Innehållsförteckning för February 2024 från Engineering in Miniature

Last month we described the first test runs of our budget battery locomotives and having proved themselves the two were now ready for some bodywork. Here you have a vast choice of types to choose from. We had acquired a decent amount of 6mm and 8mm plywood rescued from a skip so elected to use that. It’s from discarded packing cases so is not the best in quality but good enough for what we were trying to achieve. There is an array of materials you could use for your bodywork, steel sheet for example - I have cut the sides out of washing machines/dishwashers/ fridges before to get steel sheet. Among other options are aluminium and plastic. You have a wide choice in the look of the body you build,…

The website Youtube, which encourages users to upload video clips, is a rich source of widely varied model engineering content, but can be overwhelming to the firsttime user. So each month we will be pointing readers at some clips they may find of interest. If you have seen something on Youtube that you think other readers might enjoy, then send in the link to editor@engineeringinminiature.co.uk ■ This month our video spotlight falls upon the Guildford Model Engineering Society and a good quality 15 minutes of film by ‘Mr and Mrs T’ captured at the club’s open weekend on 1st July 2023. Those that have been to Guildford’s Stoke Park track in the centre of the Surrey city will know it manages to cram a great deal into what is quite…

Those readers who have been following these articles will notice that the picture above has changed. Rather than being of another similar build it is of my engine as it is now ‘finished’. I use the word finished advisedly as in reality there have been and no doubt will continue to be bedding-in issues. Each time I have steamed the wagon there have been small leaks in different places and I expect this to continue for a while. In the previous article I stated that I was planning to take the almostfinished lorry to my local steam railway gala and indeed as reported by the editor in the last instalment I managed to get enough done to be there. The event, at the Welshpool & Llanfair Light Railway, is held…

The 2023 exhibition, sponsored by Engineering in Miniature continued with the good all-round presentation that started in the previous year following the Covid problems. As expected, there was some reduction in the number of entries in both the competition classes and display classes, but this was more than made up for with the quality of the exhibits overall. Two special 125th anniversaries were celebrated which are both worth mentioning. The first was of the founding of the Society of Model and Experimental Engineers (SMEE), the Society providing a top-class display of members’ work over the many years of its existence. Very special guest Included within the display was a special acknowledgement of the work of Cherry Hill. This remarkable lady has been making superb models for many years and has…

It is one of the oddities of magazine production that while you will be reading these words in this February-designated issue sometime after the middle of one of the dullest months of the year, your editor is actually writing them on the very first day of it! A good thing I did not over-indulge at any New Year’s Eve parties last night… Trying to ignore the extremely dark and gloomy weather outside, conditions that seem to have gone on for weeks with none of the winter deep and crisp and even to enjoy, we can look forward to the fact that the winter is passing by rapidly and soon members will be queueing up for boiler certificates at clubs right across the country and getting their locomotives out of hibernation…

Regular readers of EIM will have gathered that we have acquired a new (to us) 7¼-inch gauge loco - a Tom Rolt, based upon the prototype which runs at the Talyllyn railway in mid Wales (Photo 1). It is a splendid example of this loco, being the original model of its type, built by its designer. It is, however, a ‘used’ example (unsurprisingly) and hence came with a few little issues to fix although it ran beautifully, being very well engineered. The main issue was wear on the treads of the wheels. The wheels are made of cast iron and when cast-iron wheels run on steel rails (as used at most clubs which do passenger-hauling), the steel ‘wins’ and wears the cast iron. This had happened on all of the…

Followers of these witterings will recall that last month I described winter trackwork on the 12¼-inch gauge Fairbourne Railway using what could be the smallest tamping machine in the world, which we are currently borrowing from the Ruislip Lido Railway. Well I got back to the workshop after a few days in Romania driving steam engines on one of the country’s narrow gauge railways (which Harry will describe in detail in the March-April issue of EIM’s sister magazine Narrow Gauge World - Ed) to be greeted with the news that there had been an accident with the tamper that needed fixing. This had happened at the end of a day when returning to Fairbourne the rail clamps had either sagged a little or hadn’t been retracted fully and caught on…

This year is set to be a special one for the 1¼-inch gauge line at the Ropley station of the standard gauge Mid Hants Railway, as it’s getting a new resident steam locomotive. The loco is ‘Ivor’’a narrow-gauge Quarry Hunslet design with tender, built in 1991 for the Ferry Meadows Miniature Railway in Peterborough and which has moved around a bit since - the Ropley Miniature Railway has acquired it from the North Cornwall Miniature Railway which was set up in 2019. Ivor has been taken to the Eastleigh Lakeside Railway where it has been overhauled and worked a few winter passenger trains. It is expected to move to Ropley in the next few months but it won’t be the first steam to operate on the RMR - the line…