheffield then made an incredible variety ranging from garden tools (photo 23) to surgical instruments (photo 24) and from builder’s tools to precision measuring equipment. Sadly, much of the industry was in decline. Many smaller manufacturers were closing down with others sending production abroad. He recorded how craftsmen like the ‘Little Mesters’ would make specialised tools or even parts of tools like handles, sometimes filming operations. He built a vast collection of tools occupying several garages and his home. Almost equally importantly he collected manufacturers’ catalogues and sales information, now a vital record, along with engineering…

Slotting polygon holes We have four problems to solve: 1 - tool height adjustment 2 - which roughing diameter 3 - which depth of cut to give 4 - work holding and indexing 1 - Tool height adjustment This is necessary (especially for the smaller dimensions) as the cutting edge must be in a horizontal plane cutting the spindle axis. See fig 42, which shows a slotted 5mm AF square, and the effect of the tool having a 0.25mm offset. The intended square is shown by the grey lines. See photo 20 for a tool height setting method – in this example we are cutting a 5mm square hole with a 4mm diameter slotting tool (already described). A DTI set on a bracket able to slide on the cross slide…

Introduction Having investigated the fundamental principles of radial gears and the shortcomings of Hackworth gear in the last episode, it is now time to see how these shortcomings can be overcome. There are at least three remedies and the most common, in the UK at least, was Joy gear. David Joy is described by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers as ‘not only an inventive engineer, but also a fine draughtsman’ (ref 14). He presented a paper on this valve gear in 1880. It was widely used on the LNWR and the LYR and, whatever else anyone might think about the LNWR, their non-compound locomotives had tremendous haulage capacity for their size and worked the heaviest and some of the fastest express trains of their day, so the valve gear can’t…

The crossheads were tackled next and are formed from two sections, the main section being made from a mild steel blank that was squared up on the vertical mill before turning the piston rod collar in the lathe. Photograph 42 shows the blank being roughed out in the four jaw independent chuck mounted in my Myford. The blank was then transferred to the vertical mill and the throat cut out using an end mill (photo 43). To complete the crosshead we needed the ‘tee’ section to slide in the guide bars and these ‘tees’ were formed using the mill and are shown in photo 44, together with the main section. The ‘tees’ have a scallop cut in the lower edge which will enable the connecting rod to fit in the…

Now this might seem a bit out of step and perhaps it is but sometimes one has to work around things the best that one can. For me, this means trying to build a workshop that is already full of everything from the old. I am basically building in three stages - new extension, rear, and front of the original garage - this is so that I can clear the area being worked on without having to move stuff out of the building into the elements. Therefore, I have decided to build some of the drawers so that I can empty some of the old units brought with me which can then be scrapped to give me more room - at least that’s what I’m trying to accomplish. To begin…

The year is 2019 and, with Elidir’s valves and fittings finished, her injectors tested and miraculously working, and two vacuum gauges stuffed into a single housing to become one, we descend upon the author’s workshop once again to find him connecting everything together with length upon length of increasingly unstraight copper tube. The lost art of tubulating Isn’t copper wonderful stuff? Alright, I know it costs a king’s ransom these days and it can be a pig to drill and machine but, to this day, and despite knowing what’s going on inside to make it happen, I am still secretly astonished when, after simply heating it with a blowtorch and quenching it in water, a stiff and unyielding length of copper is suddenly as flexible as a pipe cleaner. Simply…

Published by Camden Miniature Steam Services, 2021 ISBN 978-1-909358-52-2 £18.95, 160pp, 30 drawings, paperback (order through the website camdenmin.co.uk) During a very pleasant barbecue with my dear friend Martin Evans I happened to mention a book I had purchased titled Ephraim, A Simple Freelance Live Steam Shay Locomotive for 45mm Gauge written by Peter Scott. Martin encouraged me to write a review hence these few words. I must confess to being a bit of an armchair model engineer spending too much time thinking about my next projects - very often they never get started or, when started, they never get finished. Gardening, car maintenance and weekend away days often send me off on an unrecoverable tangent. I have always fancied making a small locomotive and to that end purchased Kozo…

Well, here we go again, Geoff is taking his well-deserved holiday so you will have to put up with my ramblings! I hope everyone has been enjoying the good weather and getting out and about as there have been some great events on offer. I understand the Annual Sweet Pea Rally at the Sheffield SME was well attended and enjoyed by all. One of the next events will be the Dreaming Spires Rally at the City of Oxford SME in July. The Bristol Society is hosting this year’s IMLEC so I expect that competition to be keenly contested. It is an excellent track at Bristol for this type of event so hopefully it will be a good weekend (it was! Ed.). The summer edition of the National 2½” Gauge Association…