The Home Machinist!

Love those trucks. Side frames look nice.

That one looks like it was set up with the original 'weed burner' firing method. My understanding is that there were 3 ways this Miller locomotive could be configured: (1) locomotive runs on air, boiler is simply a large air tank, gas motor and compressor inside of the tender to provide air pressure...

It depends on the size of your firebox, and the locomotive itself. I have run some smaller locomotives with small fireboxes that didn't like large coal chunks. There just wasn't enough surface area, and one chunk of coal would take up a good portion of the grate area. So we dropped back to 'nut size...

Looks really nice! Keep it up!

I have disassembled a locomotive which had gearboxes made onto each axle, and that is how they did it. It looked like 1" axles, but was really 3/4" axles with a 1" OD sleeve pressed over it. The bore of the gear inside the box was 3/4", the wheel bore was 3/4" and the bore o...

Saw a 1920s Ford 1 Ton truck this past weekend up close. It is amazing how small and narrow the cab was on those. That truck looked absolutely tiny compared to a brand new F250. This Ford had dual wheels in the back and used only 5 lugs to hold the wheels on. They were pretty big lugs, though. The m...

That locomotive is not as-designed. It is a replica of a locomotive that was built by Paul Brien from Nashville. Back in the late 70's, Paul Brien built a 4-4-0 using the Miller Backyard Railroad 4-4-0 castings as a basis. As you can see from your drawing, the original Miller 4-4-0 did not have a fu...

On that Chloe, the manifold is connected to the steam dome via a tube that surrounds the throttle rod. It has plenty of flow back to the manifold, and pretty much all of them that I have seen, including my own, had the gauge connected there. FYI it was never a problem on my own Chloe locomotive.

Good Job! Some leaking from fittings will not disqualify your boiler. You ever see a steam locomotive that wasn't leaking steam out of somewhere? Me Neither. Most of the blowdown valves I've ever seen will drip until you get heat and/or pressure on them, and then only about half of them will leak or...

Yep, and they are simple, work good, and are activated with a mechanical linkage. I've used them before, same style.

Last person known to 'own' the L.E. Small scales stuff was Russell Stewart. I was contacting him about some couplers in 1/2" scale back about 2010-2011 timeframe. He replied a couple of times, then I just never could get anything back from him. No answered e-mails, no phone, etc... Just dropped...

If you saw my shop floors, you'd cry... and not tears of joy or amazement either!