An old style kero lantern

I'm building a Great Eastern style tram, based on the construction series in the Australian Model Engineer magazine with a few mods, and I needed to make the headlight.

The commercial torches these days mostly use those surface mount LEDs and the reflectors are not the right shape for an incandescent bulb. I came across a cheap torch at a junk store which still had a bulb and looked to be a suitable diameter.

I had a drawing of the kero lanterns the Victorian Railways used on the narrow gauge NA locos of Puffing Billy. This fortunately printed off in a scale I could work straight off the drawing...half the printed size.

The lantern body is made from bronze, machined out to house the reflector and bored right through so the bulb retainer comes out the back. The front wall of the tram was drilled out to clear the bulb retainer and facilitate wiring up The reflector is a push fit into the body of the lantern and so is easily removable.

The kero tank and the vent were made from solid, filed half round to suit the body, and machined to shape. The handles are from hardened piano wire with a bit of copper tube to represent the hinge. Mounting is via a tapped hole in the kero tank.

Maybe you could make a similar style lantern for your project!

Don't forget Christmas is coming up shortly, and those who purchase through the website will be in the draw to win some of our prizes!  See more about it on our website!

www.npwoolley.com

Pansy boiler trial fit

Some pics of how it's all coming together! Not long until the soldering starts.

A lathe spindle stop

I finally took the time to machine up a dead stop for the lathe spindle. Certainly makes for easy and consistent lengths when required.

A batch of boiler tubes seemed to be the ideal job to try it, so a bit of 50mm round bar was sourced and machined down to suit the thread in the rear end of the lathe spindle.

Thread cutting involved a bit of measuring and a bit of guesswork to get the plug to screw in, which is now a nice fit. The plug shoulder tightens up against the end of the spindle.

The end was machined from an offcut of bronze, and a 3/8" thread bar installed for setting the length. It will also fit inside the chuck for those short jobs.

Very easy to knock one up, worth making one if you have a few parts the same such as axles, boiler tubes, etc.

www.npwoolley.com

Capstan lathe rebuild

Currently in the final stages of rebuilding a Ward 2A capstan lathe for making production parts. It's a heavy brute of a machine. Very solid on the headstock too.
The strip-down involved pulling apart the gearboxes on the carriage and capstan feed, only to discover some serious rust had taken hold on the gears. So much so that quite a lot of teeth on the carriage feed gears were heavily pockmarked and much reduced in thickness and the capstan power feed wouldn't engage or disengage. Evidence of grease lubrication in some of it, I couldn't tell whether the greasing was done in the 1960s or 1970s. Quite historic!

The turret indexing mechanism didn't work either, and was missing a pinion gear that drives the stops. This was sourced from the UK from Ward Spares.

Many new parts have been made and the old ones given full treatment. The bed was oil-stoned to remove some dents and many hours spent on the wire wheel making it all look like new. The paint work seems to be original, I can't tell.

A 240v coolant pump was added, the well tank lid was modified and milled away to fit the new pump.

The spindle motor has been rewired to run off single phase through a VFD (variable frequency drive). This was wired up by a great friend and master electrician Jonathan McDonald. Took some time to decipher the Chinglish in the VFD manual!

Not long to go now, certainly a rewarding journey to strip and learn how it all goes together. The English machines are certainly made to last with a bit of TLC.

www.npwoolley.com

Boiler plates for a Pansy

Boiler plates coming along well for a 5" gauge Pansy. (Pansy is an 0-6-0 Great Western Pannier tank loco, building a new boiler to replace the under-spec old one)

The firebox flange was completed first, and then the reverse flange for the barrel.

www.npwoolley.com

NP Woolley news via a blog site

Hi all,

I have created a blog/news site at www.npwoolley.blogspot.com.au, it's not intended to be a separate source of information on what's happening but a "slave site" to generate a news feed that we can embed in our website.  Our website design program is not as customised for blogs and news feeds as we thought!  The main problems are text and image integration, getting overlaps on some devices!

Facebook's design had given us an easy place to put updates and job photos, but the problem with all these social sites is that they set up a separate source of information away from the website.  I'm not really happy with having a blogspot either as it has a separate URL, but the only other solutions seemed to be pushing on with our current clunky website manager or make some downloadable newsletters...ugh, I think that would be reverting back to the dark ages!

We're trying to download a copy of our old Facebook page, just for old time's sake.  It's not a bad resource either.  If we can, we'd like to get it up onto our website so you can go through it at your leisure.  Surprising how many people had visited our Facebook page, who weren't actually on Facebook!  I keep bumping into people who don't have an account and still looked at the page as a website.  We want to get that onto our website so there's ONE PLACE for all the information.


Lots of website improvements are underway, make sure to keep regularly visiting to not miss some of the new pages such as Modeller's Hub.  I have some more VR drawings to be scanned so keep an eye out!

Happy steaming,

Nigel

www.npwoolley.com

1-1/8" scale front ends - Some quick layout drawings

Modeller's Hub!

We're pretty excited to have a new page on our website called "Modeller's Hub".  We're in the process of listing up the railway drawings and information we have to make it available free of charge to help your project.  Many people have helped us for which we are extremely grateful, and we want to continue in the same way.  In the words of the Master, "Freely you have received, freely give".

There is a lot of work in generating drawing lists and indexes but have a look at what is available already on the Victorian Railways K and R classes.  Download the drawing list and if there are other drawings or locos of interest to you, by all means send us an email.

Help us help you
If you want to help us build a library of information to assist other modellers then we would love to hear from you.  Even if you have 1 drawing or some detail photos or site measurements of a prototype that you've taken, we would like to hear from you.  Send an email or use the contact form on this website to begin a conversation.

Click this link to visit MODELLER'S HUB

www.npwoolley.com

1-1/8" scale victorian railways models

I have always liked the steam locomotives of the Victorian Railways.

Commonly 1" scale is a close scale reproduction of Broad Gauge (5' 3") locomotives in 5" gauge, but a little bit of thought has gone into whether we can make these same locomotives a little bit more competatively sized in 5" gauge.  Some of the VR locos were designed for gauge conversion to Standard Gauge, being the designs from the 1920s and later.  The VR N class, R class, J class and so forth were designed with different techniques such as removing spacer blocks and machining frame stretchers to bring the cylinders and wheels in by 6-1/2".    The earlier designs were theoretically not "gauge convertable" but many wonderful things can be done to a model.

1-1/8" scale is popular for standard gauge models in 5" gauge, which gives an easy scale factor of 3/32" per inch full size.  The features and benefits of this scale is that the locos are a little bigger than "true scale" but improvements occur to the mechanicals and boiler with an increase in size, not to mention the added wieght with a cubic volume increase.  My personal philosophy is that we are trying to show the locomotive, and the slight size increase helps the loco look a bit more realistic on the ground level track, as the flat bar rail we use is quite over-scale anyway.

Some of the first parts have arrived and are being tested for fit.  So far the wheel patterns are underway, and we have some beautiful CNC machined buffers on the go as well. Some laser cut parts are here for the tenders, and work is progressing on the design.

The design for the K class will incorporate an improved regulator and superheater setup in the boiler, CNC machined parts, and a large selection of water cut and laser cut steelwork.  The prototype is a "Series 1" K class, whcih has the original flared tender and chimney, and no smoke deflectors.

You can read a bit more about the K class on Wikipedia  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_Railways_K_class

www.npwoolley.com 

Off Facebook, whew!

Hi folks,

We've made a tough decision but we know it is for the best.  Facebook was instrumental in showcasing our work to our friends and making many new customers across Australia, and contacts in the UK.  In the last 4.5 years we have been able to broadcast worldwide some of the work that goes on here.

For a few reasons, we have closed our Facebook business pages (NP Woolley & Trainage), as we have narrowed it down to one point of contact here on our website, free from Google and Facebook ads.  That's what we pay our website host for!!

We've certainly been suprised at how many people have looked at our Facebook page through the internet (those who don't have a Facebook account).  No more need to do that, it's all going to be here!

We will be excited to add some newsworthy posts and updates, in the same flavour and easy reading style our fans liked on Facebook!

www.npwoolley.com

More 3/8" stainless steel superheater elements in stock!

We have another batch of stainless elements in stock.  This type is proving to be far superior to the standard copper superheater designs.  Many of our customers have cut off their existing copper superheaters and joined the stainless on, noticing a big difference in improved loco performance and longer service life.  The stainless stands up to the extreme heat of the fire, and also a harder metal to resist cinder erosion.

One of the improvements with the stainless type is the higher temperature of steam because the stainless superheaters can extend well over the firespace.  The steam gets much hotter and dryer in "radiant" superheaters than the common "convective" copper types.   There is more economical use of boiler steam & water and an improved performance at the cylinders.  Higher temperature steam gives more power before condensing.

Additionally, the return bends are neatly TIG welded, not constricting the gas path within the superheater flues, as compared to some designs of copper elements.  Some of the loco repairs we have done in the past has revealed the existing copper elements were hardly working at all, and the huge return bend blocks served no other purpose than to block off the flues!  In that case the boiler steaming capability was inhibited by having these elements fitted.   The stainless elements we supply will not constrict the boiler flues, and easy to fit a tube brush down the flues for cleaning.

How do you join the elements to the header? We recommend a liberally silver soldered joint as near as possible to the superheater header. Typically a 45% silver solder (with cadmium) is well suitable, just remove the outer oxide layer off the elements with emery.  We have also used the standard silver solder flux "Comweld, Silver brazing flux No. 2" with success. The trick is to not overheat the stainless, as the oxide layer will return, and you will have to clean it off and start over.  According to our silver solder manufacturer, the 45% CAD silver solder is formulated for joining stainless steel to copper, and doesn't waste away due to the dissimilar metals being joined.

Our superheaters are...

Seamless 316 grade stainless tube
Standard length (1m for 3/8", 600mm for 5/16"), you cut to suit your loco
TIG welded by pressure welding company
Purged with gas while welding (no weld slag inside tube)
Hydro tested to 200psi to confirm no leaks

If you would like to invest in the performance and long service life of your superheaters, why not give these elements a go in your loco.
Check out the "PRODUCTS" page of our website for pricing and details

www.npwoolley.com

A 1:1 scale loco project

After meeting some of the core team in Victoria, we are very pleased to offer services to the V499 new build steam locomotive project.  This engine is under construction by the Victorian Steam Locomotive Company.  The V class is significant to Victoria's railway history, as it was it's first class of 2-8-0 heavy freight locomotive. The engine is also unique in that it has the Baldwin patented Vauclain compound cylinders.  None of these locomotives have survived into preservation.

This is an exciting opportunity tor us to step it up a notch and assist a full-size new build steam loco project in Australia.  It requires ground-up design and drafting, working from Baldwin drawings and Victorian Railway archive documents.

If you haven't yet seen the VSLC's website, you can check out www.vicsteam.com