A Quarry Hunslet in 009
This page will follow my progress at building a Quarry Hunslet. The oldest entries are at the bottom of the page.
21 January 2003
It's been a long time since I last posted - University life has been far more hectic than I thought it would be. Fat chance of doing any modelling! It's also the effort required to edit this page - I really need to write/install a proper weblog tool for it.
Anyhow, let me record where I've got to with the locomotive: I bought metal strip at Warley and soldered up some crosshead strip over the Christmas holidays (2 bits of U tubing with a metal spacer in between) which works well. I also soldered up some slidebars, which seem to be working OK. I haven't worked out how to mount them onto the chassis - I thinkk I may fix the slidebars tot he cylinders rather than to the chassis directly.
I thinned down the connecting rods as well, as the chassis was working perfectly, no binding or any problem. Of course, once I've filed down the rods it's sticking again in one location, and I haven't solved the problem yet. I'm loathe to enlarge the holes in the connecting rods any more as otherwise there's going to be a LOT of slop.
Expect the next update sometime in April during the Easter holidays. Who knows, I might even get the locomotive running!
31 August 2002
The motor arrived today - and it looks as if it'll fit! The curved sides come up much less than I thought they would (or the flat sides are wider than I though - you choose how you want it expressed) so I'm going to have to do some filing to get the motor to look like the loco's boiler - but once I've cluttered the footplate it shouldn't be too noticable.
Still thinking about the slidebars.
29 August 2002
I ordered a Mashima 1015 flat can yesterday from Branchlines in the hope that this will fit in the locomotive. As it's less than half the price of a Faulhaber motor I had a big incentive to try it!
Still considering how to make the slidebars for the locomotive. They're extremely difficult to make, and I haven't the faintest idea where to start. I've looked at existing ones in the Backwood kits, but they're all too big to adapt.
I've got the chassis running smoothly now - the stick appears to be going the more I push the chassis, so I'm leaving well alone and will wait and see what happens.
25 August 2002
I finally got the flycranks quartered. I had soldered 3 of the flycranks in place, leaving one to be adjusted which proved easy enough. The problem turned out to be that the holes in the coupling rods were too tight, making the chassis stick in one place in both directions.
Now the chassis is only sticking when going in one direction, and I'm wondering how to cure this problem - it's hard to know which hole could still be too tight. While I muse on this I'm waiting for the glue to set on the flycrank - I tacked it in place while quartering using superglue and have now applied Loctite 601 to fix it.
I'm still dithering over the motor to use. I've nearly decided on using a Faulhaber 1016 coreless motor, but I have a large number of Sagami 1013 motors sitting in my cupboard and wonder if I should use them instead...
I've also realised how much lead I can fit into the chassis. If I put dummy ashpan sides right against the inside edge of the frames then the whole rear area is free; likewise the space between the cylinders at the front.
Not quite such a good photo today (less daylight and I was in a hurry) but this shows the current state of the chassis. That rod isn't finished yet (just in case you thought it was!). You can see how much more grimy the phosphor bronze frame strip has become over the last few days, no doubt due to the amount of handling that quartering involves, and the use of fluxes without a neutralising wash.
18 August 2002
This picture give a side view of the chassis. The wheels are from the 2mm Association and are 8mm diameter - 1mm greater than the scale diameter, but it allowed my to get in a much greater gear ratio. The only downside has been the need to make the chassis ~ 0.75mm taller than scale. For the second chassis I'm going to try using 7mm wheels if I can figure out the gear ratio...
A view of the other side of the chassis.
Looking from the front down the chassis. I have actually spaced the frames much wider than they needed to be, as this picture shows - I forgot that I didn't need to use bearings when cutting the frame spacers. Again, for the Mark 2 chassis I will narrow this.