Innehållsförteckning för November 2023 från Engineering in Miniature

Part Six of a short series This month we move onto the locomotive's control systems. We are aware that electrical systems and components for quite a lot of people are something they are either scared of or unsure of if they don't understand them. Because of this the electrical instructions have been broken down to simplify the process. If you are happy with electrics please bear with us. we will describe all the components and the circuit and then give a list of wiring instructions. The motor The motor used for this locomotive is the 24-volt 270 watt motor employed on many shop mobility scooters and similar. They can be picked up quite cheaply on auction sites or by speaking to one of your local mobility scooter suppliers. It is…

GENERAL NEWS The Evesham Vale Light Railway is to be taken over by the owners of fellow 15-inch gauge line the Perrygrove Railway. Husband-and-wife team Adrian and Sandra Corke put the EVLR up for sale earlier this year, having decided to retire. The new owners will be another family team, David and Kat Nelson-Brown who run the Perrygrove line in the Forest of Dean. The EVLR runs for 1¼ miles within Evesham Country Park in Worcestershire. Carrying just under 50,000 passengers a year, it is one of a number of activities within the park, also known as ‘The Valley’. The line has three resident steam locos and currently operates trains on 170 days a year. “We believe that this move will be good for the EVLR given the similarities between…

Aclutch of new releases from Pen & Sword this month and this one will be of great interest to many a model engineer as it is full of information on small locomotives, mostly of tank engine format, the kind of engine that many novice readers of this magazine might consider for a first project. Colonel Holman F Stephens was renowned as an operator of light railways, building up an empire of eclectic lines across the UK which he ran on basically a shoestring. He went all over the place for his locos and they are all detailed here, from ubiquitous Stroudley Terriers to saddle tanks, a wide range of Manning Wardle product and a host of more unusual types, right up to the petrol shunters that ran on the Weston,…

Welcome to the monthly round-up of what's happening around the clubs and tracks, and while the outdoor season is definitely coming to an end (it's distinctly chilly in the mid-Wales location of EIM Towers as I write this at the very start of October, and I did admit defeat last night and put the heating on…) it's clear that as many model engineering enthusiasts as possible have been getting some runs in, as we've had lots of pictures in this month's round-up! Mind you, they've again mostly come from our regular photographers rather than the clubs themselves – if you have a special event, unusual occurrence, something new or simply a really enjoyable running day, send in a picture or two as we'd love to see them and then very…

At the time of writing the last part of this series, the safety valve assembly of my Foden kit had been returned to manufacturer Steam Traction World (STW) for a second time for them to get the valves to seat. The assembly was returned to me shortly after and I refitted it. Using my hobby compressor I was able to pressurise the system to about 110psi and the valves remained shut. With this test proving successful I arranged to take the lorry down to my local steam railway in order to run it on their workshop compressor – this has a much greater capacity and operates at 130psi, meaning I could run the engine harder and for longer than at home. Photo 36 shows the engine on its trailer at…

Part Nine of a short series In the most recent episode of this series I described the construction of the valve gear of my 3½ -inch gauge Schools class project, and some small corrections that were needed to try and equalize the valve travels. However the biggest failing of the original design was the short travel of the reach rod, so that it was not possible to go from full forward to full reverse gear. “I was surprised just how much vibration was transmitted back up the reach rod from the valve gear – the reversing wheel was being rattled around much more than I expected…” Beefing it up This lack of operational flexibility was simply a result of the geometry of the reversing mechanism in the cab and not…

Midlands Garden Rail Show organiser Meridienne events has confirmed that the 2024 show for the smaller-scale end of the hobby will take place in its traditional venue, the Warwickshire Exhibition centre on 2nd and 3rd March. The show traditionally attracts workers in Gauge 1, O Gauge, G Scale and 16mm and we are told there will be more than 15 layouts and clubs at the event, providing plenty of inspiration to those planning their own garden railway be it live steam, gas or coal fired, i/c or battery. Around 40 specialist suppliers are also expected to be present offering a wide range of items to bring garden rail plans to reaility. Details on the exhibition and suppliers attending will be updated over the coming months at; www.midlandsgardenrailshow.co.uk and on Facebook…

This is something a little different – most model engineers will know very well who Sir Nigel Gresley was, producing some of the most iconic LNER locomotives such as the A3s and A4s, but far fewer have likely heard of Bert Spencer. For 16 years Bert was Gresley's assistant at a time of the engineer's greatest work – he had just as much knowledge and experience as his master but remained in the background as the reliable confidant over his entire career with Gresley. This is a story of Bert's life, much of it told in his own hand, and provides a real inside view of the cutting-edge technology of the time that was under development in railway workshops between the wars. But it also goes beyond the workshop and…

I was brought up in the small town of Eastwood close to the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire border. In the 1950s we were served by two railway lines – the busiest by far was the Midland main line running from London St. Pancras to Sheffield Midland station and further north. The second was a branch line running from Nottingham Victoria to Pinxton, and which fell foul of the Beeching cuts in the mid 1960s. The Midland main line was quite busy especially with coal trains heading south from the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire coal fields. The majority of my train-spotting time was spent on the Midland main line with a diet of Jubilees, Black Fives, 8Fs and 4Fs, plus the occasional Royal Scot and Britannia thrown in. With 2023 being the 100th anniversary of the formation…

Editing and designing EIM and its sister magazine Narrow Gauge World, together with having a completely separate career as a motoring journalist, means that unsurprisingly your editor does not get out to visit nearly as many model engineering clubs as he would like. Therefore I was determined to make time in my schedule to respond to an invitation to join the Lincoln & District Model Engineering Society for its open weekend on 23rd September, particularly as this one had a little extra hook in being promoted as the 90th anniversary weekend. Excuse for a do Now 90 is not often regarded as a much celebrated milestone but I was intrigued by club secretary Neil Grayston's matter-of-fact comment, “We want to do something a little special and we are all being…

Part one of two Matthew and I have been looking around for a solution to a number of loco-related ‘housekeeping’ problems for quite a while now. There are three problems of concern, which I'm sure are common to all loco owners: 1) How to move a loco around the workshop (if only to get it out of the way when working on other things) 2) How to position a loco in a convenient location (and at convenient height) for working on or testing 3) How to move, and then load, a loco into its transport, for taking off to a club track. Our 5-inch gauge ‘Super Simplex’ locomotive is relatively easy to live with, in this regard. It lives in a wooden box, with locking castors on its base, and…

The 7¼” Gauge Society's 50th annual gathering and AGM meeting took place at the Summerfield Miniature Railway, the home of the Bedford Model Engineering Society over the weekend of 15th-17th September 2023. It was a well-supported event with a good and varied collection of locomotives from different parts of the UK. Friday and Saturday were bright warm days with plenty of sunshine while Sunday was also a good dry day to start but after I left just after lunch I ran into some very heavy rain on my way west, so I expect it didn't remain dry all day. The BMES site is located about six miles south of Bedford and features a good fully signalled ground-level track. It is an unusual end-to-end track (see map below) with all the…

Nigel Thompson, member of the L&NWR Society and The Erewash Valley Model Engineering Society, passed away peacefully on 28th September from the terrible disease Alzheimer's and with a chest infection he had caught earlier in the week, which contributed to his passing. Nigel was very well known among the model engineering fraternity of the UK and had served as secretary of The Northern Association of Model Engineering Societies from 1996 until 2006. He had been a model maker all of his life “making all sorts of things” to quote him. His father was a ‘Premium Apprentice’ at Crewe Works from 1915 to 1918 under C. J. Bowen Cooke. It was his father who taught Nigel to use all kind of tools for both metal and wood, Nigel credits this period…

It would not be a reviews round-up without yet another new entry to David Ma idment's reference library of locomotive classes – the man's level of output is astounding… This time he again turns his attention to less high-profile locomotives, focusing on the various tank engines absorbed by the Great Western Railway when it came into existence 100 years ago. Of all the titles in this series yet produced EIM readers might well find this one the most interesting and useful – not only because the breadth of locomotives involved is fascinating with some distinctive and unusual shapes included, but also because the descriptions of most of the classes are accompanied by general arrangement drawings – not the biggest, but especially in the older classes easily able to be scaled…