On Saturday I had another excellent day at the SLSLS grounds in Ryde.

I started off spending a while using my brushcutter to get rid of a lot of overgrown grass and other plants impeding progress around the elevated track [which I will need in a fortnight’s time if I can get to the “Smaller Gauges Open Day”]

I was then able to get my steam engine through both its “hydraulic test” and its “steam test”, which means that it is certified as safe to use in the future (4 years in theory).

We then tried to run my engine around the circuit.

The trouble was, I had forgotten to put the “steam oil” into the oil supply for the cylinders, so it lost steam constantly, and after about 100m “I ran out of steam” – literally.

However this disappointment was lessened by my being given a chance to drive the 3½ inch gauge “Britannia”, which was also having its steam test done.

It is a much bigger model engine than mine and as such is very “forgiving” if you are an inexperienced driver (!).

I drove it around the circuit a couple of times – really special !!!!

I went to run the Impressionist model of a Stanier Mogul today at the Sydney Live Steam Locomotive Society .

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The engine  performed very well indeed.

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This is my “Dyak” – a freelance design which looks most like a Stanier Mogul in my view (even though the model design actaully PRE-dates the prototype by a few years! – hauling me up an incline of about 1in 60.

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It was a wet day, with lots of wheelslip, but even despite this the engine performed well..

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This was a tremendous moment for me – proof that the engne which I bought based on a comnbination of appearances and a “hunch” has proved to be a good buy.  Just as well considering it cost me $2,500 all up .

The Sydney Live Steam locomotive Society site in Ryde has a circular run of about 400m, which is superb.

See the YouTube video:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n2NSUETiIA

They let me have a go on a locomotive known to them first, I suspect to check out that I was able to follow their instructions, so some of the above video shows me running an LBSCR “Atlantic”. They then let me go solo with my “Impressionist Stanier Mogul”, and the first time around I got the whole way up their 100m long 1/60 bank, albeit with wheelslip, etc., without stopping. On a rainy day that was a mark of success apparently. Trouble is, I couldn’t repeat the feat! The loco. went very well though, and others more expert than I said that it was as “sweet” loco., and I had done very well when I bought it.
Their site has three gauges – 2½, 3½ and 5 inch gauges, interlaced and crossing over each other. Very cleverly arranged. We were using the elevated 2½ and 3½ inch tracks (these engines can only really be used to pull real passengers on elevated track) and some of the loco.s on the video are 3½ inch models.

[Updated four times]

While the Dyak 2-6-0 has its boiler removed for restoration and repair is clearly the best time to consider painting it.  It has never been painted before, and as it isn’t a scale model of any particular, I could really paint it any colour I like (so long as it’s black …).
So I am going to have to take the wheels off, to paint the frames behind.

This is not simple.  If you look at the driving wheels, I need to “drop” them as a unit (all six wheels) to make it a manageable task.If you look at the first picture, there are a lot of pipes in the way, and they have to be taken off first.

This picture shows from underneath what it looks like with the pipes removed.

Trouble is, there are still two eccentric drives to be disconnected – for the axle water pump (for pumping water into the boiler as the wheels go around), and the mechanical lubricator.

Once the eccentrics are gone the wheels still aren’t free: the connecting rods and valve gear have to be disconnected first.

Then finally the wheels can be removed, complete with axle boxes.

All this, just to get black paint behind the wheels …

27th May.  Having dismantled the engine as far as I dare, here is the result of painting on the “primer”.  In the end I used a “rattle-can” (aerosol paint) as my airbrush simply wouldn’t handle the epoxy primer I had bought – even after thinning it with the special primer solvent.

Much of the masking tape can be seen, trying to cover the moving parts and those which clearly shouldn’t be painted.

7th June.  Painting it black was better – a rattle-can used at first, covering the majority, but the paint easily could be thinned (with the appropriate solvent), to fill in the areas not easily reached by the aerosol.

Now to the simple task of putting it back together …

Now I have put the “Cladding” back on – the wrapping around the boiler firebox, and I have put some of the fittings back onto the boiler.  Mostly the controls on the “back head” – the face of the firebox in the cab.

Here is a picture of the back head.

It’s now possible to get an idea (a very approximate one) of what the end result will be like:

This day was a great day …

On 28th June, the Dyak steamed for the first time, I believe, in about 50 years.  It is a great tribute to Warwick Allison that this has proved possible.  My original assessment was I think correct (that it had been very well made, but subsequently abandoned by whoever made it), but it was only with Warwick’s guidance that I could get it going!

So I took all the parts, now painted black, over to his house in Mount Riverview.  First we had to reset the valve gear and make sure that it ran, on compressed air.  Click on the link to view it at this stage:   Dyak black no boiler

Next was to put the boiler back on, connect it up and make sure there were no leaks on compressed air.  Yes, there were, but with Warwick’s help we found them all and fixed it up.  It still didn’t have the cab on, but it looked much more like a locomotive now.  We began the steam test: filled the boiler with warm water, put a fire in the firebox.  This in itself was a good moment!

The fire initially was “kitty litter” soaked in kerosene, but after a while real coal could go in the firebox.

The orange cloth protected the tender, the gadget on the loco. chimney is a fan to “draw” the fire through the boiler.

This is me supervising the steam-raising.

After what seems like ages, pressure was shown on the gauge, and I could hear the engine “blower” beginning to work.

Finally the great moment arrives: the engine wheels are propped up above the track, the regulator opened, and for what I guessed to be the first time in 50 years, the engine turns it wheels under the power of steam produced in its own boiler.  

Click on the link to watch:  Dyak first steaming 2.

So in the end I didn’t waste my money on 20kg of useless brass scrap ….

And as of 5th July

Engine running first time ever 5th July

By the way, I have decided that it is an “impressionist” model of a Stanier Mogul.  It doesn’t have a taper boiler, the cab windows aren’t quite correct, and maybe the wheel sizes are wrong, but the tender looks right and the straight unstepped footplate makes it closer to a Stanier Mogul than any other locomotive that I have seen.  There is the minor problem that the design for this model (the “Dyak”) and probably the manufacture of this particular example of it, pre-dates the first example of the real Stanier Mogul being made!

Yet another Midland Railway wagon!  This time it is a D299, which is a bit like the D302 which I have already made (see prior entries), but this time it is a Slater’s kit.  Like previous ones which I have written about, it is largely laser-cut wooden in construction, which I like.    

“Etching” with a laser is also possible, and the parts fit pretty-well perfectly (computer design and computer-guided cutting also).

This is the body after all the wooden bits are stuck together.

There is a long and tedious part now fitting the “strapping” and braces,  and all the tiny rivets through the strapping.

This is the result afterwards.

Next is the underframe.

But there is lots of lovely detail.

The other part of the “Gauge 3 action” relates to my locomotive.  The boiler has now been removed and the leaks found largely to relate to the boiler fittings (all the controls and gauges which come out of or go through the boiler).

A considerable relief – it pressure-tests well when all the fittings are removed and the holes for them plugged temporarily.

Here (right) the front safety vale has been replaced with a (large) pressure gauge.

Once this was established, we could work on all the small parts – the regulator, the manifold fitting, the clack valves, etc (when we come to them I will explain what these arcane terms refer to).

Here is a picture with the “superheater tube” removed (the last tube before the steam reaches the cylinders, where it is superheated to get it well about the temperature at which water could condense in the cylinders).

Next is the regulator removal and remaking.  Here is the old regulator.  The regulator shaft has to go the entire length of the boiler.

Warwick Allison (who is doing much of this work with me helping as best I can) said that for a better long-term result we had better remake the regulator, to which I knowledgeably (ha, ha!) agreed.  This involved me learning a little lathe-work, as well as learning much more about how steam engine actually works!

For instance, why does a steam-engine have a dome (usually)?  Well it is to create a place to gather steam which is well-above the water level.  If water is collected, you see, and gets into the cylinders then (not being compressible like steam is) it will severely damage the cylinders.  Here is the loco. steam-collecting pipe after the dome is removed.

On a final note, Sue has said I can have a garden railway so that I can send a train out to her and her friends, sitting out in the garden, carrying a cargo of sparkling wine.  So I had to check that my flat wagon would carry the load ….

The bad news is to do with my steam-powered locomotive. I took it to my friend’s house to have its boiler “hydraulic test”, which it failed spectacularly.  A hydraulic test is when you fill the boiler up with water, put it under pressure, and see if it leaks.  I had high hopes of this, after all it had run on compressed air.  My friend Warwick Allison clearly had high hopes also, but when we tried it, water leaked out all over the place – from the regulator fitting, from the front boiler plate, from the top of the backplate, possibly elsewhere.  “I think it’s a ‘boiler off’ job”, said Warwick’s son-in-law (Andrew, who is a boiler inspector).  When air leaks out, you cannot see it.  When water comes out, it is very obvious!

Clearly a fairly major setback, but I always knew this could be a major undertaking.

The good news is progress on a fourth G3 wagon.  This is a long flat truck, and model of the Midland Railway D336 single-plank wagon, the kit coming from Peter Korzilius.

As you can see, the basic construction is out of wood – “mahogany stripwood” (a little  ideologically unsound?) with a plywood floor.

Reproduction of the metal framework is in styrene, with little brass rivets to represent, well, rivets.

This is also a very satisfying wagon to make, and I like working in wood.

The other good news is that the man in Victoria who has offered to make the transfers for my coal wagon has finished them.  They were a bit difficult because of white lettering with green shading and a red cross design on a white shield, but the colourful nature of the wagon is its main attraction, so we will see if I can apply the transfers adequately once they have been posted to me.