The Home Machinist!

i have riveted up a bunch of tenders and cabs. when i rivet up a tender, and have a long row of rivets, say about 75 rivets, i will start on one end, go to the middle, go to the other end, back about halfway between the end and the middle. i will just skip around. i have never had any trouble with t...

that happened to me while running my nephew's mogul up at Columbia, tn. we come around a curve and noticed something rolling along side the engine. we couldn't figure out what it was for a minute. it turned out to be the right pilot truck wheel. same thing, it come unpressed. we glued it back with 6...

instead of using a hand pump, why not connect a garden hose to the boiler, and use that as a water feed. city water pressure won't be enough to blow up your boiler. i remember the first time we hooked up the garden hose to my boiler, it looked like a water sprinkler.

the last two locomotives i built were insulated with a material called fiberfrax. what i got was about a half inch thick and bout three feet wide. one layer did a pretty good job of insulating the boiler. it still got hot on the jacket, but it didn't burn off the paint on the jacket. i don't remembe...

this reminds me of something rather funny that happened to me many years ago. i was over at my friends house running my allen mogul on his track. the local newspaper had sent this lady reporter to do a story about us and take pictures of our operation. she was riding around on my train and we had st...

if you are talking about the really small check valve, the ball measures .094". ninety-four thousands of an inch. that ball is so small, if you were to drop it, it would burn up in the atmosphere and you would never find it.

i remember when i ordered my first set of mogul parts. when i asked him how much to make the check out for, he said to just mail him a check when i got my parts. he didn't know how much the freight would be and he would write the total on a stick on invoice. not many people would do business that wa...

there will never be another supplier like the late Gene Allen.. i once called him at 7:30 memphis time. i didn't even think about the time difference in california. his wife answered the phone and said he was asleep. my smart mouth comment was, i guess he is sleeping late. she nicely told my the tim...

i once built a two cylinder stationary steam engine using aluminum for the pistons and cast iron for the cylinders. i machined the pistons to what i thought was a good running clearance. it ran great on air, but then we hooked it up to steam, it ran for about 20 seconds and then stopped real fast. o...

thanks for all the replies. andy and i were talking about him this morning, but neither of us could think of his name. it's been bugging me all day. i figured if any body knew who he was, it would be the folks who hang out on this group. thanks, again.

a friend and me were having a conversation this morning and we were trying to come up with the name of a former supplier of live steam stuff. neither one of us could come up with a name. so here goes. there was this guy who had a shop in missouri. he made the live steam meets. i regularly ran into h...

i have been fabricating my main and side rods from steel and aluminum for quite a while now. i used the castings for my first set of rods, fabbed them after wards.