Member postings for Werner Schleidt

Hello all , here is an update of my work.

The Plettenberg was now two times under steam with good experience. But, as you all know, steam is in everytime good to get new expereience. By the first heat up the pressure gauge was defekt. I let the fire go down and I had luck that I had a replacement.. With the replacement all work was straight forward. And the first ride was succesfull.

I ordered after that a new pressure gauge and I added an additional check valve to  the Injektor pipe to the boiler.

With this setup the injector worked very good from 3 to 7 bar from low to high water in the water gauge.

The loco run very good I was satisfied ,but there is room for optimization. The safety valves I will change to pop action , because they open good but the closeing is sometime late.

The hand valves have to be optimized ,because they are not satisfiing steam thight.

Overall i am very fine with the behaviour of the Plettenberg.

To give you an impression I made a video from the build in the workshop and the run in my garden.

Werner

Edited By Werner Schleidt on 07/04/2019 08:50:45

This is the boiler on the driver side.The reversal handle was not ready at that time.

I tried to use the same setup of valves and handles as I have on my other locomotives.

All necessary attachments are there some refinements have to made later before painting.

For my opinion it looks pretty much the same like the Plettenberg at the photo.

The spark arrestor was very difficult to make. The small pipe and the bell are whithout function.

Now with the nameplates on the side. The have been made in etching technic.

With good wheather the next step is testing under steam. Then I will see whath happens. With air pressure I made tests on the table and they were sucessful.

Werner

It is shure to keep an eye on it ,but you can take a short break and you are not forced to look to the pressure cauge, the safety valve and so on permanent. I have tested it with an other small loco . With the steamp pump on in slow movement and enough coal in the fire box, the system can work for till an half hour with nearly nothing to do.

Otherwise you blow the water out by the safety valve ,the fire is dead or there is no water in the gauge.

Here is the next update.

The boiler was aligned at the frame to see where the pipes and attachments have to go.

This was an iterative process, because my plan is only the photo in the rear .

The the footplate on the frame were build.Screwed with many M2 Screws countersink type.

The boiler attachments were arranged and Iwant to use as much as possible from the old frame.

The housing was constructed with brass material .I ordered at the dealer as much as possible cuted in the correct dimensions I measured from the photo. Step by step it came to the look of the original locomotive.

The brass for the roof I had to order later ,because the correct dimension were only visible and measureable in this stage.

In the time between till the ordered parts arrived,, I completed the frame with valves steampump ,bypass valve,,watertank between the frame and so on.

Here is the water tank between the frame visible and the pipework for water and oiling the axles. For all attachments I tried to install it in a way that service is good possible.

That is not easy to achieve ,because in further steps there are some attachments were screws are blocked.

The homemade oilpump with ratchet mechanism. The toothwheel have to have more teeths. In this configuration it is a litle bit dificult to adjust it.

On the right side is an automatic blower valve. This valve open and close pressure dependant the blower .For small boiler is this a good attachment, because is much easier to fire. And it is good if you have a coffee break then you could come back and the fire is still alive.

Werner

Many thanks for your replies.

I will update my work .

The next step was looking if the boiler is OK . For that I had to make several plugs with M8*1 thread.

I had to learn that teflon tape which tighten with M8*0.75 without problems with M8*1 there were the problem that the tape was shift off the thread and the tighting was only by chance. I had to do it several times,perhaps the fit of the thread was to good.

All of the valves I found in the added box ,but they were internally not ready made. It was not a problem to fix it ,but only work to do. At the picture all valves are in place and the boiler is OK a good step forward.

The next step was to make the new 5 inch gauge frame. So I disassemble all parts with the exeption of the wheels. The profil and the diameter was not useable. In the time between I ordered my material and I had to keep in mind ,it was late in November 2018, that over the year when i have time that all important materials are there. for the frame and the housing.

I build the frame in a simple way similar to the principle of my Maxitrak Ruby. That means the rear axle is fix in the frame and the front axle is tiltable. That worked on my locomotives relativ good even on not good prepared tracks.

I tried to reuse as much as possible .It was not easy to align all properly. The plans from the Gezina was not very helpful,because the cylinder tighting sketch at the frame was not there. And the guy who build that 25 years ago had not the same hole layout on both cylinder. The wheels had a greater diameter and so I had to arrange all new. But with some patience bot sides got together working. In mid of december the first turns of the wheels were achieved under air pressure.

It was noticeable that the cylinder needs a lot of air and the compression was low. I tried to see what happens with a lot of oil.

The system behaviour was better ,but I can see that there was leeaking oil out of the cylinder a leak was recognized.

The cylinder were build up with a combination of materials and were silversoldered together. I had to disassemble it and softsolder it steam tight. By stripping all off and out I saw that the pistonring with teflon tape has no connection to the cylinder bore. I machined a new groove to fit a teflon ring with an Oring for static pressure.

With this setup the cylinder had a lot of compression. That was really good .This action I have done on both sides and then I put all together . What a difference in the behaviour after that repair.

will be updated

Werner

Hello all,

this is a discription of my work , a conversion from a 3.5 inch Gezina to a 5 inch Tramway locomotive.

All starts with the question to steam friend " do you still have the boiler ?"

The answer was yes . This was the start oft the project.

The parts look nice, but more then 25 years old. In the beginning I thought if its possible to keep the green house, but it was very fast clear that makes no sense.

The front

After the decision to look to a tramway locomotive I made very fast the decision to build the locomotive Plettenberg. She is in preservation at the museum railway Bruchhausen-Vilsen in Germany.

This was a good decision,because I have The Chiemseebahn and a freelance Wiliam Wilkison tramway locomotive build and constructed.

Werner

Hello all ,

many thanks for your comments.

The last thing I add after the winter season is a new name plate. On an old photo it is visible that the fire king was christening to the name Dreadnought.

So I add this for the new steam season.

The firemen and I are waiting eagerly to come out of the basement to be in the new steam season.

Werner

Hallo Duncan,

I am lazy with drawings normaly I made the most on the fly out of my brain. I send you an article from a german

publication by PM.

Werner

During winter time I made some cleaning activities and I had to rework and improve the joint to my crankshaft.

The forces from the cylinder to the crankshaft I had underated. The oscillating force lead to a weak conection.

The fireking was running in two years 80 km .

On the last ride last year I had such a good fire after installing the turbulator device I decided to test fire damper doors for better controlling the fire with less blow off from the safety valves.

Here are picture s open and closed . I hope that work as it is intended.

I will try to measure the difference with a thermo probe and I hope the effect is as I wanted it.

Hallo Jon,

it is a good idea to discribe where you want to use the generator.

For example for my son, as he was younger, we made a Wilesco setup and then he want to have a generator for his small radio. I looked the same way as you , but you need with this type of motors a very high speed. We ended with an old printer stepper motor. This was used as a printer with 20 to 30 Volts or similar. Stepper motors are putting out as a generator ac volts , but with a simple diode and capacitor circuit and a voltage protector for the radio, it was possible to run the radio by about 500 to 1000 rpm of the wilesco steam engine. And that works fine. He had a lot of fun with it.

Werner

Hello , there is an update of my activities.

In a german steam forum there was an advice to use  a turbulator ,if you do not have installed a overheater pipe in the boiler. The turbulator give some friction for the heated air stream and a better heat transfer to the boiler pipe.

And a basic effect is to equal the heat over all available pipes. So the boiler effiency is better. That is the theory behind. In the first step i made one 20 mm wide steel stripe and twisted it as possible. That was not very good makeable. So I cut some fins out and twist them.

With this setup I drove with my friends in September at our Club track at the DBC Rhine Main.

There was a subjective impression that there is a slight improvement in steaming. The tests were made in the range of 18°C .

Edited By Werner Schleidt on 31/10/2018 17:41:16

Edited By Werner Schleidt on 31/10/2018 17:42:08

Edited By Werner Schleidt on 31/10/2018 17:45:10

Hallo David,

I have a small lathe ,hobbymat, and a similar lathe to the emco compact 8. The most of the parts I built on the smaler one . Only the parts where I have problems or it is not possible I took the larger compact 8.

Both are precise but I like more to work with the small lathe. My milling machine is a BFE from the same manufacturer as the hobbymat. In the first build videos there are some pictures of the machinery . Then I have a bore milling machine and a self build hack sawing machine where i can use hand sawing blades as a replacement that is very cheap in comparison to band saw blades.

With a part of this equipment I started my steam career by building 45 mm steam locos.From this time I learned a lot. I have build 5 45mm locos and 4 5 inch steam locos. The last one in compound action.

By chance i found by ebay uk a boiler of a tea pot quarry locomotive. With some thoughts the fire king project starts all build after old pictures I found in the web.

Making the wheels was very tricky and i milled them round with much of improvisation.

I hope that answers your questions.

Werner

Hello,

I want to add some new experiences . For the reason of flying sparks I added this year a spark arrestor made of a tea ball. At the Mannheim steam event I added in the bigger middle tube a turbulator to get better fire results.

I measured a decrease of 50 °C less temperature ,but from my feeling the boiler effience was not as before.

On sunday i decided to drive without spark arrestor and turbulator and found that the fire burns much better. In the exhaust less changes have more effect that i imagine. These two days brought lot of fun to give you an impression please take a look to the video.

best regards

Werner

Edited By Werner Schleidt on 22/09/2018 19:30:56

Hallo Keith,

I use on my SD 300 / MD 65 a system similar to the folowing

**LINK**

you have to downlod the "Katalog" with download and on page 34 there is Elmars System. My system is similar ,but I do not know where I have bought it. As I remember it was a competitor of him ,but he is out of service.

Proxxon the former dealer in west germany of the hobbymat have a smaller system .

Please look at this **LINK**

Please look to the middle of these page **LINK**

there are universal tool posts.

I have my SD 300 converted to a 3 phase motor with inverter. This was a big step forward in useage. With the fastes gear with 1400 rpm motor and the inverter you can cut threads from M3 without breaking the thread drill.

The lucky sad story was the single phase motor shut down after 35 years of service and that forced me to use rge 3 phase setup.

I hope that help.

Werner

If you want to use it as tachometer with an analog or digital read out it is good to use a magnet on a shaft with a reed contact or hall sensor. Then with a NE 555 circuit as triggered monoflop you can convert pulse to DC voltage.

This is a small and cheap electronic circuit . I you want i can provide the plan.

Werner

Brushless DC Motors are normaly synchron engines with a permanent magnet.

They are excelent to use as an alternator! For use with Lamps you have to use at minimum for each phase a diode.

Usually the are wound in a star setup.

Stepper motors are also good generators .I used it with my son with a wilesco power plant.The stepper was from a defect epson printer. There were diodes and a 2000 µF Condensator to run are small transistor radio as a steam radio. The boy had lot of fun with it.

Years ago i modified a small Servo DC motor to a 3 Phase Outrunner alternator for a steam turbine. That works very good with four LEDs .My mistake was that I had to much thermal conection from the steam turbine to the magnets so they got hotter then 80° C and the magnet was dead.

Werner

Hello Simon,

I made after the last run the experience that in the chimney near the top there is inside a greasy film like coal tar.

The engine runs good now.

Werner

Hello Simon,

many thanks for your reply. I interpret your answer that all is made by experience with simply controling how is the oily surface in the chimney. That is nearly the same what i have done . It seems that i have to live with this kind of procedure.

best regards

Werner

Hello all,

I have a simple question, when is the amount of oil enough for the lubrication of a 2 cylinder engine.

There are some indications I know by experience of my 5 inch steam locomotives. I recognize if there is over the day at the chimney a lubrication and then the loco runs good. That equals about in 3 km distance the oiler have to refilled. With this amount the locos runs good. On my merrywheather fireking i changed the amount of oil, the engine runs better now, but I have the feeling it could have more oil. Is there any rule of thumb or only try and error possible

best regards

Werner

Hello all,

on the last weekend in my hometown was an vintage car and tractor event. I joined with my Fireking for Saturday and Sunday. On both days i drove about 8 km amd never before I had so long the fire burning.

There were many interested people and I had some nice conversations.

My oil pump was in function,but I think the piston is too small. At my locomotives I had much more oil in the cylnder and at the top of the chimney. Here at the fireking the chimney top is nearly dry and without oil. I have a cylinder bore of 42 mm and a 2,3 mm piston .In the locos I have a 40 mm bore and a 3mm oil piston.

Is there some kind of rule of thumb or choosen by try and error?

Here is the video I made.

best regards

Werner