What Did You Do Today 2026

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

I will try to remember that one Ian. I suppose I could Dremen a broken drill now, just in case.

Bob

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

I managed to dismantle the curious air-pump the subject of my enquiry elsewhere, discovered how it works. I had never previously encounted this mechanism, in reality or books.

Then cleaned all the old grease out of it and re-assembled it. I put a Nylon plug in the grease-lubricator to reduce the rather wasteful volume by about half.

I didn’t waste the old grease from the lubricator. Of two different types – Tar Black and Old Pond Green – I used it to help protect some of my steel stock from (further) rusting.

 

I did hit a snag in trying to re-assemble the crank. The pin runs in a bush in the piston, and in trying to push the crankshaft assembly back in, I unwittingly pushed the bush forwards by a tiny amount so it rubbed the cylinder wall. Taking a deep breath, and relying on having oiled it very liberally, I pushed the piston out, noting a light scuff mark along the cylinder surface I hope won’t be a significant leak path, and very carefully filed the bronze back to the piston surface.

I’ve now to deal with the broken gasket on one cylinder cover. A small piece came out of the ring of fibre material, but I think I can put it back with a touch of sealant. This little compressor is not intended to drive a pneumatic road-breaker, after all!

 

Then to find it Something To Do, depending on what it can do. Low-pressure bubble-testing soldered pipe-fittings springs to mind though I think I’d acquired it to drive a basic air-brush.  If I can find that.

 

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I got enough bits made to give the Jowitt Major that I have been working on a first run with the governor. Still needs a bit of tidying up but happy with how it runs and if you watch until the end it will go surprisingly slow for a single acting engine.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Well, yesterday and today (Saturday and Sunday)

Helped run the club’s portable railway at Purbeck Vintage Rally, held near Wareham.

The organisers had fenced off a lane along the side of one the two arenas. Which seemed a Jolly Good Idea in advance, considering some events have placed us in locations most visitors do not spot; but no-one could have foreseen the consequences here.

This arena was used for the main “crowd-pleasers”: not only the vintage vehicle parades but also the dog-training and falconry demonstrations, and two-a-day displays by “The Tigers” childrens’ motorcycle display team.

Don’t get me wrong. We genuinely admired the beauty of the falcons, and were greatly impressed by the young scrambles-bike riders – aged from just five to sixteen.

While these on we could not operate the railway though. Trying to keep an impatient 7-1/4″ g loco from blowing off without losing the fire, for nearly an hour for each display, alongside the dogs, the falconer’s birds and fine black stallion (the trainer ran a sort of animal double act) and clouds of flying dust from the bike wheels, takes some doing.

Not only that but the motocyclists’ adult trainers and supervisors used our railway land to store their jump-ramps clear of the arena while the act was under way. One part they omitted in view of the drought and grass-fire risk, was the fire-column jumps. They erected the ramp and ran the jumps but did not light the torches.

The displays bill was even more intense today (Sunday), to such an extent we decided around mid-day to stop running, and let the engine cool down. I think I was about to set off with what turned out to be the last train with a few young childen on board, when The Tigers roared into dust-filled action a few feet to our left, and the call came to stop. Obviously we refunded the fares; but when we learnt the rest of the day’s events we realised we’d be left with barely half an hour’s running.

There were no programmes, so we could not know what was happening other than by the public-address announcements.

 

To their credit the organisers did realise their mistake, in discussing it with us. Also, perhaps due to the heat, the whole event suffered from rather low attendance. Perhaps everyone had gone to the seaside.

+++

 

The other arena?

That was for what little live steam there was on site; and a rather unexpected display of heavy-vehicle recovery, using two HGV rescue lorries and a scrap refuse-lorry. The breakdown cranes laid this vehicle gently on its side then showed righting it in controlled fashion, using the cranes in opposition. The commentator was at pains to explain the dust-cart was clean, with no fluids in it- the engine had been removed, the hydraulics drained.

 

Live Steam?

Very little.

Full-size was two rollers, one a Fowler named “Fippeny Queen”, and a Marshall traction-engine christened “Hadyn [sp?] Princess”. I cite those because they have been regulars Dorset engines on the rally scene for decades.

The Marshall spent the weekend belted to a rack-saw bench. Fippeny towed a farm trailer around, giving public rides.

Miniatures:  I counted just three miniature traction-engines, of 4-inch scale I estimate, and our “Wren” class locomotive.

The show-ground geographically was not kind to anything with small wheels and exposed motion as it was a mown hay-meadow presenting hard, dry grass tufts in very rough, deeply dusty, sun-baked soil. Even driving an ordinary car across it was unpleasant.

 

All in all, the show was interesting for vintage vehicle enthusiasts generally; and the funfair and arena displays catered well for families; but we half-dozen club members spent more time trying to sit in the shade than doing any train-driving. I don’t think we carried more than about twenty or thirty passengers in the whole two days.

At least there was plenty of catering on site, and the plastic “building-site” toilets were kept very clean and in good order.

 

 

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Received a circular from the Society Chairman to all members…..

That due to the drought conditions, there will be no live-steam running on our site, of locomotives or traction-engines until further notice.

The road steam tends to stay on the car-parks but there is always the hazard of a blown ember or two. The ground-level track poses a much more serious danger as it runs past a lot of vegetation including trees with dry leaves and pine-needles.

 

I wonder if other clubs have similarly “quarantined” their engines, or been asked to do by site-owners.

 

Meanwheil, slowly getting back into my own engineering after a lot of work for the club, I dare not do any welding and angle-grinding at home until the Rainy Season.

I had a go at reproduce the injector part-drawings in D.A.G. Brown’s Miniature Injectors Inside & Out; and thereby assemble them into something vaguely looking like his design.

This was an Alibre Atom exercise; and if I become tempted to try making an injector, to investigate much easier ways to fabricate the overflow passage than Mr. Brown shows.

 

These drawings are on page 38 of the book, in a chapter titled ‘Making The Bodies’.

 

I take my grease-top cap off to anyone who can make reliable injectors to his design – a challenge on a par with making 18C-style carriage-clocks.

 

First problem: the drawings in the book are so small I needed a magnifying-glass.

Then, binary-fractions of inches, necessitating continual conversions.

Two of the spouts are radiused to the bore through the cylindrical body; the third to fit its exterior. The drawings do not locate the radii centres, so I had to deduce their geometrical construction.

So far so good, sort of.

The valve chamber’s overflow port is a horrible, a tiny “oval” slot of umpteen-twiddlieths-inch centres, according to the poorly-dimensioned drawing smaller than full-size. I cannot model rectangles with semicircular ends in CAD properly, nor make real ones neatly, so drew a nice circular hole instead.

Now I had four Part files: Body, Water Inlet, Valve Chamber, Overflow Boss. I’d omitted the threads.

Tried to Assemble them…. Ah well, I tried.

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