Innehållsförteckning för August 2023 från Engineering in Miniature

The Littlehampton Miniature Railway celebrated 75 years of entertaining visitors to the Sussex seaside resort over the weekend of 24th-25th June, and marked the anniversary in style with a pair of visiting steam locomotives. The line opened over the Whitsun weekend of 15th-17th May 1948, having been built by Billingshurst miniature railway specialist H G Cookson. There were several 12-inch gauge lines operating in the UK at the time but Cookson chose the then highly unusual gauge of 121/4-inch, arguing that the extra width would add stability. Today Littlehampton is the oldest of a small number of UK lines to this gauge. Chequered history The line has always operated over a route of around half a mile between Norfolk Gardens and Mewsbrook Park, and always in conjunction with the local…

Part Ten of 11 Among the final parts to be made for our ride-on tender is the coal bunker door. The door and the door-guides are made from stainless steel – stainless was chosen for these parts as it was felt that they are likely to suffer some (accidental) abuse, at the hands of the driver and their shovel and hence the paintwork may well get damaged, thus removing any protection from the elements and consequent rust. The arrangement consists of five components: the door, the door frame (Photo 164), the front runners, the spacers, and the rear runners. The dimensions for all of these parts are captured in Figure 63, with Figure 64 showing an exploded diagram of the assembly. All parts are laser-cut from 1mm stainless steel, with…

GENERAL NEWS Plans are well underway for this year’s Rob Roy Engine Rally and organisers are hoping to attract many more examples of the famed six-coupled tank engine to the event. The 11th edition of the rally will again be held at the Bromsgrove SME track at the Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings in the Worcestershire town, postcode B60 4JR, on Saturday 16th September. between 11am and 4pm. Information about the venue can be found at www.bromsgrovesme.co.uk Martin Evans designed the loco more than 60 years ago with a challenge to make and enter completed locos in a competition held 17 months later. Today the rallies are more about owners getting together to swap experiences and advice about their locos and generally have a good time on the track. “We…

Welcome to this month’s club and track round-up and it’s a month when we have been absolutely inundated with newsletters and journals! This is of course very pleasing, clearly demonstrating the strength of the model engineering environment. I had absolutely no doubt what to lead on this month – step forward the members of the South Cheshire ME, a club we don’t hear from that often, who recently held a public running day at their Peacock Railway in Nantwich with the pure aim of raising funds to help fellow club the Rugeley Power Station SME. Regular readers of these pages will know that the Rugeley club was recently allowed back to its site following the demolition of the former power station in the grounds of which the club track is…

Part Three of a short series Continuing the construction of the frame components for our 5-inch gauge budget loco project, we come to the buffer beams. The two buffer beams (Figure 12-13) are identical so can be machined and drilled as a pair (Photo 41). Once again we have shown two drawings of the buffer beams so as not to clutter them up too much and to make clear as much detail as possible. One drawing shows the holes to be drilled for the buffer beam to frame angles and the other shows the hole positions for the body mounting angles and the couplings. “Steel angle is very rarely a true 90 degrees so its best to check it with a square…” The beams are made from the same steel…

Have you driven a new car lately? I needed to get my 2½ year-old electric van serviced recently, not because it really needed it as the mileage covered since the lockdown period was quite low, but a minor issue needed investigation before the end of the warranty period. Plus the fact that when the time comes to sell dealer stamps in the service book are always a plus point. Thus I came to be driving an almost new Nissan Leaf for the day. I am familiar with electric vehicles, I’ve been driving them for six years now, but I hated this experience – noises and vibration when you go close to the middle or the edge of the road, plus lights on the dashboard signifying all sorts of things I…

Another of those useful little publications to have around the workshop, this inexpensive guide covers quite a wide spread of subject matter within its 128 pages. Beginning quite rightly with some words on safety, the author then focuses on an area which is essential to get right, measuring and marking out, and also offers some aids to accurate working. Techniques such as heat-treating and workholding aids are covered in detail, as is the bang up-to-date subject of 3D printing. If you think, however, that the book is mostly about producing basic hand tools you’d be very wrong. Subjects range from a simple milling cutter holder up to the making of toolpost spindles, gear-cutting tools and even a dividing head. As is typical of this series of books the information is…

Readers of these musings each month will be aware that last time I had needed to sort the coupling rods of our Welsh Highland Railway-style 2-6-4T ‘Russell’ and with the loco back in action I could concentrate on taking delivery of the rest of the attractions for our Gala at the end of May and making sure they all worked well on our line. The first loco to arrive, to run on the 15-inch gauge demonstration line, was ‘Prince Edward of Wales’ a class 10 Atlantic built by Bassett Lowke in 1911 for the railway around the Marine Lake in Rhyl, where it ran until 1920. Then it was sold to the line running at the Kent resort of Margate where it stayed until 1968 when it was bought by…

Back in Feburary we reviewed a sister title to this new work, on the subject of steam-powered model boats, and this latest publication caters for those who don’t want the complexity of the steam route. Like its sister this is a compact but comprehensive guide, running to 192 pages and starting with the tools needed before moving on to the choice of model, power and control including choosing the correct radio unit. It then describes adding the essential fittings to make your scale model look like a miniature version of the real thing, along with some lessessential ones too. The author, who has an easy-to-understand but informative writing style, then describes the construction of an off-the-shelf kit for a steam yacht, followed by the more complex challenge of scratch-building a…

David Maidment’s ever-growing reference library of locomotive classes this time focuses on something more ‘ordinary’ compared to his previous large express locomotives, the workhorses that were vital to the Great Western Railway. Not surprisingly th is as now expected extensively researched title follows the style of previous editions in the ‘locomotive portfolios’ series, starting with a study of t he engineers behind the loco designs and then focusing on a subject not widely studied, the early locomotives of the GWR’s broad-gauge years. The narrative then moves on to standard-gauge locos built by the GWR before 1923, and afterwards when it became one of the ‘big-four’ companies. As well as detailed information there are very plentiful photos all well reproduced and including a number of colour images all grouped together in…