Thought i'd do a little update, not a huge amount has been achieved with life being so busy and still really suffering with long covid so not done any more track laying to speak of just stuff in the garage.
Finished the wagon i posted about, added suspension which works really well, think they're about 100mm die springs, my back of an envelope calculations about spring rate seemed to be about right which i'm quite surprised about but it works well, you need a bit of 'sag' in the springs so the axels can move to take up any vertical movement in the track. Seem to be getting my eye in with my Arc welder now as i've done all of the hopper wagon, the new red one and now 2 sets of points.
I'll let the pictures do most of the talking, suspension:
The bits of my welding i'm willing to show off..
finished (bar painting) wagon, the top section is removable and just lifts off to leave you with a flat wagon.
Bought this around Christmas time, I've been fancying one for ages and this came up on Facebook marketplace, it looked in a right old state and didn't turn on which is how i got it cheap but after a bit of messing around it works really well.
For clarity it's a Clarke ML500 combined Lathe and milling machine, they're very much on the lower end of lathes and the milling it can do is quite limited but it should enable me to do what i want to do.
And this is one of the jobs i wanted it for, making points
I've used the milling head to create the 'blades' of the points as you can see here, they need to be tapered to guide the wheels. As the flanges are only 6mm on the wheels i'm using i've only gone down 10mm as it makes it easier to mill and quicker to do.
This is the finished product, they're a very tight radius as in a very sharp curve but taken slowly they work fine for the garage.
As i'd got my eye in i did another set straight after for out in the garden with a bigger radius, the first set took me a couple of months of doing them on and off, the 2nd took me about a week and a half of doing an hour every other night.
Next job is to start on my new loco powered by my Lister stationary engine, here i'm turning the axles down. They need to be 25mm at the ends of the bearings then 1" for the wheels then 28mm in the middle for the sprockets so that was a really enjoyable task learning how to do that on the lathe.
then i bored out some 8mm steel to 25mm, they'll be welded onto the axles and drilled and tapped to hold brake disks.
I got some 50x100 steel channel again off Facebook marketplace for a good price so cut that up to mock up the frame, it'll be 1300x600 with a 500mm wheelbase.
Need to machine the 2nd axel next and then drill the frames for the horns which hold the take up bearings before i can weld it all up.
Scored a 2nd Eaton 7 hydrostatic unit the other day too so if i have enough steel channel left i may make another loco after this one to sell on as that should hopefully fund both with some change left over.
The grass has taken nicely where i'd laid it and turfed over it too
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