Over the last few days I have been joined in the shed by Paul who has come to have some working experience with me. He's learning how to paint some of our TrainAge signs which is a valuable service which we may be able to offer soon for the customers that order those.
On the locomotives, Pansy boiler is being prepped for a trip to the inspector to hopefully get approval to put it in the frames. The hydro test is done prior to fitment.
Happy steaming!
Nigel
A few days has been spent on straightening the running boards, adjusting bolt holes and tweaking the running board brackets, sorting out the sandboxes and bending their plumbing to represent the drawings more accurately. The running boards have been riveted too hard and had bowed. Also the brackets to the frame aren't all square or required a shim to get them to bolt up without huge tension on them causing them to bend out of shape again.
A few sand box bolt holes on one side of the frame were 7BA and required fasteners made, who knows why they were tapped oversize only on one side.
Another mystery was why the bolt holes in the running board brackets were mostly out of alignment witb the tapped holes in the frames. There's no other position it could sit in place and so was a womder how many screws were in the holes to begin with...maybe just a few. So the holes were filed into some slots to get the bolts to fit. One of those jobs where assembly and dismantling was every 5 minutes!
Happy steaming!
Nigel
The boiler was reinstalled back in the frame to begin looking at the regulator rods and positioning of the pivot on the boiler. Working off photos mainly. Using some 1/8" steel rod to set up some dummy rods and to see how close the handrail will come.
Happy steaming!
Nigel
