The Home Machinist!

back in my running days, my locomotive was an allen mogul. It was oil fired. I used diesel fuel and had great success with it, but it smoked quite a lot if you turned the oil up. I tried firing a few times on kerosene. it burned cleaner, but it would not keep up with demand. tried some jet-a fuel. n...

if you are using copper tubing with actual 1/4" and 5/16"o.d., there is a cheap way to join 1/4" copper tube to 5/16". take a quarter inch reamer and introduce it into the larger tubing. ream for an inch or so. the smaller tubing should slide into the bigger tubing. you may have ...

i have built five of the allen dome throttles and i had the same problem that you have. i modified the throttle lever and the throttle lever pin a bit. i made a bushing out of stainless steel about a half inch long. it was 3/8 inch od by 1/4 inch id. this was silver soldered to the throttle lever in...

have you tried loosening up the bonnet, or what ever it is called, just a bit while trying to open the valve? a very wise old gentlemen who had a great knowledge of live steam told me that when you shut down a hot engine for the day, that as it cooled off, it would contract in size somewhat, and tha...

marty as ricky r would say "essplain".
big c

when i plumb up an engine, i use the various sizes of copper refrig tubing. i use the coles unions. i have made fixtures so that i can hold the male and females separately so that i can ream the threads out of the unions. then, i carefully silver solder the copper tubing to the respective union end....

i have built several of the allen moguls and ten wheelers, and the way i fasten the boiler to the smoke box is to turn down the o.d. of the smoke box end of the boiler to about half thickness. this is the part that sticks out past the front tube sheet and is not subject to pressure. i turn down for ...

dear mr. soot i have used two boilers made by the late ray pennell for allen moguls. i asked him to turn down the smokebox end of the boilers to around half the thickness of the boiler shell for about five eighths of an inch. then, when i built the smoke box, i bored out said smokebox so that it wou...

imho, i would use a piece of 1 inch stock, turn it down close to the finish diameter. polish, sand, etc to get it really smooth. then fit the bushing to the crank pin. take care on the other end where you press the pin into the wheel. get the hole on the wheel sized first, and make the pin to fit. d...

one more funny story, and then i will quit. many years ago the late r.f wilson, charter member of the midsouth live steamers and myself were running his i.c. 2614 locomotive over at the late austin barr's track. the injectors dribbled real bad, so we came up with this real cool idea, we thought. we ...

to: fender; i have three ohlenkamp injectors. they were bought back in the early eighties. they went on my allen mogul. two operating, one a spare. several times they were operated at 150 psi and above. they worked fine at that high pressure. i tried to run the boiler around 120 psi. they safeties w...

why not carve them out of crs?