The Home Machinist!

Charlie, wonderful job! Really looking good.

Glenn

A few notes to preserve valve gear references and formulas. The use case here is these references and formulas are useful for designing valve gear when no plans or drawings are available, and original parts or components are missing. Such is the case with most all Cagney’s and early day antique loco...

reminiscent of WW1 trench engine mules… impressive construction.

One additional thought. Once you get your wheels assembled on your axles, plan on turning the wheel sets on centers- e.g. holding the wheels mounted on the axles with centers mounted in the headstock and tailstock. In the event shaft stress or other small anomaly shows up in the concentricity of the...

I assume you mean pickling for rust removal or removing mill scale from hot rolled plate or bar? The only disadvantage i can see is the vinegar takes several times longer to work than stronger, commercial products - phosporic acid (Ospho) for example. Hence the vinegar can evaporate and dry out on t...

Alas, I have no experience in any of the modern drawings programs. Swore off everything related to CAD when I retired, and now woefully out of date. I did find a citation to a couple of spreadsheet programs and on line simulators that might provide some answers. They are British and apparently quite...

Thanks Bill, I think I will make a full scale mock-up of the gear using some of the parts I found with wood axles and plywood templates to tweak the return lever to match the required valve clearance - once I have determined the actual valve travel and existing lap and lead. BTW, I did find a formul...

Still assessing the various valve gear types. Locomotive Valves and Valve Gears, by Yoder and Waren, first printing, 1917, as recommended by Mike Decker. I bought a recent reprint. The book renders an extensive description of five valve gear types: Stephenson, Walschaerts, Baker, Southern, and furth...

Bill Shields wrote: ↑Mon Oct 23, 2023 8:49 am Anything outside the frame is preferable to anything inside

Assume this a slide valve design?

Bill,

My apologies. I missed your question first go around.

Yes, this is a slide valve set up…

Thanks,
Glenn

Mike, that’s kind of what I thought. Sounds like it would be possible to fab all the parts from a drawing if need be. Next step, I guess is try to get someone at RMI to pick up the phone, and see what’s currently available.

1/16” is pretty small, and I have little experience in this size. However, just a tip, If you ever have need to replace or use 1/8” or larger, old school black iron pipe is a very usable, durable, and long lasting substitute for copper or brass.

Good railway engineering videos are kind of hard to find on the internet these days. So, quite pleased to have stumbled across a really nice railway engineering video just now. It’s only been published these last three weeks, but does a very nice job describing wheel dynamics and need for properly s...