Overhaul of a 9F

[don9f]

Well my missing cylinder drain casting has finally arrived! After waiting over 3 months for it, I can finally complete the work on the underside of the cylinders/frames and hopefully keep things the right way up from now on.

I wanted to fit new water gauges to the boiler, looking more scale like than the original "chunky" ones, so I ordered some 3 cock gauges but was dismayed when they arrived....they were just as chunky and not what I was hoping for at all. They will probably be used on a 5" Jinty that's waiting its turn, so what to do with the 9?

After being inspired by Roger's excellent water gauge over on his thread, I thought I'd have a go at fabricating some that looked at least a bit more like the real ones. I decided on 5mm glasses and basing the design on others that I had seen, came up with dimensions that were just about the minimum I could use for that size glass. To say the work was fiddly would be an understatement....they definitely include some of the smallest parts I have ever made, but I have enjoyed the work very much and found it most satisfying. A few bits had to be made several times to get things right and on & off, it's taken about 3 weeks to get to this stage. All that remains is to actually fit them to the boiler and adjust the lengths of the linkages for the (dummy) shutoff valves and finish the ends.

You may have seen a contribution to Roger's thread concerning injectors. I have bought an ultrasonic cleaning tank and will clean up my dismantled GC scale like BR Standard live steam injector and rebuild it with a new outlet clack valve cap, that got a bit chewed up trying to unscrew it, before applying heat that did the trick.

Cheers   Don

[92220]

Very nice work Don!! Will be interested to see it all up together.

Bob.

[don9f]

Thanks Bob, I thought I'd have a go at making these, then I can wait in the hope that one day, there will be some nice scale cast ones available.....I'm sure that they would be very popular.
I never seem to be able to get really decent photos....haven't got the right lighting for this sort of thing.
Cheers Don

[92220]

Hi Don.

I had the same problem with photos. My set-up was for scenic work. Now I have a 60mm macro lens with a circular, 'around the lens' light. Works a treat!

Bob.

Forgot to add....I don't always use the light. I often set up the camera to take the pics without the light. I up the ISO and slow the speed and focus manually.

[don9f]

 That's given me a great idea.....Fit led's all round the back of my ipad!

Thanks   Don

[don9f]

Hi, I know there hasn’t been much from me lately but over the last few weeks I’ve spent a lot of time working on the steam operated cylinder drains. In particular I wasted a lot of material before I found a reasonably successful way to make the actual valves, these being small ptfe “slugs” that I found a bit fiddly to start with.

I haven’t quite finished the pipework yet but have had the valves working off air pressure, but this was without any air in the cylinders, so don’t know if they actually seal properly or not.


I will come back to these and show photos etc. in a while but for now I wanted to do something a bit different and in eager anticipation of picking up my new tender “Timken” axlebox covers (plus other goodies) from Adam at the Midlands Exhibition, I turned my attention for the first time to the tender’s overhaul. From its build, I was always conscious of the fact that the Warnett / Spink arrangement of its axleboxes wasn’t particularly scale like, so now came the opportunity to do something about that.


I have to say that in service, as axleboxes, they were 100% reliable but some of the problems for me were that the machined boss for mounting the Timken cover was far too small, so much so that I never actually fitted any! The boxes themselves were a bit oversized in width and height and they lacked the proper shape of the real thing....which is a big heavy steel casting. The springing bore down directly on to the top of the box, instead of onto a spring pad working in the horn guides like the real thing. Checking dimensions from the drawing show that there appeared to be virtually no allowance for lateral movement of the wheelsets, which surely there ought to be for negotiating sharp curves?.....although I must admit, I never had any apparent problems, even when running on 30 foot radius curves at one ground level track I used to visit.

I turned the tender upside down for the first time in a very long time and straight away was reminded of what a real working tender looked like underneath! Things were covered in rusty muck and the brake rigging, although still operating via the handbrake, had started to tighten up and most of the pins etc. had rusted and seized a bit.

The whole thing had to be washed in White Spirits to clean all this gunge off.





When I liberated the middle wheelset, one of the wheels had lost its Loctite bond and came off its axle! I used to ride on the tender when on ground level tracks, so I suppose the axle loading was quite high (and definitely overscale!) but whether or not this or the lack of lateral movement was anything to do with it or not we’ll probably never know.

Once removed from the axle ends, first job on the axleboxes was to push the bearings out. As designed, there was no provision for doing this and I didn’t have any sort of extractor, so given that the bearings were only a light push fit into the gunmetal boxes, I drilled a couple of holes in the front, to be able to insert pins and push on the inner race. New bearings will be going in and the newly drilled holes will be covered up by the new Timken covers.




In order to achieve a more scale like appearance on the front of the axleboxes, I needed to add a bit more material….amounting to approx. 0.140 inch thickness. These additional gunmetal pieces had a well radiused central hole, enabling them to fit over the original undersized bosses and were silver soldered in place. By good fortune I had some old full size scrap fusible plugs, the square heads of which were ideal for making these add-on pieces.








Once an “add-on” piece was brought to the right size to match the existing box, the upper half was partly machined away on the rotary table, leaving a new “half boss” of the correct diameter to match the new covers, with a well defined root radius. The external radii around the edges of the box were done with emery wheels in a Dremel tool, files and eyeball engineering!








The spring pads were machined out of a piece of mild steel bar and individually fitted to their respective horn guides. This model has dummy solid gunmetal leaf springs with coil springs and pins working inside the buckle….I will have to shorten the pins slightly and play with the springs when the tender is back on its wheels and loaded, to get the axleboxes to ride at the correct vertical position in the guides, as these spring pads have altered the sit of the boxes.


I have yet to think about providing for lateral movement of the wheelsets, but that can easily be achieved by modifying the axle slightly. On the real thing, because the boxes are only restrained by the horn guides at the back (inside the frames) with a bit of clearance, they can move a bit laterally under the spring pads, which are constrained by both inside and outside faces of the horn guides, to stay in place under the spring buckle and keep the spring in the right place, whilst the boxes move about underneath….if that makes sense.


Overall I think the result is well worth the effort, especially with Adam’s beautiful scale Timken covers and will really enhance the appearance of the tender…..whether anyone will notice though is another thing!




The covers are held in place by 1.2mm studs and nuts, these being just the right hex size to represent half inch Whitworth. Once some other fine detail is added, I’ll have to get in painting mode and decide whether to finish them in plain black, or paint the covers yellow with the red stripe? Haven’t made up my mind yet.


Cheers Don

[Cro]

Don,

These look great, really smart job and with a little bit of effort on the other details it really transforms the look. Must admit I can't take credit on the Timken covers, these are something Mike (in New Zealand who does the castings, also a member on here) designed these ones so they are his great work.

Keep the updates coming, lovely to see the rebuild progressing.

Adam

[don9f]

Hi Adam, thanks for that....now you’ve mentioned it, I think I remember you saying the covers were Mike’s work, once before. I do look back over previous postings in the various threads from time to time, but of course most of the photos are no longer visible due to the PB debacle!
So thanks to Mike and yourself I’ve now got 4 good looking axleboxes but 2 still in progress, hopefully to be completed as soon as I’ve finished helping a farmer friend assemble a rather complicated sheep tunnel affair.
Cheers Don

[92220]

Hi Don.

You were asking about lateral movement for the tender axleboxes. I had the same problem so had a word with Doug Hewson as he has made a Brit with a B1G tender. He recommended having the first and third axles with no lateral movement, and the middle axle with 1/8" total movement. I didn't like the 1/8" movement on the scale middle axleboxes, so plumped for a total movement of 1/16" on the middle axle and 1/32" total on the first and third axles. I allowed the axleboxes to make the lateral movement in the guides, not the axles in the axleboxes. I adjusted the lengths of the axles to give the movement because they are locked into the boxes by the bearings. I don't think I sent you a copy of my axle drawing because I assumed your axles would be different. I'll email you a copy so that you can compare the lengths with your tender axles. That should help you work out the lengths of your axles to get the required side play. I have to admit that I made up the axleboxes and measured their back to back dimensions before finishing my axles because I wasn't too confident the theoretical dimensions would exactly match the actual dims. Hope that helps.

Bob.

p.s. Those boxes have come out great!

[don9f]

Bob, thanks for your reply here, plus the PM’s and info you have kindly supplied. I think your suggestion of a bit of play on each axle (2x 1/32 + 1x 1/16) is spot on and is what I’ll do on mine.....I have checked the drawings for the Warnett tender (dated May 1982) and can confirm that if the spacing between the frames is as it states 6 5/32 inches, then theoretically there is no lateral play at all! This is how mine is at the moment, but some builders may have increased this dimension a bit, to take account of 3mm steel frames, not the 1/8 inch that the drawings call for. Because the axleboxes don’t bear against the outside of the hornguides, at the time I didn’t see that it mattered, so left it at 6 5/32.

My recollections of 92214’s tender (BR1G) are that whatever lateral play there was, it was the same on each axle, making the wheelbase quite flexible.
There was an occasion once at a certain roundhouse that we visited in 2004, where the loco was stored in a particular modern building prior to its return to base and had to negotiate a set of points that seemed to have been assembled from mismatched bits and had a very sharp curve towards the toe ends of the switch blades.....the tender went through ok but the engine derailed. Looking back now, that was probably inevitable!

Cheers Don

[don9f]

Hi, I was inspired by Bob's (92220) drawhooks & couplings which were described in his thread back in September and obtained some EN24T at the Midlands Show, to be able to have a go at a new tender drawhook myself. The original  is a Doug Hewson one from way back and served well during the years the loco was in regular use....however it somehow got bent whilst in storage and in view of the fact that any future running will be on a raised track, I thought it would be wise to replace it.

Bob kindly made available to me his CAD drawings of the hook, which is a scale representation of the real thing. The drawings give copious detail and made the machining of the relatively complicated shape of the actual hook quite straightforward....real ones would of course be made from forgings. A couple of the photos show my own idea for adjusting the centres of the various different radii for machining, relative to the centre of the rotary table. I don't have any sort of CNC or DRO gear....all done by calculations and reading dials etc.
 
So far I have finished the machining of the profile, but it remains to finish the thread and create the tapered shape of the front part of the hook, plus round off all the edges and get rid of machining marks. The 3rd photo makes these look awful but its not that bad really and it should all polish out eventually. The same photo shows the original Doug Hewson one for comparison, which is actually very similar in shape but slightly lacking in strength at the thread. It is also quite soft, as I managed to straighten the bent shank quite easily.

Cheers for now   Don

[don9f]

Spent a few hours today finishing the hook. The drawing shows various angles of different parts of the hook, but you can’t beat a bit of eyeball engineering, which involved a bit of grinding, filing, emerying and polishing! The fabrication behind the rear buffer beam etc. of my tender isn’t to scale, so the hook doesn’t need to be as long as the drawing shows which is why it appears short. I made the thread M5 and the nut from silver steel....a tightish fit on the thread, also to be pinned in place on assembly. 
 
Now I’ll make a new drawbar for coupling to the club’s riding cars, plus fettle the dummy screw coupling. Incidentally, our club requires a secondary coupling arrangement between loco and train, a safeguard against runaways!

Cheers   Don

[don9f]

Hi, over Christmas I’ve managed to spend a few hours on the overhaul / upgrade so here is the final update for 2017:-

I might have mentioned before that I wanted to finally fit the sanding gear that I have had for some considerable time....the sand ejectors and their outlet pipes are from Doug Hewson, actually bought from him when I used to live near him. In the set are also the sand traps that fit directly below the sandboxes on a 9F, but as they are just about invisible from outside, I haven’t bothered with these.

I made six little brackets from some thin stainless sheet (for strength) and drilled mounting holes in the underside of the relevant spring hanger brackets. Real engines had an adjustable bracket arrangement but to me, that would be a step too far!

Some 1/8 copper pipe is about right for the sand pipes between the traps and the ejectors and some copper wire from 1mm twin & earth lighting cable was good for the steam pipes (1/2 inch on the real thing). The dummy steam pipes were only made made long enough for that part visible near the wheels etc.

Some patient trial & error bending produced the six assemblies.....the upper ends of the 1/8 pipes were flattened and drilled, to be able to secure them to a convenient cross stretcher near where the sandbox traps would be and the dummy steam pipes were bound and soft soldered into place. I had to remove some of the rear brake pull rods whilst fitting these.





Just like the real thing, the collection of pipes are very close to the brake crossbeams and are obviously very vulnerable to damage in any derailments or rough handling.



In this final picture are also visible some of the grease “blocks” (thanks to Adam) which I’ve just recently fitted and were for greasing the horn guide faces, plus the front brake shaft bearings....hence eleven each side on this part of the frames.



That’s probably it for this year, so wishing everyone Happy New Year and we’ll carry on in 2018!

Cheers Don

[92220]

Hi Don.

They look really great!

Bob.

[don9f]

Thanks Bob, I’m very pleased with how they’ve turned out....to get to this stage has taken many hours of fiddly but again, rewarding work, which I started weeks ago. Since I took the photos, I have cleaned & finished painting the sand pipes, which would have been steel, leaving the ejectors and steam pipes in their natural state, to tarnish with time.
These sanders are the last of the upgrades I’m making to the frames, so next year should see a return to boiler/ashpan refurbishment.

Cheers Don

[don9f]

Hi, another detail I never incorporated when I built my 9F were the small access doors to the ash pan.....roughly under each of the 4 corners of the foundation ring. These greatly assisted with clearing of the relatively shallow slope of the upper parts of the ash pan that were outside the frames.

Photos of newly built early 9Fs show that these were not originally fitted, indeed one of my reference books has a good photo of a completed ash pan, ready to be fitted to one of the Crosti boliered engines (in 1955) that hasn’t got them, but as time passed they were retro fitted to the earlier engines and provided from new on later ones (don’t know any details/dates etc). My own, numbered 92167 of 1958, had them from new, so I ought to fit them whilst I’ve got the ash pan on the bench!

Having no current easy access to a 9F, I wondered if anyone had any drawings of these doors, or knowledge from a real engine, who could give me the general dimensions of the doors and their lateral position relative to the lower, outer edge of the firebox cladding?

I have a few photos showing their longitudinal position but none detailed enough to dimension off.

Thanks for any help with this....if not, then I’ll have to make a trip to Loughborough!

Cheers Don

[92220]

Hi Don.

I'll have a look through my drawings. It may take a time as I have to try and work out what the name of the drawing would probably be. I will also look through the various assembly drawings to see if the doors are referred to and their number quoted. If I haven't got it, then the chances are that it is just not available.

Bob.

[Cro]

Don,

I'll also have a look as I was given a whole load of stuff recently thats fairly well documented but more than likely Bob will have something if its around!

I have a load of photos of the 9f at the Bluebell as its one details I want to add at some stage, I will email you some later on today if I remember when in the workshop.

Adam

[Cro]

You both have an email!

Adam

[92220]

Hi Don.

Any suggestions as to what the doors might be called? What exactly do they do? I've had a look at the obvious drawings, like the boiler arrangement and the firebox arrangement, but they don't have those doors on them. I'll keep looking though.

Bob.