October Engineering Report
Behind the scenes, engineering has been progressing steadily.
To ensure that what we manufacture is fit for purpose a considerable amount of time and CAD work has gone into design and test fitting so as to avoid unnecessary and expensive mistakes.
Following research of our drawings, the Trust has decided that, unfortunately, we can’t go for the cheaper original option of running Joy valve gear as we’d originally hoped but instead, we will have to run with the later Stephensons valve gear. As a consequence, we will have to manufacture all of the additional eccentrics, straps and rods which we’d hoped to have avoided.
All the drawings for the additional frame stretchers, angles and buffer beam brackets are finished and Tyseley Locomotive Works will be adding the manufacturing costs to the build quote. In addition, the drawings for the bolts and rivets required to fix the frames together have been put out for quotation for CNC manufacture to keep the costs down to a bare minimum.
The original hornguides were of an angled construction, this was to allow for adjustment during service to take up any slack in the assembly.
It was decided at an early design stage that all was really required for 25mph running were parallel hornguides hence a new design has been generated instead. These are going for quotation this week and hopefully casting in early November.
Following a visit to Tyseley on Oct. 28th a plan of action has been drawn up to start the process of frame erection. At the moment Tyseley is coming to the conclusion of several large projects and once they are completed and out of the works our job can start in earnest. In the mean time Tyseley will make a start on the additional bracketry as previously described and hopefully, the frames can move indoors for the first time for assessment and a start to be made on the hundreds of holes needed to create the assembled frames. I’ll be visiting Tyseley again on Nov’ 13th to catalogue exactly what’s there and make sure everything is in place to make a start late this year, early 2017 (current projects depending).
Also a start has been made on quotations for the wheelsets. This is a huge undertaking as a crank axle is required which will need massive expenditure from the trust so once we have quotations in from Ian Rileys and SDR Engineering we can see exactly what’s needed financially.
We also have a price for the driving wheel pattern, this will be a traditional pattern and cost in the region of about £3000.00
Coupled to this we already have the pattern for the leading and trailing wheels so along with three plain axles we have a good starting point for getting the loco on its wheels as soon as money provides.
Whilst we looking at patterns we realised we hadn’t got one for the heart of the loco, the nameplate. A CAD model has been completed and a local manufacturing company has offered to machine the pattern FOC. Once this has been done its off to get two castings done so we can display them on our stand for all to see and once the loco is finished they’ll take pride of place on the loco itself. If someone would like to sponsor the brass castings then please feel free to contact us.
