Slow Progress Of Sorts….

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Too cold in the workshop but I’ve not been idle…

I’ve been warming my hands over the computer instead, designing my Hindley steam-wagon engine.

And today found an on-line photo of the Vincent-built, full-size replica showing the driver’s side of the cab – or where that would be if it had one. Hardy folk, were drivers in the 1900s! Horses don’t have rooves so why should horseless-carriages?

This photo revealed the proportions I thought all horribly wrong may not be so serious after all. Besides, I’d forgotten the platform’s head-board partially hides the back of the engine!

This morning I braved the cold and measured my real chassis with boiler in it.

Hence could give the CAD equivalent of the chassis a block outline of the boiler and the partial-engine assembly “fitted” with two temporary suspension-plates, and it does nearly resemble the tracing of the full-size version photograph. The engine does lean slightly forwards in the chassis.

It needs some tweaking, and I am sure Constraints belong to some strange and very exclusive secret society so that when I add a new one to a complicated assembly a dozen previous ones scattered randomly around it go on strike.

I’ve produced a drawing of the part-assembled engine, implanted in the chassis assembly as a sub-assembly, and it contains assorted peculiar dimensions and mis-alignments all to be traced and corrected.

Some components are depicted in provisional form, for refining as I develop the CAD model.

Roark’s text-book about Stress and Strain is really about those in metal objects, but I hate to think what of his mid-boggling formulae would apply to me in managing to concoct this:

Oh look, I’ve gone and put the cylinders the wrong way round! The LP one should be on the nearside. Not that it matters here because the miniature will be simple-expansive working, with only the two top covers indicating the original being a compound. I will need correct the engine-model assembly.

[DiogenesParticipant @diogenes]

It’s good to hear and see this, Nigel – admirable tenacity – Happy New Year to you.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Thahnk you Diogenes!

 

Happy New Year to you too!

 

There is a strange thing though. The engine image in the chassis won’t animate but its own assembly can be pulled round by the flywheel.

To examine the valve events I made some parts translucent and “drilled” two tiny holes through the connecting-rod so they show as dots I can align by eye with a central plane when the engine is viewed directly on end. I measured the distance from the crosshead to the cylinder cover at dead-centre, but noticed the stroke seemed the wrong length.

I examined the crankshaft drawing, did correct a wrong journal diameter on the connecting-rod, establised all was correct there.

Went back to the engine model, re-tested one dead-centre, and from that “engraved” 2 alignment marks on the guide-bar.

It it still wrong, somehow, somewhere, and I’ve not managed to establish where.

It’s just occurred to me where one error may lie….. I engraved the guide-bar alone, not its sub-assembly with the cylinder-cover that is used for the engine assembly, which is what I’d measured.

[David JuppParticipant @davidjupp51506]

Nigel,

To get the engine to animate in the main assembly, you have to set ‘make flexible’ for the engine sub-assembly.

Only use make flexible when needed as doing so adds in all the assembly constraints from the sub-assembly to those in the main assembly.

[noel shelleyParticipant @noelshelley55608]

Nigel, you may know the following but hey ho, The auction sale at Weeting steam rally in 2000 of the collection of Ronald H. Clarke, one lot was what was describes as the company archive of Hindleys of Bourton in Dorset. I don’t know who bought them. It may help you if you could trace this information. I think I may still have the auction catalogue in which case I may be able to give the date, auctioneer and lot Number.

Best wishes for 2026.  Noel.

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

I admire your stamina and dogged determination to complete your project, Nigel,  More power to your elbow!

I’m sure that you have trawled the Internet for photos – but have you seen this collection of ten photos of a rebuild/replica at what appears to be a full-size wagon?

John

 

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Thankyou David.

I am not so worried about being to revolve the engine in the chassis model, but there is something peculiar about its own assembly. I may try a stripped-down copy to see if that reveals what’s happening.

 

Noel –

No, I hadn’t known of that, although I do have assorted bits of history from various sources.

I could try asking the auctioneers if they’d be kind enough to pass on an enquiry without their revealing the buyers’ identity to me.

 

In fact I visited Richard Vincent very early in his building of the replica, and he told me of the same lack of anything beyond old advertising photographs, which I think he found in the Agricultural Institute in Reading. Among the more purely historical items I have is a list from Dorset County Council, of the Hindley lorries it registered.]

Preserved Hindley steam-engines I know of are all plant ones. They are a horizontal one that used to power machinery in the Devenish Brewery in Weymouth, a larger one fed from a vertical boiler fired on waste wood in the water-supply museum in Sherborne; a small open-framed, inverted-vertical in the town museum there; and a pair of small, enclosed high-speed verticals at Breamore House.

Those last two had been rescued from the old whaling-station on St. Georgia Island! It’s feasible they used steam-wagon parts but from memory I don’t think they had reversing-gear, and most likely drove dynamos or centrifugal pumps.

The pumping-station museum, run by a volunteer group and open on some Summer weekends, also has the remains of the water-wheel that once powered the pumps. That had been built by Hindley, but the pumps are now driven, in display mode, only by a similar wheel built new by Richard Vincent.

Sherborne, Mr. Vincent’s premises and Bourton, where E.S Hindley & Sons traded, are all fairly close together geographically, and the water-supply museum is also dedicated to that company.

 

John –

Thank you for the compliment!

That vehicle is a replica, not rebuild, although its builder thinks the front wheels might be original! They might have survived on a trailer or something.

Really I should have completed the thing years ago! I have seen that Steam Scenes collection, have now book-marked it; and indeed yesterday found one image on its own, that of perhaps the most useful, which is the view of the driver’s side of the “cab”.

That, and the corresponding photo of the mate’s side, show some curious details. For a start it looks as if Richard Vincent fitted that vehicle with a ‘Weir’-type feed-pump, nested between the bunkers. As far as I know that was his idea, and the Old Glory out-take says the original was a pump driven from the crankshaft, as more conventional though quite where it was located is not shown by the photos. Also the replica’s near-side footplate has a large handwheel of no obvious purpose (damper control?), a big plug-cock on the boiler of equally uncertain use, and shows the seat as a simple box. I made my model’s seats as boxes with hinged lids. And fitted a canopy!

 

 

 

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Measurement problem identified…

By the Inspect > Measure tool, the model gave stroke lengths over 2″ from a crank throw of exactly 1″, slightly different on every re-test.

Yet all the Part Dimensions, Anchors etc., were correct.

Well away from the computer, out shopping in fact, I had a sudden Mornington Crescent moment:

“The two edges are parallel but at different depths “into” the screen, so I must be measuring invisible diagonals!”

Indeed, when I measured between the parallel surfaces, all became present and correct.

 

Noel-

If you do find those auction details please, I’d be very grateful, thankyou.

[Author]

Posts