Member postings for Nigel Graham 2

Obtain a copy of the latest edition of the Model Engineering Liaison Group boiler testing handbook. Their cover colours are changed at each revision and the present one has a white cover with orange lettering.

This has been prepared by both national federations of model-engineering societies and several other groups of parallel interest, and in conjunction with the regulators and insurance trade.

It is not the most coherent of manuals, but once you've teased out the sections relevant to your engine, study those to see what a boiler inspection carried out by an MELG-affiliated club entails - or should entail.

You can then also perform a preliminary test to - never above - its instructions to ensure readiness for the certifying test itself. You can't of course, certify your own boiler.

I outline the test itself below.

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Regarding reluctance, you may have found is a club worried if your interest is joining simply to have the engine tested; and this has happened a few times in my own. While it's not compulsory to do so most clubs in any activity do like new members to play a part beyond just paying the subscription. However, one thing a model-engineering society may not do is charge for boiler testing. The owner needs to become a fully paid-up member, but the tests should be free as part of the normal services to members.

Also all club boiler-testers are volunteers bearing a heavy responsibility and they are free to decline a boiler if unhappy with it for some reason, including doubt of the boiler's provenance or built privately to some unusual design. There is allowance for consulting another club whose own boiler testers may have more appropriate experience. In you case, with a commercially-built boiler of known design and documents, this problem should not arise.

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On the technical side, the test under the MELG scheme is in two parts. The documents create an awkward repeat dates step but provided you don't let the thing lapse, I can't see any reason the future dates can't be scheduled to allow both parts in one session, with the club boiler-tester's agreement.

By the Clubs' MELG system:

The first is a cold hydraulic test to ensure structural integrity and lack of leaks. The odd slight weep through a valve is annoying but not important.

You need remove the engine's own pressure-gauge and blank its fitting: the club's test-kit will have its own, traceably-calibrated gauge of range perhaps twice the likely maximum it will encounter. It is worthwhile having the engine gauge tested against the club one - without digging my book out I forget if it's called for, though some boiler-testers might want to do that anyway.

Remove the safety-valves and blank their mountings. Or make and fit clamps to hold them shut. Don't try to emulate that by screwing them down! It is bad for them ..... and you might forget.

The rest of the fittings should be left on. They are part of the "pressure system".

The one awkward thing is the regulator. It should seal closed but that is not always certain, and would be indicated by water eventually emerging from the cylinder drain-cocks. This could mean a worn or scored valve face, or the valve sticking on its operating-rod; so needing some attention.

This is the sort of case where your preparatory test even just to working pressure is valuable, showing things that may make the official test difficult. Oh, and boiler testers do like the firebox, tubes and smokebox to have been swept out.

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The second part of the test if the hydraulic test is successful, is the steam [accumulation] test.

The engine is refitted to running order with its own pressure-gauge, steam raised and the gauge-glass and water feed arrangements verified operable. On a traction-engine these are normally a single injector and crankshaft-driven pump. Some miniature engines are also fitted with an emergency hand-pump.

The safety-valves are also observed to ensure they open at the working-pressure marked on the gauge, plus a small margin. This is usually shown by a line on the dial and should be there on your engine, but if not, and the gauge cannot be opened without wrecking it, an external mark is permissible. The safety-valves must also hold the pressure steady even at maximum steaming-rate: damper open and blower hard on, forcing the boiler somewhat beyond normal operation.

All being well you can then let the engine calm down (or take it for a drive around the site!) while the friendly local inspector doggedly completes one of the most confusing forms ever devised for an essentially simple task.

There are two forms. One is the test certificate. The other is what is called the Written Scheme of Examination (WSE sometimes colloquially pronounced "The Wussy" ). It summaries the "Pressure System" and identifies its ownership. It is unchanged while you own the engine and make no significant changes to its boiler. You will anyway need a new copy to identify you as the new owner, if you don't have that already. The boiler inspector will sort that out with you.

Finally, Happy Steaming!

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 20/08/2023 20:15:00

Welding a tool-steel to mild-steel may work but risks a brittle weld.

As you've made the cutter-holder cylindrical, the forged form may be easiest but you could make an insert-tip from gauge-plate, oil-hardened and tempered; screwed to an inclined, rectangular rebate milled in the end of a mild-steel holder.

Diogenes...

I must be missing something here how do you use a DRO to set a work-piece to the centre of an existing hole without something between it and the rim of the hole?

You still need some type of edge-indicator, whether you use a DRO or the handwheel dials.

You discarded your CDs? A lot of music is still published that way!

I have someone instantly dismissed for turning up drunk.

The printing-machine manufacturer I worked for had a CNC lathe and milling machine, both programmed and set by their operators. It bought a second, similar mill, and engaged a young woman to operate it. I don't know her previous experience, nor if she was also its setter or simply operator but I do remember she was rather conceited and not very pleasant, though friendly with the more bloke-ish blokes among the twenty or so machinists. (My role was cutting and supplying the raw materials blanks.)

One morning, less than half an hour past starting time, I saw her and the workshop supervisor, both grim-faced, head through the door to the rest of the building. Some while later, Jim, the foreman, returned alone.

We learnt later she had turned up still under the influence from a party the night before.

I don't know how she travelled to work but if by own car, I wonder if she had risked driving in that day....

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Regarding German manufacturers being efficient by making the work un-skilled, I have heard from source of a different side to that. I knew a sales rep for a large, German agricultural and veterinary products manufacturer. He told me the company preferred British staff for such roles for naturally having a lot more initiative and willingness to help solve the unusual problems and enquiries that sometimes occur in their customers' industries. The Germans, their own employers found, were fine with straightforward sales but too hide-bound by "procedures" and petty office politics to be good at anything straying from the rigid script.

He didn't say how any French or Italian sales staff there, scored on that aspect, influenced by their own national cultures.

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Incidentally the hacksawing machine I used in that printing-machine works was German made. It had two excellent features. One was the huge lateral bearing surfaces guiding the bow. The other, which I never knew it to need come into action, was that if the electrics or the hydraulic down-feed failed, massive tension-springs would return the bow to its rest position well above the work. Other than that.... high-quality construction, but oh, what a rubbish vice design!

(To be fair to it, that was in the 1980s. Its manufacturer's own web-site shows it now makes only two models, but fitted with proper flat-jaw vices in place of the awful pinch-rollers that had let ours down so badly.)

Of equal standing and approach in model-engineering to Cherry Hill was Ron Jarvis, who similarly built working miniatures of pioneering or unusual engines. They did know each other, as model-engineering friends.

At one major show the toss-up between him and another competing for the Silver and Gold Medals, was whether the fine, complex castings on his Diagonal Paddle-Steamer Engine would have been painted. I wonder if the judges knew the "castings" were silver-soldered, mild-steel fabrications; finished in a home-made grit-blaster to give the correct sand-moulded surfaces.

His Newcomen Atmospheric Engine was complete to the point of Ron having made and wipe-jointed the lead pipes, and of course all bricks or masonry on those engines needing these were individually moulded and laid to the correct bond for the region, era and purpose. This engine's boiler is about the size of tennis-ball, if that, WP 2psi, its rivetted copper plates vacuum-caulked with epoxy resin, and given a finely-dimpled finish to represent the original's hand-forged wrought-iron plates. It is electrically heated with microprocessor-control: Ron, whose other hobbies included computer programming and bee-keeping, would joke about the 18C machine being computer-controlled!

He also modelled Church's phantasmagorical Steam Coach, a massive three-wheeler optimistically intended as a London-Birmingham omnibus; but too ahead in its engineering ideas for its stagecoach-inspired style and construction. It was far too heavy and too full of auxiliary machinery for its own, over-decorated, under-powered good. Despite its contemporary, glowing publicity painting showing it carrying many passengers in a suitably bucolic setting, I understand it never progressed beyond road tests. The bodywork of Ron's model is sectional along its centre-line, allowing displaying its interior and constructional methods, including timber chassis.

Those are just three examples of, I think, about 8 in all. Sadly, although I was, and still am, a member of the same model-engineering society as Ron; I don't think any of us in the club know where his models went after his death.

Ron also wrote a book about the original machines, illustrated with photographs of his models; privately published so a limited run. Unfortunately I can't find my copy so can't cite it properly, but its title is something like Old Men And Iron.

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My blood still runs cold at one personal memory.

I helped carry his models back to his home from a local exhibition by our club. His Atmospheric Engine stands a good 20 inches tall, on a base over a foot square, and is heavy, as I found when carrying it. I was very relieved to put it safely on a table in the lounge.

For between the car and the table were several yards of crazy-paving and three steps up to the front door...

The two narrow-gauge locos there now, at least easily on display, include those I photographed: the 15"g one built by Exmoor Steam Railway, and the 2' g Hunslet; and two or three others, steam and diesel.

In Standard Gauge are the SR tank, and two from Norway: a German-made 1930s Kriegslokomotiven 2-10-? ( I could not see it fully) and a 2-6-0 called 'King Haaken'. I tried photographing these but they are in a gloomy shed.

The German one was one of four that had been stored in a disused railway tunnel in Norway for decades. A photograph on the information-panel shows it in steam at Bressingham but it is presently shedded out of service.

There was frustratingly little information shown about the Norwegian loco beyond its use in a film.

The sheds also gave glimpses of the back of a small diesel locomotive; but more accessible are the GER locomotive, two Royal Train carriages (no entry, just viewing-platform) and Royal Mail TPO you can enter from steps. .

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Following the model-engineering gauges line round, I encountered a 2ft-gauge siding somewhat away from the obviously-public paths, holding a 2' gauge diesel loco minus its engine, coupled to a flat carrying a locomotive boiler and several ex-quarry, side-tipping mineral wagons. The wagons, perhaps used as ballast-carriers, are on the rails but tipped to prevent rain accumulating in them. My path back, along the model-gauge formation, took me past the 15" g station's fence but no-one worried about my being somewhat "off-piste". (off-piston?)

Photos in order: the Kl and 'King Haakon', the slumbering 2ft g items and part of the 7.25" g installation, and another informal scene bewtixt Gallopers and cafeteria.

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 18/08/2023 13:13:15

Mmmm....

Red buttons but no brakes.

I placed the VFD controller for the Harrison lathe above the tailstock so away from the moving parts; but it still has the original clutch-lever, horribly-placed over the headstock.

Well, at the weekend! As promised / threatened, a rather random selection from Bressingham Steam Museum and Thetford.

At the Museum, the Portable is a Burrell SC Compound. The two railways are of 15" and 2ft gauges, their long, rural circuits crossing at two places. The 'Terrier' tank-loco is used on footplate-experience days.

Some may recognise the 6" scale Foster and saw-bench from their operating at "The Fosse". The small red undertype steam-lorry in the parade is battery-electric using mobility-scooter parts. I could not resist the photo of the couple returning with their purchases from the adjoining garden-centre!

Of the two contrasting footbridges over the River Little Ouse in Thetford, the cast-iron one proudly bears its 1829 year; the other is an ingenious, modern, 3-way steel fabrication linking both banks and a wooded island that is part of the town's lovely riverside parks and walks.

The trouble is such people carry on doing these things for so long it has become a habit and they no longer think about the possible consequences.

The "jokes" and impatience about safety usually come from work-places where any of several factors come into play:

- Boredom leading to inattention and/or complacency.

- Pressure to get the work done.

- Laziness: a combination of that and the previous two is a recipe for disaster.

- Simple thoughtlessness, and/or long-ingrained bad habits.

- Bravado. I think this has largely gone. Using PPE and other protective measures has become so widespread that it is no longer seen by most people as "for softies" as it may once have been.

- Some middle-manager having been landed with H&S responsibilities with little or no support or training for the role and sometime little understanding of the work - so tending to pick up on trivial things or misunderstand the rules and needs, patronise the staff and then wonder why the ethos has become the butt of satire.

(I have known parallels there with the organisation trying to gain ISO9001. It succeeded but only after the certifying authority took one look at the absurd bureaucracy the directors had invented and imposed, and said they had done far more than was necessary.)

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Even when we think we are being careful we can have accidents. About two years ago I was working on my model lorry on the concrete yard in front of the workshop - there is no room inside the shed for that. The day was chilly and cloudy but dry until a sudden shower arrived. In a hurry to put tools then the lorry indoors I caught my foot in a step in the path and went flying, crashing down on my side onto the hard surface. Luckily I was quite heavily dressed, and also my head did not hit the ground. I was still in pain next morning, rang 111 - the upshot was an ambulance to hospital for an X-ray that proved I had not broken my hip. Even so I needed phsyiotherapy to help the damaged thigh or groin muscle to heal over the next two or three months. Fortunately I was heading diagonally away from the wagon. Had I fallen onto that with the same force I could have sustained very nasty head or face injuries on all the sticking-up bits of metalwork.

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Finally, many of us work happily away for hours in our little workshops, using machine-tools that could rip your hand off, edge-tools that are not fussy what they cut, chemicals you'd not want in your cocoa - and alone. Not only that, but no doubt some of us have no-one indoors to wonder why we've not come in for that cocoa.....

This has come up before.

Worry thee not!

It might have a rocking-grate of some form, but anyway your description suggests no reason the locomotive cannot be used.

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Last year I think now, one of ME's regular contributors (Doug Hewson if I recall correctly) wrote of someone barred from running his locomotive at a club track by the club's boiler inspector because the grate could not be dropped rapidly. The author pointed out that the ban was wrong.

I studied my latest-edition copy of the MELG. It contains NO recommendation, let alone requirement, for a quick-dropping grate. It does not even mention grates! The rules are of pressure-vessel integrity not fire-grate design.

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Another writer around the same time (Peter Seymour-Howell?) described his own fine-scale 5"g loco's grate and ash-pan as close to original, I think with a rocking grate in some form. There is too much steelwork around the chassis for dropping the whole lot out. He explained that should you ever need put the fire out rapidly, stuff rag down the chimney to block it, and turn the blower on hard, with the fire-door latched shut. It cuts the air-flow, pushes the fire gases backwards down into the ash-pan, and smothers the fire - keep hands clear lest any blow-back from below the footplate.

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Better than a grate section made for wangling out through the fire-door and hopefully wangling back in (when the engine is cold!), is to hinge that part at its front end, released by a catch whose control lever imitates that for the full-size rocking-grate or second damper control.

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The BR Standard full-size rocking-grate looks fairly complicated in the official Handbook diagrams (I've not seen one in the steel) but I would think a miniature edition, feasible.

It is divided cross-ways, with extensions below the bars pivoting on longitudinal links connected to a lever on the footplate. The geometry is that of a parallelogram.

The lever has a simple safety-collar to limit fire-bar movement and gaps to breaking and dropping clinker into the ash-pan without losing the lot. Raising the collar gives full travel to tip the fire-bar sets nearly vertically to drop the fire; not into the ash-pan, but through the pan's open doors into the disposal pit.

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There is no reason that Royal Scot cannot be certified for service purely on grate and ash-pan design. It simply needs extra care in use, and knowing what to do if it ever becomes necessary to put the fire out rapidly.

I may be wrong but I think your friend's Royal Scot having a damper makes it unusual among miniature locomotives; and I've often wondered why that is. However, it also leads me to ask if it has a lever-operated grate as well - I would expect its lever to be be on the fireman's side of the footplate, perhaps next to the damper lever.

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If the grate cannot be dropped or swung open, the only disposal method is to shovel the fire out, which is fiddly and risks a messy cab, but does not take long. May be best done after the fire has died out and locomotive cooled down naturally; the slower cooling also better for the boiler as well as your fingers.

My preferred disposal method with our club's loco, a 7.25" g 'Wren' which does have a one-piece drop-grate /ashpan assembly, is to slice a lot of the run-down fire down through the grate, shovel the rest out, then rake the ashpan empty - no dropping an assembly which on this specimen is awkward to replace.

You don't want to leave clinker in the firebox or embers jammed between the bars, but odd bits of half-burnt coal loose on the grate won't hurt. The next running session will use them up!

I've just posted a similar comment before I spotted yours.

Carefully searching by the reference in the ad opens a web-site which reveals despite the pretence at being a London-based firm (lending in Euros?), it is based in India.

Another commercial ad in our For Sale column, I see, this from a loan-shark.Or a phishing attempt?

I have seen a piece of rod in a 13A plug on an extension lead: "the appliances are all fused", I was told.

Even worse, and I kid thee not, a roll of aluminium foil in a 13A plug... in a small plating works where in cold weather most surfaces were damp with condensation. (Yes I know distilled water is not very conductive, but it doesn't take much contamination to send the ohms 'ome.)

Spent most of the day driving across and down England... just over 300 miles of it. And was amazed to find I could park right outside my home having left it on Friday morning! (It's in a street of terraces built when cars were still for the nobs and celebs of the day.)

Why (the drive, not celebs)?

Saturday at Bressingham Steam Museum - so far away I made a long weekend of it, camping a few miles away. The event in particular was a miniature road steam vehicle gathering; not really a "rally" in the usual sense but the mid-afternoon ring parade, with commentator, drew a satisfyingly large public audience. I asked one owner of numbers in steam and he thought about 35. The engines had number-cards but if there was any published list I did not see it.

Otherwise the engines were driving around the Museum site quite informally, as were a couple of full-size ones though their room to explore was obviously much more limited.

The admission ticket included rides on the impressive 2ft and 15-inch gauge railways, and I took both. It also included rides on the 100+ years old Savages gallopers, but I didn't take that offer.

I was surprised to find - and follow round - a ground-level 7.25 and 5" gauge railway looking a little forlorn among the weeds. Enquiring I was told it had not been used for a while.

Took lots of pics - will load some here when I've sorted them. Too knackered now after that drive home. Yet I have driven practically the same distance there and back in one day, twice - or is three times now, Michelle? - responding to sales ads on this very Forum; the seller living in Norfolk!

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That were Saturday.

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Sunday - a pleasant few hours exploring Thetford. Need I say why?

The Charles Burrell Museum is housed in what had been the paint-shop, and its huge double-doors opening straight onto the street (Minstergate) need a lick of paint themselves, but I suppose it's like any other similar collection - someone has to do it.

I had expected it might be closed on Sunday but a smaller door opened and a dog emerged, leading a lad who said "yes" when I asked if it was open.

Stepped inside. The little ticket-office was in darkness. "Maybe a bit early yet", I thought and followed my ears towards voices. After admiring some miniature engines in front of a full-size Burrell general-purpose engine, I came up behind a sizeable party being told all about Dad's Army, by a gentleman in WW2 khaki with an incongruous high-vis vest; and standing in front of Cpl Jones' butcher's van.

Eh? - I discovered that Walmington-on-Sea is really Thetford-(-Not-Near-the-Sea).

Five minutes later I was politely ushered out along with Sgt. Flourescent and his audience; by the Museum curator locking up. The Museum is open only on Saturdays and Tuesdays (difficult to find volunteers) and I'd stumbled into a town tour of the show's locations. (Some scenes, including the title sequence with the whizz-bangs, were filmed on an Army training-range elsewhere in Norfolk, and the occasional sea scenes borrowed Lowestoft or Great Yarmouth.)

The rest of the day involved a fens walk, trying to spot where the Rivers Little Ouse and Waveney, flow away from each other from points so close that they almost make Norfolk a North Sea island. Fruitless though, as I found the paths don't go near that close point.

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A Plug if such be allowed here:

Courtesy of the Parish Magazine in the pub in Hopton (excellent selection of cask ales and ciders, too!)

August 27th.

Charity Road Run - by 6 miniature traction-engines.

Five-mile circuit based on Theltenham Windmill. Though apparently not on one of the preserved mill's advertised Summer-monthly open days, unless it will be for the occasion.

Donate via Justgiving (one word) .com and search by "steam engine fundraiser for cancer" [research] to reveal it is being organised by Mark Goddard in memory of his sister. The page uses a photograph of, I assume him, driving a 4" (or larger?) scale Burrell TE outside what I recognised as its ancestral home.

I should add I do not know Mr. Goddard, I live some three hundred miles from Thetford and Theltenham; and I found the advertisement by sheer chance, in the Parish News of the United Benefice of Hopton [& several other villages].

Responding to Noel -

It does not need certifying if you are going to be its only user at home; though certainly do still test it.

If you intended offering its use to, say, other members of a model-engineering club then you would need it formally passing fit for service by the club boiler-admirer just as if it is part of a miniature locomotive or traction-engine. Though I suspect some club boiler-testers would refuse it as too unfamiliar or the like, to them; or on grounds of it being a steel boiler of unknown provenance.

You won't go far wrong by adapting the standard MELG handbook instructions for its cold hydraulic test as a new boiler, and for testing the safety-valves as per the "Steam Accumulation Test". The instructions cover only testing a pressure-vessel: they do not cover how the water is heated, as that is not relevant.

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SpeedyBuilder:

At least you've the advantage with electric "firing", that if summat happens as shouldn't, you simply switch it off!

Whether manually or by a pressure-switch does not really matter. There is little metal in this proposed design to hold heat, and once the element is off, the boiling will diminish and stop very rapidly.

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[As an aside, if you ever had the pleasure of seeing Ron Jarvis' working model Newcomen Engine, you might know its boiler, about the size of a small orange, is electrically heated, with the controls on a discreet panel in the plinth. Both the original and scaled replica worked at a heady 2 psi, and Ron realised electric "firing" and fine control was the only way forwards, so designed and fitted the appropriate equipment. As he wryly commented, there can't be many 18C atmospheric engines with automatic microprocessor control.... ]

"Surface finish"? My reference book on threads gives one set, I forget the standard's name and diameters, up to well over 200tpi !. I think it is a watch-making size - literally so.

I read that article too, and wondered how sharp a scriber and what pressure to engrave a groove 0.007" deep in mild steel! Still, it obviously works......

File Handle -

These are "Split Pins".

I think it's American practice often copied by shops to call them "cotter pins".

A cotter pin is a different beast, a type of wedge whose action tightens the joints and with it, its own grip inside the hole or slot.

Examples include the round-section cotter in a bicycle pedal-arm, and the flat-section one (a little like a Morse-taper tang drift) typically holding a piston-rod into a cross-head.

Engine connecting-rod big-ends with split brasses were often held together, and adjusted, by a tapered, rectangular-section cotter working against the mirror-image wedge face of an insert called a "glut", to present opposed parallel faces to the appropriate surfaces of the bearing block and big-end. Often, a threaded tail on the cotter allows it to be tightened with a nut acting on a bracket.

Bear in mind you need know the boiler temperature at working-pressure, and it will be above 100ºC.

Don't use a test-tube. They are very thin-walled and very unlikely to be strong enough to use as you suggest. Gauge-glass tube walls are about 2 thick even in model sizes, and of much smaller diameter than a test-tube..

A belt drive should be fixed and not over-tight. The standard ML7 motor mounting uses a slotted link then clamped to hold the motor steady, much as the alternator belt on a car.

Some machines with vertical shafts use a spring to tension the belt correctly, at which point the motor on its hinged plate or guide-bars, is then clamped. This happens on the Myford VMC milling-machine and the Meddings bench-drill; the latter have a warning notice not to tighten the belt further.

Nor should belts be bar tight! That will cause early wear on the belts, pulleys and bearings... and your wallet It should be possible to deflect the centre of the longest leg of the belt by light finger pressure, to about half an inch.

Note that this applies whether you keep the motor original or replace it with a 3-phase one fed from a VFD inverter. If you do that, consider it not replacing the belt drives but complementing them, particularly as motors should not be run at too low a speed. Use the pulleys and back-gear to keep the motor running as it should, even at very low spindle speeds.

(My Harrison L5 has a single-ratio belt drive to the geared headstock, and in bottom gear the spindle ambles round at maybe 70rpm with the motor at a healthy 900+ rpm, according to the VFD speed-control markings.)

You could make a gauge like that, with a scale along the side of the tube, but you'd certainly need protect the tube from the heat of the boiler. Or use boiler gauge-glass tube.