January
2008
Engineering
I am currently investigating engineering firms around
Hamilton, NZ that can provide bearings (for axle boxes) and
laser cutting (for frames).
I obtained a Hercus 9" lathe via TradeMe. I can now start
turning my own wheels.
Railways
I have visited the Hamilton
Model Engineers track a couple of times. They have a nice
park location and three interesting routes. I have become a
member which has the benefit of as many free rides as I want!
I have just received an email from a guy in Cambridge (New
Zealand not England) that owns a 7¼" gauge railway with a 1000' mainline run. He has offered to show me
round the line and maybe let me have a drive.
I visited Grant and his Squirrel
Valley Railway over the weekend and what a lovely little
line it is. I got to drive Grant's NZR DA-class loco and also
his Sandy River and Rangeley Lakes 2-6-2. What a beautiful loco.
February 2008
AutoCAD evening classes
I have just signed-up for evening classes in the use of
AutoCAD. I'd like to start using it to design rolling-stock and
then get the parts laser-cut by a company in Hamilton. This is
the way that Paul Middleton at
Ride
on Railways produces his 5" gauge equipment. OK, so a
six week
introductory course it not likely to have me churning out
rolling-stock in five minutes, but it is a piece of software you
need some training on because it is so complex.
Engineering
I was originally looking to buy an
Atlas 10" lathe on TradeMe, but the seller wanted more for
it than I wanted to spend and I ended up buying a "scruffier" Hercus 9" lathe. Now the
seller of the Atlas has asked if I am still interested in it at
a lower price. I am toying with the idea of buying the Atlas 10"
and selling the Hercus. The Hercus could do with a thorough
clean / restoration, but
do I want to do the work on something I might then sell? The
Atlas also has a vertical milling attachment and a lot more
accessories than the Hercus, making it even more appealing (both
practically and financially). Or,
for the money, I could keep both and set one up for milling and the
other for turning..... Umm.
Hercus 9" ?
or Atlas 10" ?
It really is a small world. The father of a friend of Pip's
works for a steel fabrication company in Hamilton. The owner of
the business (also a John) is in to miniature railways, is also
a member of the Hamilton Model Engineers and knows
Grant who owns the SR&RL #24 (see above). He has also told me
that if I ever need to use any of his machinery to let him know
as he'd be happy to help. He is rebuilding a 5" gauge Meyer
articulated at the moment but is also building a 7¼" gauge
Romulus.
I have decided to buy the 10" Atlas lathe. Moving it will be
a problem, but I may be able to borrow an engine hoist from John
at the steel fabrication company.
I have had an offer of the off-cuts from the flame-cutting
machine from a large engineering firm in town. When they make
flanges for pipework, the bit they cut out of the middle of the
"Polo-mint" is scrap; to them anyway. They are around 6" diameter and about 1½"
thick - ideal for wheels. I've also got a supply of off-cuts of
1" diameter steel bar - ideal for axles, so I'm doing pretty
well at the moment.
John from Tube Tech (see above) has not only offered to loan
me his engine hoist to move the Atlas lathe, he's also offered
to help me move it. The guy is almost embarrassingly helpful.
AutoCAD evening classes
I went along to the first class and got drawing almost
straightaway. The course is being run at one of Hamilton's
better boys schools and the instructor is one of their craft
teachers. He seems pretty good but he's said that if anyone
really wants to get "in to" AutoCAD then they should look at the
more in-depth evening classes run at the Polytechnic. So, I
asked them to send me more information as the next course starts
in May.
Here's my first drawing. The instructor saw that I was
picking it up and instead of drawing the "AA" logo in 2D, he
showed me how to convert it in to 3D. Then I added the cone
for a bit of fun.
I just downloaded and printed off a beginner's guide to
AutoCAD 2006, it is 374 pages long and fills three smaller A4
ring binders (OK, so I did print it single-sided). This isn't
some cheap-n-cheerful piece of drawing software I can learn in
five minutes; but then I knew that.
Engineering
John and I managed to get the Atlas 10" lathe back to my workshop
(garage) on Saturday. We needed to use John's engine hoist as it
was too heavy for the two of us to lift. It wasn't too much
trouble, but the height of the garage door was a bit of a
problem as the hoist above the lathe was only a fraction of an
inch clear of the top of the door. But it is in place now so
that's fine. Seeing as we have our house on the market at the
moment, I am not going to get too comfy as we'll need to move it
again soon when the house sells.
I just won a small petrol engine on TradeMe for half its
retail price, which frankly was too good a deal to pass up. I
can always park it in the back of my workshop until a project
comes up to use it on:
March 2008
After slaving over a hot PC for several hours, I managed to draw
this:
I don't reckon that's bad for for just two lessons. In case
you're wondering what it is, it is the beginning of a chassis for a
petrol-hydraulic loco.
Pip and I spent a very pleasant 10 days in Melbourne and I took
the opportunity to visit the Box Hill and Diamond Valley miniature
railways.
I have finished the 6 week "taster" AutoCAD course at Hamilton
Boys High School and I have decided to take this further. I have
therefore signed-up for a 10 week course at the polytechnic. From
this I will receive a formal certificate or qualification. I'm not
fussed about that, but to move on to more CAD work and do 3D, I need
the introductory course at the polytechnic.
April 2008
I was invited to see another model engineer not far from me by
John Bremner. Andy used to be a metalwork teacher but is now
retired. His garaged is packed with machinery and he has so many
projects on the go that it makes you dizzy to look at them all. He's
been building a Tinkerbell for nearly 20 years but though he says he
could have it running by the end of the year, he's apparently been
saying that for quite a while. He's also in to 32mm gauge live steam
and knows Grant who owns the SR&RL #24. It really is a small
world in model engineering around here.
Pip and I have been invited down to New Plymouth by a guy who has
a 7¼" gauge line around his garden. We're going down there to stay
on ANZAC weekend (25th-27th
April).
I sold the Hercus lathe for almost what I paid for it, so that's
good. I don't need two lathes so similar and the Atlas is a better
bet for what I want.
Unfortunately we didn't make it to New Plymouth as Ted's wife was
not well. Shame, but there'll be other occasions, especially seeing
as I now work only 4 days per week in the office so I have the
flexibility to take a long weekend pretty much whenever I like.
I am gathering more and more information on
Weymouth Miniature Railway and
Crystal Palace. The detective work
is fun if a little frustrating at times. Miniature railway
locomotives seem to have some interesting and varied lives making it
tricky to pin down accurate information on their movements.
I have identified a potential source of some used aluminium rail
in the UK, and some friends are hiring a container to ship their
goods from the UK to NZ later in the year - the rail wouldn't take
up much space in a corner. Watch this space.
May 2008
My AutoCAD beginners course begins at the
local polytechnic this week - which I am really looking forward
to.
The used rail in the UK was sold some time
ago unfortunately.
I am following up on a lead for a 2-8-0
that is for sale in Auckland.
Pip and I went up to Auckland to see a
locomotive that is for sale. Stupidly, I forgot to
take any photos of it, even though I had the camera in the car.
- POEM is unusual in that the builder
(Murray Lane) combined features of several different locos to
build this one. It is vaguely reminiscent of a World War I
American ALCO or Baldwin trench loco, but it is a 2-8-0, not
a 2-6-2.
- POEM is a combined side tank and tender
loco making it more like a sugar-cane loco. There were no
eight-coupled sugar-cane locos in Fiji,
though there were
still a few in Java (as of 2006 and most of those were German-built).
- POEM uses
Allan straight-link valve motion, which was unusual on
full-size locos and even rarer on miniature locomotives.
- POEM will have to be repainted, it
simply doesn't look right to have a blue and purple steam
loco. That said, many of the sugar-cane locos in Java (and
Australia) were painted some fairly garish colours.
POEM is a big loco, probably bigger than
Grant's Sandy River 2-6-2.
She was designed for a railway at Manu Ariki Marae a few miles
north of Taumarunui in the central north island of New Zealand.
She was to be able to haul a load of 54 adults up their 1 in 100
gradient, including a short stretch of 1 in 40 on a bend. Due to
a lack of suitably trained staff at the line they decided not to
buy the loco in the end and Murray retained her for himself. The railway
is still open and now extends to just over 3km (just under 2
miles), or a 25 minute
run.
Murray was originally going to build a model of Palm
Oil Estates
Management (P.O.E.M.) railway locomotive #3 but she would've been too small
for the intended use so he changed the design to the
semi-freelance 2-8-0; but he kept the name POEM.
Murray said that POEM has been running
for about five or six years and he has rebuilt those parts that
were not satisfactory, so there is little chance of it
developing a fault that he hasn't already uncovered. For
instance he re-made slide valves as the original phosphor-bronze
ones distorted and he made new cast-iron ones. Murray is a superb engineer and there is no faulting
his workmanship.
This is a loco built for hard use and is
not a finescale model. The paintwork is a bit tarnished in places
but the underlying loco is in very good condition. It is up for
sale at a very reasonable price and I am sorely tempted. The
colour would have to go though, it is just too... purple.
With an all-up weight of around 1 ton, I
am going to have to get a trailer specifically to move it. Where
to put it is also a bit of an issue at the moment as our current
house is far from ideal, but seeing as we'll be moving soon I am
not worrying about that.
I have decided to buy the loco in
Auckland.
John Bremner has offered to help me
collect the loco using his ute (pickup) and then help me build a
trailer for it. I got quotes for a trailer capable of handling
1.25 tons (with brakes) and they both turned out to be around
NZ$5000. John has all the equipment necessary to build me a
trailer and can get the parts (wheels, hubs, brakes, ball-hitch,
etc.). The end result will be much better as it'll be exactly
what I need rather than a compromise; and hopefully it'll be
cheaper too!
Pip and I went back to Auckland for a
seminar so we stopped off en-route to take some photos of POEM.
For more photos, see the
Locomotives page. There is a also a tender to go behind POEM
which is not visible in this photo.
As an idea, I will probably repaint POEM in the same scheme
as VICTORY on the
Bredgar & Wormshill Light Railway:
June 2008
My wife and I are
moving to Raglan in July. We are moving in to a rental whilst we look for a suitable
piece of land that will "work" for both of us.
John Bremner and I went up to Auckland to
collect POEM on 14th June.
John had organised a (large) trailer where the deck
was as near as we could get it to the height Murray had told us
the trolleys were built to - the idea being we could just roll
the loco and tender on to the trailer. Well, it didn't quite
work like that. Murray had made a mistake and told us 800mm when
it should've been 600mm. This meant that the trailer was a good
150mm or 6" different in height to the track on the trolley.
This wouldn't have been so bad except that POEM weighs in at
around half a ton. After much scratching of heads, and much
jacking and blocking of the trolleys we got the trailer level
enough to roll POEM and her tender on to the deck.
This was the first time I had seen
loco and tender together.
Once tied
down along with the two trolleys and the passenger carriage we came
to
the easy bit - pulling the trailer out of Murray's drive. Well,
that didn't quite go according to plan either. The trailer was
very wide and long and when we pushed it back in to the garage
by hand we pushed the drawbar over to get in round the slight
corner. This is fine, but when you have a pickup truck hitched
to it you cannot drag the whole lot back over the other way. Suffice it to say that for what should've
been a fairly routine job, it took us 3½ hours to load
up.
John with the grin
that says "see, we got it out of there in the end!"
The journey back to Hamilton was
uneventful and we took her to John's workshop which will be her
temporary home for a while. John has the benefit of a 1 ton
crane in his workshop which made unloading a lot easier - once
you figure out where to put the strops (ropes). This photo shows POEM hanging in thin air on John's one ton hoist
- which was a bit un-nerving.
PS. I know there are no
photos of me, I was behind the camera!
Mid-winter steam-up at Grant Alexander's Squirrel Valley Railway
- 21st & 22nd June 2008
CLICK HERE for more
photos
This was POEM's first outing since I bought
her in June 2008. I had her for only one week before Grant
Alexander's mid-winter steam-up at his railway.
Grant let me borrow his trailer as in the week
since I'd bought POEM John Bremner and I had not had the chance to
build my own. Grant's loco is big but even so POEM was a very tight
squeeze - we reckon there was about 3-4mm gap down either side! John
and I will definitely make my trailer a bit bigger to make life
easier. My car performed well with over 1 ton on the towbar and the
half-hour journey from the workshop to Grant's line was uneventful.
Unloading at Grant's track was fairly easy as
the ramp is the right height for his trailer (obviously) and the
loco and tender were soon on the track. This was the first time I'd
seen POEM on rails and she looked great. John and I both through
that all the effort to get her from Auckland was well worth it. Next
job... raise steam.
John had cut enough bits of wood to fill a 1
gallon ice-cream carton - well that disappeared in the firebox with
room to spare, so we rustled up some more. Once this was alight we
threw a shovel full of coal on top and after a while the pressure
started to rise. Note to self for next time - cut lots of firewood.
We noticed a few leaks but POEM seemed to be in good order.
Next came the great moment when POEM moved off
under her own steam. OK, so she's 13 years old and has run before,
but there is something special about running you new loco for the
first time. For some reason the reverser was stuck in dead-centre
and didn't want to move. It had moved fine when cold but now with 80
psi of steam on the valves the reverser wouldn't budge. Much
scratching of heads and John gave me a nudge and then... POEM
erupted like a geyser and leapt forward. I put her back in neutral
and everyone said "ah, the regulator works backwards to normal". The
regulator had been wide open and the steam chests were full of steam
at 80 psi - which is why the reverser wouldn't budge. That
embarrassing incident over (and caught on Grant's video camera to be
shown for ever more to remind me), the rest of the day went great!
It was supposed to rain but stayed fine all day and I may have
caught the sun a bit.
There were a few other locos there too. A very
nice PHANTOM built by Dennis (surname??) in only 10 months! A
particularly nice NZR Hunslet diesel and Grant's battery-electric
"diesel" was running. He didn't get his SR&RL's 2-6-2 out as he was
too busy being the host. There were also a number of people there
running their G-scale live steam (Grant has G-scale and 7¼" gauge in
his garden).
One interesting problem later on was how to
drop the fire. John managed to hook one of the grate segments out
but we were both expecting to be able to just drop the whole grate
out the bottom - it doesn't work like that.
We got loaded up easily enough and took POEM
back to John's workshop in Hamilton and whilst cleaning her up we
looked back at a great day which both of us really enjoyed. So I
wonder where we are off to next?
July 2008
John and I spent an hour or so discussing our discoveries so
far on POEM.
- There is some quite bad surface rust under the flare on
the tender sides. This will need to be rubbed down and
repainted.
- John made up a prototype (crude) replacement bracket for
the regulator that swaps the pivot and rod holes around thus
making the regulator work the "correct" way.
- After a quick chat with John he made up a new headlight
bracket to mount it on top of the smokebox.
- The chimney looks slightly too short to my eyes.
- Both John and I agree that the cab sides are too low.
We're looking at options to raise the floor of the cab to
the tops of the frame - about 70mm. This should make the
proportions about right for the Baldwin/ALCO originals.
Not much going on at present. My wife and I just moved house
so we've had more than enough to do, therefore POEM and other
railway activities has taken a back-seat for a while. However, I
have been talking to John concerning the design of POEM's
trailer.
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