Table of contents for Issue 4726 in Model Engineer

Sydney Live Steamers I receive a lot of newsletters from various clubs and these invariably contain something of interest. The latest from the Sydney Live Steam Locomotive Society in Australia informs me that they are celebrating their 75th anniversary this year. So – happy birthday to a very lively and productive club! Atmospheric Engines These were the forerunners of the later high-pressure steam engines and relied on the pressure of the atmosphere rather than steam pressure to supply power. If you have been following Ron Fitzgerald's series on the Steam Engine over the last several months you will be well ‘up to speed’ with them! David Hulse has spent the last 52 years building a series of models of atmospheric engines chronicling their development through the 18th century until they…

ME VISITS Where your editor lives is a bit of a wasteland as far as model engineering societies are concerned. The area between Bury St. Edmunds and Haverhill appears to have acquired some kind of immunity as far as our clubs are concerned and the nearest clubs are all at least half an hour away. These include the clubs at Ipswich, Colchester, Brandon (the nearest) and Cambridge. I was kindly invited over to the Cambridge club on a couple of occasions recently and it was very pleasant to revisit a club I've got to know quite well over the years. The Cambridge club is now 75 years old, having been founded in 1938, and acquired its first track in 1950. However, it soon moved, eight years later, to its larger…

Introduction Almost fifty years ago, I made a weather vane from 300 series (austenitic) stainless steel sheet depicting a galleon in full sail. The galleon was silver soldered to the stainless steel pivoted arm with an arrow head on the other end. It was silver soldered using Easy-flo No.2 and Easy-flo stainless steel flux. It was free to rotate on a supporting rod which held the four compass direction arms and was mounted on the shed in my parents’ garden. When my wife and I bought our own house the weather vane was, of course, removed from my parents’ shed and installed on the shed in my own garden. This lasted over thirty years until one dark and stormy night the galleon disappeared from the vane. I found it in…

Continued from p.407 M.E.4725 September 8 First of all, we need to think about the choice of motor to drive the leadscrew. There are basically three types to think about – stepper motor, servo motor and hybrid stepper. A stepper motor, on receiving a pulse from its controller, will rotate by a fixed amount. On receiving a train of pulses at a fixed rate, it will rotate at a constant speed. If it is under load, there is the possibility that it will ‘lose’ steps and not achieve the desired speed. You will only know about this when it ruins the thread you are cutting. A servo motor will rotate at a speed determined by its control signal, using internal feedback to ensure its accuracy. A servo motor is significantly…

Another nugget of dross amongst the gold; here I am again, with more tales of my travels in the Far North, unusual vehicles and interesting engineering. In this issue: hello, sailors!, the possible end of a club, a cuckoo clock or should I say a Phoenix clock, a screw loose, a river clean, no trains, a centenary bucket list, knobbly knees, skip diving, slot cars under a bushel and a frightening ignorance of tool knowledge. The Daily TelegraphMagazine of 29 July carries a great item about those who buildmodel boats. As we in themodel making fraternity/sorority understand and practise, the essence is in the detail. One of themis quoted as not owning a television; ‘sitting in an armchair looking at a box boresme to tears.’ Another says, ‘there's always someone…

Continued from p.373 M.E.4725 September 8 Back at the beginning of part 6 (fig 29, M.E.4723, August 11), the possible use of Watt's #1 straight line linkage as a valve gear was mentioned. Voilà, Sisson's valve gear, see fig 48. The only references I've found to this gear are given at the end of this article. From these two sources I find that Sisson's gear was invented in 1885 and that Sisson was ‘a very clever engineer and prolific inventor, [and] was primarily concerned with small and medium sized marine engines’. He was not perhaps over keen on his own valve gear as I've found lots of pictures of Sisson's engines with Hackworth and Stephenson's gear, but not one with Sisson's gear. It will be noted that the vertical movement…

Continued from p.392 M.E.4725 September 8 The completed items of the Schools Class locomotive and tender are shown in photos 91 and 92 awaiting final assembly. The cylinder blocks were the first items to be fitted to the main frames and these set the whole alignment of the locomotive up because the fixings pass from the inner cylinder through the frame and then into the outer cylinder. In the past there have been problems getting the fixings into place around the cylinder bogie area on the locomotives that I had built and this one turned out to be no different. Photograph 93 shows the cylinders in place with the retaining nut being positioned with a holding tool that was made when I was an apprentice some 64 years ago. Photograph…

There is a wide variety of interests amongst the members of our club, the Northern Districts Model Engineering Society (NDMES) in Perth, Western Australia, including road and rail steam, electric and internal combustion, stationary engines and other more esoteric devices. Personally, I have always been interested in clocks, along with most other old mechanical devices. Clocks always appealed to me because of their seeming complexity and the symmetry of the many gears and wheels, together with the hypnotic reliability of a smoothly ticking mechanism. Why a Model Engineer's Clock? While I like clocks, I also like the robustness of bigger machines such as beam engines and steam locomotives. Many people, including numerous model engineers, have made clocks although the discipline doesn't appear to be as popular within model engineering circles…

Continued from p.377 M.E.4725 September 8 It's always an interesting debate: when should a model be painted? As the builder gains experience and confidence in his builds, I find the painting moves earlier and earlier in the project. I personally like to paint in batches. When all the components are completed for testing on air, I make sure everything moves like it should, then I strip and paint. Only after painting do I reassemble, oil all the moving parts, and only then do the final testing on air. The next painting stage is the completed boiler with the cladding, etc. For my Fire Queen, because everything is mounted to the boiler, painting was left rather late in the build. But before I can tell you about painting the model, the…

September 20 Bristol SMEE Auction, Begbrook Social Club BS16 1HY, 19:30. Contact: secretary@bristolmodelengineers.co.uk 21 Warrington & District MES Talk: Paul Caldwell on ‘Big Game Hunting’, St Mary Magdalene Church, WA4 3AG, 20:00. See www.wdmes.org.uk/events 23 Brandon & District SME Running/family day, Weeting track. See www.brandonanddistrictsme.com 24 Canterbury MES Public running. Contact: ginapearson@btopenworld.com 24 North Wilts MES Public running at the Coate Water Railway, 11:00-17:00. See www.nwmes.info 24 Sutton MEC Diamond Driving Centre fete. Contact: Paul Harding, 0208 254 9749 24 Warrington & District MES Running day at the club track. See www.wdmes.org.uk/events 28 Newton Abbot & District MES Club night at Rydon Community Hall, Kingsteignton. See nadmes.org.uk 28 Sutton MEC Afternoon run from 12 noon. Contact: Paul Harding, 0208 254 9749 October 1 Bristol SMEE Public running at the Ashton…

Continued from p.399 M.E.4725 September 8 Some Notes on Liveries In researching for the content of this article leading to the building of No. 420 as a rundown, scruffy tram, it occurred to me that the history of British tramcar liveries was of considerable interest. Bolton itself demonstrated fairly typical use and development of the application of decorative lining to public transport vehicles (photo 35). Even from before the Victorian era, lining was used extensively and probably reached the peak of its use in the 19th Century and into the first half of the 20th. It was particularly applied to railway locomotives and rolling stock as well as the emerging tram and bus fleets (photo 36). Widespread use declined slowly at first in the nineteenthirties and then rapidly from the…

Gauge 2 Dear Martin, Many years ago, in the mid 1970's, I was asked to restore to static display a small live steam locomotive that had been very badly damaged in a fire. It had been in a building fire and the remains had lain in a box for many years before it had come to me. It was in a very sad state but after many hours of work, which included trying to work out the jigsaw puzzle of loose pieces in the box, I managed to restore it to its owner who then displayed it in his office in Sydney. The engine was obviously a commercial product and I had no idea of its origin. It was a strange gauge, somewhere between gauge 1 and 2½ inch. The…

Continued from p.381 M.E.4725 September 8 Competition Day 3 Sunday After the disruption of Saturday, many what-if scenarios were played out preparing for Sunday's packed agenda. By 7:45 there was a long queue forming outside Ashton Court Gate, as we waited for the park gates to be unlocked. We decided to stick closely to the original sequence as that made sense although, with extra runs to fit in, it was going to be a longer day for all. With a slight improvement in the forecast, there was some optimism this might be a drier day and our volunteers were ready to put in their best for the hours ahead of them. Although the dynamometer car now had a new load cell unit fitted, the opportunity was taken to check the…