Member postings for Jon Lawes

Welcome Mohammed

Welcome Justin, nice to see you, I look forward to seeing your work.

They were 5 minutes early at Boscombe Down, luckily I got out of the hangar in time, they were not hanging about!

I did something similar on my ML7 I suspect, I bored out the hole that the shaft goes into and fitted a 1/4 x 3/8 x 1/8 sealed bearing, with an NTA411 bearing either side (a needle roller bearing with washers, two of, part number NTA411).

The reduction in free play was very noticeable, especially after a further adjustment later on when they had all bedded in.

As I recently discovered (possibly through this forum!) I think Bat was designed to be made during the blackout, so I'm sure it will be just fine. Best of luck.

The Bat wiki page is very basic at the moment, if you find anything of use that you think others could learn from then it would be great if you can record it here! Hopefully it will evolve over time anyway.

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Excellent, thanks Brian. When I got rid of the siphon tubes my intention was to move the inner throat plate back to a sensible place, I guess omitting the combustion chamber.

I DO have the drawings, I just don't know much about boiler terminology. At what point does the gap above the grate start to become the combustion chamber? I am a complete novice, and although I'm picking it up as fast as I can there are still big gaps in my knowledge.

Thats a great bit of advice, thanks. I'll include that on the page in a "recommended improvements" section.

I'd already come to the same conclusion about the siphon tubes with my friendly boiler inspector, I also plan to use a screw type regulator rather than the poppet or disc type, which will obviously mean a bit of redesign. I'm a bit vague on what you mean by the combustion chamber, does the firebox protrude forwards slightly? Or is it just a section directly above the grate? Sorry about my ignorance, still very much a novice.

Another vote for Sugru from me. Very useful stuff.

I don't usually like to resurrect old threads but this is a very pertinent addition!

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I've been populating this page with any faults I'm aware of, feel free to add your own to help out other model engineers, or browse yourselves for a heads up on things you might not be aware of.

I apologise moderators if this isn't allowed, I offer this purely to assist.

One of my colleagues accidentally flashed some locking wire over a live bus in the back of an aircraft, flashed instantly into ball bearings which we then had to laboriously find... not to mention his flashgun eyeballs...

I believe he is also an Olympic Swimmer, Gold in 2000 in the Paralympics.

I bet the C130 had a bit of time amended on its fatigue life!

Thats interesting, thanks. I've enough spares to mean if I have a go and make a mistake its not a problem.

I've got a few 540 motors from the boys RC car projects (as soon as they upgrade the motor a perfectly good 540 DC brushed motor gets consigned to the scrap bin, otherwise known as my come-in-handy box) and I was thinking of using one as a DC generator so my little Stuart 10H would actually do some work for a living. I've read somewhere that they are not the most efficient generators, but as I'm not too worried about optimum efficiency I wondered if anyone has had any experiences of using them as generators?

What a lovely job, well done.

A quick recap; we now have around 60 locomotives of various types listed, some are fairly small entries, others very detailed, but all very welcome and interesting. Some people have added one or two things, others have made it their mission to research and add very detailed and interesting articles; I've lost quite a bit of time just reading up! I've fallen in love with Galatea in the process!

Many thanks to those who have been so instrumental in helping, and if you have information you would like to add about locomotives you are familiar with (did you build one and spot drawing errors? please let us know!) you would be very welcome.

Thanks to ME magazine for letting me post about the website on their forum.

I bet I'd scald myself.

That's looking superb. I can't help but think if you are skilled enough to do that its not a big leap to do the boring etc.

By the way is Naim still in Salisbury? I work just over the hill in Amesbury.

I seem to remember in a book on the SOE reading that they employed various artisans to make complex timers and guidance systems for secret weapons in a house somewhere, but annoyingly my memory has deserted me as to the book.