29/11/17 - Pansy

Today's work was to play around with the superheater plumbing. Going well. Still to do the hot header or a ring feed to the cylinders. Quite cramped for room near the petticoat and blast pipe.

Happy steaming!

Nigel

28/11/17 - Holmside

Today some hollow bar was collected for the boiler extension, and it was machined to size.

Also on the way I collected a 1/4" ball valve for the regulator. The ID through the ball is 7.5mm which is the same as the 3/8" version, the larger valve simply has bigger threads! This one will have some cranks and levers to drive the valve as there's more height to fit the whole assembly in the dome. The regulator rod will fit into a socket on the back of the elbow...similar to fullsize practise.

Happy steaming!

Nigel

27/11/17 - Holmside

One of the jobs on the Holmside is to make a 50mm long barrel extension that welds on the front tubeplate. It will engage with the smokebox. The boiler is shorter to facilitate the welding of the front tubeplate to the barrel, and requires an extension to fit the smokebox.

The barrel of the boiler as supplied was a standard duplex size...it's approximately 6 -5/8" OD and is slightly larger than the smokebox itself. So a ring was machined to fit that, and make a visually acceptable transition. The cladding will fit straight onto the barrel, no lagging or space underneath as there simply isn't room!

The barrel extension will be machined from hollow bar and welded to the barrel.

In other news I have been collating a bunch of SMR drawings which I took photos of at Richmond Vale. This is for engineering reference for some 10 class.

There is a lot of cropping and editing to turn them into a printable item. However it's cheaper and probably better for old drawings to not have to endure the scanning process in the case the only scanner available is a roller scanner! Just have to deal with the fisheye effects that come with the photos.

Happy steaming!

Nigel

24/11/17 - Pansy and pattern

I've included a couple of pics which I forgot to take yesterday, of the header and superheater elements. It's using 2x 3/8" stainless elements from our stock. You can buy these elements directly off us, just check the products page for details.

Also the CNC router got a workout today cutting out a pattern for a Victorian Railways loco number plate to be cast in iron. As per patterns the sides are drafted nicely with a tapered cutter. A definite advantage of the router vs a laser cutter.

Happy steaming!

Nigel

23/11/17 - Pansy

Today's work was to get those stays soldered up and machine up a header for the superheaters. I forgot to take a photo today (too much excitement!) so I will post one up tomorrow.

Some developments are underway for offering a 3D drafting service to you our customers. Up until now we've offered 2D drafting, but will be exciting to offer a 3D capability. More news on this to come in the near future!

Happy steaming!

Nigel

22/11/17 - Pansy

The last in-house boiler hydro revealed a couple of pinholes to fix up on the stays.. a couple of adjacent ones needed a little rework next to some I sorted out last heat. Nothing major, just a little tedious chasing some small pinholes and weeps!  Not long to go before an official hydro test.

The superheater elements are out on the bench...will be fitting some of our U-Beaut 3/8" stainless supers, these get silver soldered to the copper headers with 45% blue tip solder.

Happy steaming!

Nigel

21/11/17 - Princess Marina

An order for the cylinders was placed today with Blackgates UK.

Also the second batch of laser cut parts was counted and organised into their respective sub assemblies.

So much of the design has already been put into the laser cut bits. They are a great head start for construction. Always worth putting as much effort as possible into the design upfront to minimize the head scratching later on.

Happy steaming!

Nigel

20/11/17 - Princess Marina

Lots of milling up frame angle iron and stretcher material for the Princess Marina. Should be riveting and bolting it together soon!

Will be placing an order for cylinders from Blackgates as these ones supplied with the loco are the wrong proportions.

Happy steaming!

Nigel

SMR 10 class

Over the last few months in-between the live steam work I have been at South Maitland Railways inspecting the 10 class 10 & 18 that belong to the Hunter Valley Training Company, with an assessment of the locos. It has been a refreshing jaunt outside the 4 walls of my own workshop.  From time to time I have undertaken heritage work and find it enough of a variation to nicely offset the models.

The engines were moved to the historic red shed for inspection on the pits by the new SMR diesel. The workshop drop pit cradle was removed and the rust cleaned off and repaired for undertaking some work on the driving wheel axleboxes. The drop pit was cleaned out, rusty tracks cleaned up and the ladder and the cradle was repainted.

The mechanical inspections required a CAD file to be started to check certain things, and brought up the subject of the original sizes and drawings. A project plan and Gantt chart was also done for future work to be undertaken.

The SMR drawing series and master drawing index has been written up, and information and drawings kindly sent me by many friends of Westinghouse compressor and brake valves, and turbo generators, Detroit lubricator and so on. It is a very comprehensive file of the 10 class drawings and all the purchased items bolted to the locos.

Also a set of maintenance standards has been adopted from the NSW 50 class which is applicable to this class of loco. Some components vary but most are very similar if not the same design. This pre-work in establishing some written standard is valuable for any future operations.

A set of inspection and check sheets has been able to be remade copying off what was found in another 10 class mechanical history file. Also some other inspection sheets and maintenance intervals have been adopted from others.

Much has continued to keep surfacing on the old SMR workshop techniques and ingenuity, a tribute to the men who kept these locos going for so long.

It is not a promise of steam returning on the SMR line again, but work continues in the mean time to collate the data and look at the costs and a plan. It has been hard work to pull it together but it is exciting to see things in a more complete state at least on paper. From my perspective a chance to serve a historic railway in Maitland has been a valuable experience and introduced me to many wonderful people along the way.

I put my NP WOOLLEY station sign on the lamp irons just for fun!

Happy steaming!

Nigel

7/11/17 - Princess Marina

A big box of laser cut bits came yesterday, which included mainframes and stretcher materials. I will be going through the box shortly to see how it all looks.

Apart from that been very busy making a lot of swarf machining up the axleboxes out of LG2! An 1-3/4" diameter bar is being used to make axleboxes 1-1/8" x 1-5/16".

Happy steaming!

Nigel