Inside motion lubrication

[fostergp6nhp]

What have other builders come up with as the way of getting oil to the inside motion? only its all hidden so the only way i can currently see to oil the works is as full size from underneath which is not much good for ground level use.

[pault]

Hi
Some years ago I rebuilt a 7 ¼” Battle of Britain with inside Walschaerts valve gear and had the same issue, how to oil it easily. Below is part of the write up i gave the loco owner.
Because of problems with access to the valve gear it was desirable to make it possible to lubricate everything from outside the frames. This has resulted in a number of new lubricating points.
A drip feed lubricator mounted on the valve gear sub frame lubricates the eccentrics. This is filled from a ball type lubricating point at the top of the main frame just in front of the right hand, middle, driving wheel.
Both of the rocking arms have a ball type lubricating point approximately ¾” above the valve spindle link pin. These feed oil up the arm and along the rocker shaft to a drilling which allows the oil to emerge into the void between the rocker shaft bushes. A vent hole is provided in the top of the bearing housing to allow the air out and to indicate when the void is full of oil.
The valve plungers, combination lever, expansion link trunions, and die blocks are all lubricated by the rear mechanical lubricator, located under the front of the smoke box.
This is of the two-pump type and shares its drive with the cylinder lubricator mounted in front of it. The drive for the lubricators is taken from an extended pin at the bottom end of the left-hand combination lever. The movement of the bottom combination lever pin is 40mm, which is excessive for driving the lubricator. A lever mounted inside the frames just behind the left-hand cylinder decreases this motion.
One pump feeds oil into the bottom of the valve plunger frame stretcher. The oil then fills the voids between the plunger bushes via a drilling which connects both of the voids. At outer end of each bush is an oil seal which prevents oil leakage. A small slot in each bush prevents any build up of pressure between the seal and bush. Since the oil cannot escape from the ends of the bushes it fills the voids completely and the escapes via two vent pipes. These are positioned to allow the oil to drip onto the combination lever, lubricating it.
The second pump feeds oil to a manifold mounted below the expansion links. The manifold is designed so that the oil feed pipes take their oil from the middle of the manifold. This leaves an air gap at the top of the manifold, preventing hydraulic locking of the system. The manifold is connected by pipes to the bottom of each expansion link trunion bearing. Holes in each trunion line up with the oil feed hole in the bearing twice during each revolution of the driving wheel. The holes are arranged so that only one hole will be aligned at any one time. The holes lead to drillings which allow the oil to run down the inside of the expansion link and lubricate the die blocks.
Hope this makes sense
Regards
Paul

[brozier]

The low-tech solution is to run small pipes from either scale dummy sand boxes or dummy lubricator pumps on the running boards to the various parts of the motion. Fill the boxes with oil and gravity does the rest

Hinged lids prevent the dirt ingress....

Best regards
Bryan

[fostergp6nhp]

I had already thought of using the Doug Hewson lost wax oiler trays which full size are mounted on the top of the water tanks as drip feeds for the eccentrics, but the idea of using the front sand boxes to house mechanical lubricators to supply drip feed manifolds has merits.

[Laurie_B]

Some interesting ideas.When i get that far I was thinking of locating some oil boxes in the cab as well as on the tops of the tanks.The link to the photo may be of interest.

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A5164_Kidderminster_(1).jpg

An alternative might be to adopt the late Neville Evans' ideas about using roller bearings,though there would still be pins,bushes and die blocks requiring lubrication.