Off to the races!

Brian,

That tender was maybe a day worth of work if that.
I estimate I can handle a locomotive every two/three weeks give or take.

Something simple with oscillating cylinders? Couple days.
Seeing how Curly reused so much I am sure that it will go much faster than I anticipated, since I wont have to redraw castings.

I actually did a Cracker in two days.

Hi Dean,

As Brian says, you are setting up for a lifetimes work with this!

You will find that a few of the designs were only very briefly described in the magazines - a GA drawing and maybe a boiler drawing if you are lucky. We do have copies of most of the construction articles though if you need them.

Re Lucy Anna - we have copies of the articles in Model Maker and also the drawings.

Re Liberation - I think this is a mistake in Brian Hollingsworth's book. Certainly I can find no trace of it and the article mentioned in English Mechanics does not exist.

Re LBSCR - I think this may be the Southern Region 0-4-4T (2396) which I think is the same loco as Victoria.

Hollywood Annie is an Americanised version of Annie Boddie and was briefly covered by 4 pages in Model Engineer.

Cleopatra was covered by a single page in ME and had just a GA drawing.

Hope that helps,

John

John, you are literally, literally my hero.
I sent you an email, if you would like I would be more than happy to send you all the files. They might not be 100% perfect, but it's a running start. You might have to correct the dimensions for metric, make changes to correct some Curly-isms, but I've seen your CAD work, the Red Devil drawings you had were nothing short of AMAZING.

I think it would be safe to say that the Cleopatra is basically a Jenny Lind scaled down. I think that the Hollywood Annie, Cleopatra, Liberation and LBSCR are safe to cross off the list then- as either not complete locomotives or duplicates. I think that Liberation might be the WD Stanier come to think of it.

I really wouldn't say that I have a life time of work ahead of me with this, there are a lot of parts to this that can be either rescaled in CAD or where the parts would be the same between multiple models. I'd very much like to discuss the method I draft these designs with you, as I would like YOU Mr. Baguley to have copies.

Regards,
-Dean

Well, here it is.
It's starting to actually look like a locomotive, the coal fired tender is done, as is the part of the coal fired boiler portions I am doing. The spirits fired version comes next, as well as the alternate tender design with the straight sides as opposed to the curved ones.

To a degree I am starting to see how there are some details that are not mentioned but clearly needed such as the sheet work over the front beam in front of the fire box etc. to complete the locomotive aesthetically.
Thanks to the wonderful support of a British model engineer I've been in touch with, the next lost Curly design will come to life.

Stay tuned!

So I started dolling her up a bit.

I have to devise a way to make a cover where the lubricator goes that would be repeatable in real life and yet fill that ugly gap under the smokebox.

One thing that I can tell for certain is that there are some final finishing touches that Curly did not mention in his articles- rather just the bare bones assembly and some details. There are little things like the aforementioned gap under the smoke box and the lack of a floor board in the cab which I do think need to be addressed.

I'm basically going off of the elevation drawing as well as the instructions, but there are MINOR MINOR little tweaks that i have found that were totally 100% necessary for the model to look decent.

Any input would be outstanding!
I did add the brasses around the windows, makes it look a lot more like a real T26!

I have sort of a dumb question of sorts- Curly's writing doesn't cover boiler cleading (as we in the US call it a boiler jacket) at all.

How thick should the insulation be? I was going to use .014" thick material (relatively speaking since this is in CAD) for the jacket.

I remember saying I wouldn't draw the cab fittings.

Well...

I lied.

Still plugging away at it!
Thankfully I'm noticing Curly used the same fittings A LOT. So I won't have to draw much if at all with them.

There is good reason why I am not going to draw the backhead fittings again.
It didn't take TOO long, but drawing the pipes DOES and I would rather not go through that routine again. It's not hard, it's just really boring and detracts away from the more pressing parts.

As I've mentioned before, the boilers have to be changed anyhow, and like a dunce I drew most of the parts on the insides of them. This design has a water tube boiler for spirit firing and the coal fired boiler as well, however, the drawings for the coal fired boiler didn't really... work out that well. Suffice to say, those fittings on the back head are more or less the parsley of Curly's designs.

The frames, boiler outline, cab, valve gear are the important bits- ergo for the purposes of me not developing carpal tunnel and losing any hair, I should stick to what is important.

The next locomotive is the "Pixie" a 2-2-2 for children in 2.5" gauge. Following that will be the "Ajax" 2-2-0 oscillator.

I have to balance out these projects with the ones I have for clients- so until I am caught up I need to keep it simple. Right now I have a beginners 0-4-0 to work on. It's built like a little tank, pulls like a horse and could fit in the boot of a mini. I even picked it up with my client's help!

Any feed back would be greatly appreciated!

Hi Dean.

The 3d drafting looks great,however following LBSC's drawings to the letter does expose the flaws in his original handywork, inspiring though it unquestionably is.

If you look at the back end of the boiler there is nothing actually preventing the bottom of the firebox from landing on the rear axle other than very exact dimensions in the boiler making. I found out the hard way by having to put some blind bushes into the sides of the boiler wrapper after it was all soldered up, to take some angle plates to sit on the top of the frames. Both to support the rear of the boiler and also to allow for rearwards expansion movement. Just double check the size of the firebox to the boiler barrel. the proportions between the two seem different to mine,- although that may be because I used tube i had in stock which may have been larger than the specified design diameter.

Similar applies to the support for the smokebox at the front end. Curly didn't really show anything and support is needed for both the end of the boiler and to make an airtight joint with the boiler, and also for the steam pipes and blast pipe. Clearly for the spirit boiler the draft is not so critical and so this joint is not as important.

Again the video of the motion looks excellent. However bear in mind my earlier post re valve gear, and also the fact that this is intended to be a beginners loco where the accuracy of porting and slide valve sizes may not be altogether perfect; so setting up the slip eccentric may not be so straightforward. Curly's notes say to set it by the good old Mk1 eyeball, - but as your drafting clearly shows ; how on earth would you achieve that with the valve gear sandwiched between the frames.??? that's where my oblong slot comes in.

Please don't think I am being critical about your work - I'm not and I think its fabulous what you are doing - . but having struggled with the building of a Rose I have a bit of 20 20 hindsight vision !

Keep up the good work.

Kind regards

Brian.

Brian,

You aren't going to offend me at all sir, you could tell me that I need to draw a pink unicorn on the side and make it a cab forward- after I finish scratching my head I would do that.

Almost done!