Table of contents for Issue 4741 in Model Engineer

Martin Evans can be contacted on the mobile number or email below and would be delighted to receive your contributions, in the form of items of correspondence, comment or articles. 07710-192953 MEeditor@mortons.co.uk Changing Times Over the Easter weekend I visited a garden railway in Lincolnshire. It was good to see many old friends again but the emphasis is on the word ‘old’. We are all getting older and one of the main topics of conversation was artificial hips and knees and not being able to enjoy our hobby as we used to. Times are changing – as they always do. Our hobby is changing too – again, as it always has. It is, after all, only for a couple of hundred years or so that we have had the modern…

The smokebox This is a very important item, being literally front and centre of the locomotive as you look at it, so I took some time and effort to try and get it looking as close as possible to the original (fig 14). The smokebox barrel was rolled up from some 3mm stainless steel sheet and TIG welded along the seam. I had an off-cut of a large bronze hollow bar which I brazed into the end to form the door mounting ring. For convenience, I cast a brass slug which I could machine up for the smokebox door itself (photos 27 to 32). This turned out to be one of the only two castings that I used in the whole build, but it could just as easily be turned…

Introduction I recently had a good look at the hot-air engine that I built over fifty years ago whilst at school (photo 1). The original design by T.E. Haynes (ref 1) had a small burner designed for town gas but, as I didn't have any gas supply at home at the time, I never built the burner. Recently I bought a second-hand copy of Haynes's book and I redrew his burner design as in fig 1, still in Imperial units. Two points to note are that the slot in the top of the burner was not dimensioned but a good guess is that it was 1/32 inch wide, as this is about the thickness of a 24 tpi hacksaw blade. The other item to note is that there is no…

My visit to the Northampton SME continued my little tour of some of the Midland clubs. I had been here before when the club hosted one of the regular Sweet Pea Rallies and I thought then it would be a good idea to come back and talk to the members without all the proceedings of a National Rally taking place. It was a pleasant spring morning when I arrived at Delapre Park, the home of NSME. The club was first formed in 1933 but for the last 58 years has been at this site and quite obviously there have been many changes to this area of the park since that time. Building work started in about 1967 and the most important development in these early stages was the building of…

April 19 Rochdale SMEE Video Talk – ‘The Snaefell Mountain Railway, & Other IoM Railways’. Castleton Community Centre, 19:00. See www.facebook.com/RochdaleModelEngineers 20 Cardiff MES Steam up and family day at Heath Park, Cardiff. Contact: secretary@cardiffmes.co.uk 21 Bradford MES Public Running Day. Members from 11:30, public from 13:30 to 16:00, whatever the weather, Northcliff. Contact: Russ Coppin, 07815 048999. 21 Guildford MES Open day, 14:00-17:00. See www.gmes.org.uk 21 Plymouth Miniature Steam Public running, 14:00-16:30, Pendeen Crescent, Plymouth, PL6 6RE, Contact: Rob Hitchcock, 01822 852479 21 Westland and Yeovil MES Running the track at Yeovil Junction – Steam Train Day. Contact: Michael Callaghan, 01935 473003 25 Sutton MEC Afternoon run from 13:00. Contact: Paul Harding, 0208 254 9749 28 Cardiff MES Open Day at Heath Park, Cardiff. Contact: secretary@cardiffmes.co.uk 28 Westland and…

The machining of the cylinders was easy to do with the square blocks. The holes for the bronze bushes were bored and the one face was also skimmed at that time. That face should be marked so that it is used to mate to adjoining parts to ensure all the built-up parts for the cylinder assemblies are kept truly in line. On my engine I added a pad to the base of the HP cylinders to make them up to the same level as the base on the LP cylinder (figs 3 and 4). This can be done away with if a 62mm long square piece of two inch square is used for the HP cylinders. They were then spigotted together and the mounting faces machined with a fly cutter…

Ron Fitzgerald takes a look at the history and development of the stationary steam engine. Trevithick's involvement with the water pressure engine may have been partly a reaction against Boulton and Watt's restrictive practices but it was to bring significant positive consequences. Water engines were safely operating with pressures up to 100 psi, whereas the Watt type engine rarely approached 10 psi. Trevithick must have observed that such pressures meant greater power with a relatively smaller cylinder diameter. It was also suspected that the water pressure engine operating without a draught tube incurred only a marginal loss of power which raised the analogous question, what would the effect be on the steam engine if the condenser was removed and the steam pressure was correspondingly raised to compensate for the loss?…

The 2024 Annual General Meeting of the Federation took place at the Boscombe Down Aviation Museum near Salisbury in Wiltshire on Saturday 2nd March. There was a good attendance by club delegates, who were given free access into the museum, which contains a wide variety of aviation history and artefacts to entertain the most discerning visitor. Helpful staff and information boards provided plenty of interest and, unlike many museums of this type, access was allowed into some of the aircraft themselves. I managed to gain access into the cockpit of a Lancaster bomber and, being only a smaller man myself, wondered how on earth those men of the RAF managed to fly those machines as they did. It was a tight squeeze for me, so how they did it with…

After plugging some numbers into a spreadsheet, it appeared that Ruby Swann's elegant copper-topped chimney, while attractively proportioned in the manner typical of Allchins, may not have been optimally configured for the primary task of ejecting the smoke, drawing the fire and raising some steam. But how would I reduce its diameter and add a venturi, without spoiling her elegant appearance? And would the results be worth the effort? Avoiding commitments As you have surely realised by now, perceptive Reader, I am at heart a coward, plain and simple. For example, when presented with an alluring selection of doughnuts arrayed neatly in a container, some white, some pink, others covered in silky chocolate and stuffed with custard, I will usually choose the jam-filled variety because, even though I may discover…

The four engines in the building, set around the central octagon, were originally supplied by James Watt and Co. in 1864 and were named after members of the royal family at that time, namely Victoria, Prince Consort, Albert Edward, and Alexandra. Watt and Co. up-graded the engines in 1889 and again in 1892 when Benjamin Goodfellow and Co. Of Hyde, Manchester, replaced each of the engines’ four plunger pumps with a pair of nine foot diameter pumps shifting over six tons of sewage at each stroke. A new engine house was built in 1898 where Flemming and Ferguson installed two triple expansion engines and pumps in 1899 and in 1901 Benjamin Goodfellow and Co. commenced upgrading the original engines. The single cylinder and piston of each engine was replaced by…

No other TV series using scale model techniques and puppetry has had so much impact and success as Thunderbirds, the brainchild of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. It was a further development of their Supermarionation (ref 1) series in the early 1960's. The name Thunderbirds was derived from an airfield called Thunderbird in the USA and the series was launched on television by the ITV Network in the UK in 1965 and 1966. It was also broadcast in around 30 countries worldwide, such as The Netherlands, Canada, Australia, New-Zealand and Japan. It was filmed by APF Films and distributed by ITC Entertainment, consisting of 32 episodes during a two-year schedule. The story In a nutshell, the story plays around the organisation IR (International Rescue), manned by the Tracy family on a…

I have shown the cab roof in the flat but just check by bending a piece of card round to make sure it fits properly before you cut metal. There was a place where you could buy ⅛ × ⅛ inch angle but like many things it went TU last year which was very sad as I used to use quite a lot of products from that source for all my signal bits and pieces. Anyway, this this will mean machining it down from ¼ inch angle but make sure that it is square in the first place as I bought 100 ft of the stuff a few years ago and I had to mill every piece to make it square. I feel the world is going to pot! Inside…

Debunking a furnace lining myth When it comes to furnace linings and heat transfer there are many conflicting views; from how to design and manage the furnace to how to build it and what refractory to use. Many of these views are contradictory and yet plausible, leaving a large grey area for the uninitiated to navigate. One particular view is that a furnace lining needs to be as thermally insulating as possible. If I were to tell you that copper can be used as an effective furnace lining in certain conditions you would think I'm pulling your proverbial leg but this is a common lining technique used in certain large scale furnaces where the charge is in direct contact with the lining. The design and operation of these furnaces are…

Views and opinions expressed in letters published in Postbag should not be assumed to be in accordance with those of the Editor, other contributors, or Mortons Media Group Ltd. Correspondence for Postbag should be sent to: Martin R. Evans, The Editor, Model Engineer, Mortons Media Group Ltd, Media Centre, Morton Way, Horncastle, Lincs LN9 6JR F. 01507 371066 E. MEeditor@mortons.co.uk Publication is at the discretion of the Editor. The content of letters may be edited to suit the magazine style and space available. Correspondents should note that production schedules normally involve a minimum lead time of six weeks for material submitted for publication. In the interests of security, correspondents’ details are not published unless specific instructions to do so are given. Responses to published letters are forwarded as appropriate. Flying…

Very interesting talk at the radio club on astrophotograhy, explaining how those stunning pictures of nebulae etc were obtained using only equipment costing no more than a modern radio amateur's transceiver. However, whilst the transceiver can talk to someone no further away than the Moon, the telescope can see things light years away (a light year is six trillion miles …). Not a two-way conversation, though. In this issue: glazed blades, a country park, secret modifications, the earth ‘did’ move for him, shucks, a GWR Shocvan, rebuilding a railway, battery powered trains, a shed for £1, a 1/12th scale model trolley, lift up your skirts and a roll of drums. Thanks to Mick Funnell of Brighton & Hove SMLE regarding the identity of the locomotive in photo 1 of ME…