Skip to main content


I'm just starting on a new loco - a 5 in gauge Jubilee - ‘Galatea’


It's a good looking  4-6-0 tender loco, with the added interest of three cylinders.

Galatea is a preserved loco, so there's opportunity to add authentic detail. Also, the drawings are highly detailed, which will add to the interest. As a bonus, the drawings are all in Decimal - no more converting fractions !


A friend pointed me in the direction of Station Road Steam. They very kindly keep their old ads available. This is a very useful resource, and much appreciated . They have a group of pics showing an incomplete Galatea (long since sold).  Thank you, Station Road Steam.


There's a lot of physical work in cutting the frames: I've chosen to buy laser-cut frames this time.  There are also a lot of castings available. Whilst castings have advantages, they also bring their problems - identifying/ establishing reference surfaces, and work-holding to name but two.  Given the choice, I prefer to work from stock materials, rather than castings, for those reasons. Having said that, some of these casitings have detail which would not be easy to reproduce from stock material.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Coupling Rods

The spacing of the coupling rod centres is critical to the free running of the loco. I measure each side separately and comparing it with the drawing. Any inaccuracies in making up the axle-boxes or in setting the crank-pins will show up here. I started by marking out the centres and outline on the rod blank, then drilled the centres, starting with a small centre drill, then drilling out at (say) 2BA clearance at one end, and 2BA tapping at the other. The rods tapered from 3/8 to 1/4 in. - i.e a taper of 1/16 in. on each side. So I marked out the centre line on the support bar, and another, offset by 1/16 in. I drilled and tapped a fixing for one end of the bar on the centre line, and attached the rod blank. Then I lined up the other centre on the 1/16 in offset line, clamped and drilled through 2BA tapping. Now I removed the rod blank, and opened the 2BA tapping hole on the rod blank to 2BA clearance. Also I tapped 2BA threads in the support bar and bolted the two together. I clampe...
3 comments
Read more
Work has progressed - the boiler is now complete. The assembly sequence I used was as described in Alex Farmers book on boiler making - and, as it happens, his was also a GWR boiler, although bigger. As the assembly gets bigger, it always surprises me just how much heat it needs. I work outside, so can only work on wind-free ( and preferably dry) days. Also, I find it essential to use refractory bricks- without them, I'd never get up to temperature. Even so, it needed two good sized gas torches, and occasional oxy-propane, to complete the assembly. I couldn't do this alone, and gratefully thank George and Russell for their help. Where ever possible (and that's most of the time), we worked with pre-placed solder - its much easier than applying a stick, as it tends to melt - or at least sag - if you're not quick. We put rings of silver solder under the heads of all the rivet - stays in the firebox. As the solder flowed, each was grasped on the outside with pliers, rotated...
2 comments
Read more

Welcome to my blog

One of my serious interests is model engineering. I've built steam locomotives in 5 inch gauge, and also in gauge 1. Interest in the hobby seems to have grown quite a lot in the last few years - certainly my local model engineering society is a lot busier. Several people I've spoken to have expressed an interest in building a loco. These days, sadly, most of the college based courses are no longer running making it harder to start from scratch. I have just started building a 3 1/2 inch gauge loco and thought I would keep a journal of my progress. I thought if I set up a blog perhaps it might help someone else to get going. I will share some notes and photographs documenting my progress. Hopefully my blog will promote discussion with like minded people. The loco I am building is a GWR Hall (3 1/2" gauge). Its an LBSC design: the construction looks typical of lots of locos, so the construction notes should transfer to other locos. Truth to tell, I bought it at a...
3 comments
Read more