Mike Swain

My joy is to descend into the basement workshop and just get playing with all those wonderful ‘toys’ that numerous people in time have given me: two small lathes, a pillar drill, taps, reamers, drills, vernier calliper and a micrometer. On top of that I have also been given time and guidance by others in the hobby. Now, armed with a reasonably set up workshop and doing what I can with my transferable skills, woodwork to metalwork, chance has led me to making basic steam engines in gauge O.

One day I was given a box of bits that included a frame, driving wheels, bogie cylinders and valves and, after much delving through what reference books I had, The North London passenger tank fitted those bits best. I particularly wanted to build and run a tank engine because that layout lends itself to a better enclosure for a meths flame, which gives a better chance for outside running while still having the simplicity of ‘pot boiling.’

I hope that, in this hobby, we have all found what I have found, namely immense help from others. I shall mention Bill Wilson of Broadstone. At the end of an initial exchange of e-mails he took me under his wing and taught me the fundamentals of building and running steam engines. Here, with the North London tank, he had what looked to be a promising idea of how it would be possible to collect more of the heat from the burner and transfer it to the water in the boiler. I’ll explain later.

While we exchanged design ideas on the boiler I got on with making new frames incorporating compensation on the drivers. There is a fair amount of weight on the bogie so, in order to get maximum traction, compensation was a must (Fig. 1).

Figure 1

For some time now I’ve wanted to up my standard of bogie design and what better engine to start with than the North London tank? Here in the full-sized example was the original Adams bogie with lateral springing to pull the loco round the curves. Fig. 2 says more that I can describe in words.

Figure 2

At this point I can say that this bogie feature works well. At one point in the running this loco got away from my control and flew off at a crazy speed, but it stayed on the track. Not only does the bogie help control the running but it also looks much better as it enters a corner, not like the usual 4-4-0 that hangs its nose out at the end of the straight.

Back to the boiler, having done the basis, a folded seam and 1/8 in thick ends all silver soldered, I then followed Bill’s ideas of heat transfer. This entailed cutting slots in the sides of the boiler and inserting copper plates nearly meeting in the middle, and on their outer edge the heat protective skin of copper was silver soldered to capture much of the heat produced and transfer it to the water (Fig. 3).

Figure 3

On a previous steam engine I overcame the difficult task of linking the steam tee to the valve chests, usually done with threaded studs and back-nuts, by the use of silicone O-rings in compression. Here again, with only about 7mm between the valve chests, I squeezed in there a tee and two O-rings to form the seal. I made a subassembly of cylinders, valves and steam delivery pipe which slides up into the frame and at the same time, when bolted, forms the lower stretcher of the frame (Fig. 5). The steam delivery pipe runs back along the top edge of the frame gathering a little more heat from the flames and then tees into the oiler and up to the regulator.

Figure 5

The bodywork was first made in good quality card just to get a good idea of the fits. I only have front, side and back elevations printed from a book (Locomotives Worth Modelling by F C Hambleton). Then, using tinned steel, 0.013in thick, that piece sweeping down from the chimney and over the cylinders took some working out. After the card try I then went onto biscuit tin and finally the tin plate. Even then, it was only by the second effort that I was happy (Fig. 6).

Figure 6

Another friend, a plumber, who has nothing to do with modelling steam engines, came up trumps with brass fittings that would turn into a steam dome and a chimney fairly easily as they had a flange on them already. I have no idea about the right way to produce a flair that sits on the boiler but I reaped success in my crude ways. A tapering skirt was turned from the flange then put in the vice, squashing it firmly over a boiler sized bar and gently tapping the skirt to the bar with a half inch round steel bar using it as a hammer; heypresto, no dents. (see sketch).

With the frame wheels and cylinders all together it was the right time to run it on air and set the valve timings, the eccentrics 90 degrees apart and the valve event at what I know as top dead centre (crank pin, crank and wheel centre dead in line). I had not looked into the valve assembly and by luck that worked well. The cylinders have been identified by my friends as those made by BH Models; not the best of performers I am told.

I mentioned earlier that the bogie design is a good one; what about the boiler? I will say that it was well worth the effort. There are only three small flames fed by 14ml of meths, but that is enough to keep it going for about 15 minutes. There is very little heat to warm my hand held above the boiler so it must be going to the water.

I must tell of an incident. While doing early runs I accidently caught the loco with my sleeve and brought it tumbling down to the concrete floor. You can imagine my heart sinking. On examination, I was surprised to find that the only damage was to the buffer beam. This beam I had made from an unknown material that I just happened to have, it looked like veneer and resin laminations. I clad each side with steel sheet stuck with some ‘ultimate’ glue. I was trying to represent the original that was a wooden beam clad in steel. In the fall it took all the forces of the landing loco and deformed just enough to protect the engine, I was lucky (Fig. 7).

Figure 7

The painting and lining is my effort and I am finding that as my skills increase, age makes the steady hand decrease, I think the latter is winning. Of late it has suffered one of those odd laws of building steam engines: ‘When they are painted they never go as well as they did in the bare metal.’ This I have suffered, but I got there in the end (Fig. 8). The loco runs well now, it pulls five heavy bogie coaches, my standard load for most of my locos.

Figure 8

My reading led me to discover that the four-wheel coaches of the North London Railway were close coupled in order that more coaches could pull up alongside the platform; this they achieved by putting buffers on one end only. Can I make a rake of coaches to go with it? I think not, it will have to make use of what I already have. What next? I’m struggling to get a LBSC-designed gauge O Bat running on solid fuel, but so far that has been a hopeless task.