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| HR Yankee Tank slide-bars and cross head detail
Progress on my Yankee Tank has not been rapid hence the dearth of recent Blog postings, I've waited to post some photos until I had something that looked like an engine rather than post a picture of a messy desktop. This is really a scratch building project rather than a kit building one, I've abandoned the etchings supplied in the kit altogether. It is some small source of consolation that there are some good castings with the kit that I can use. The slide-bars and cross-heads shown above are the nearest I could find for the engine, they are from Laurie Griffin's range ref: 10-11 ; they needed a good deal of modification to look anything like those of a Yankee Tank and even more modification to work properly. There are no driving wheels on the market that exactly suit the Yankee Tank, the nearest I could find were dimensionally correct though the oversize throw of the cranks resulted in the cross-head fouling the front and rear mounts. I had to reduce the width of the cross-head and modify the piston rod before the assembly ran freely.
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| HR Yankee Tank chassis |
The inside motion I fitted is designed for Martin Finney's Adams Radial Tank and fits the Yankee Tank without modification. The connecting rods and coupling rods were made from my own patterns by Malcolm Wright of Wrightscale. they need detailing. The connecting rods of a Yankee Tank are inside the coupling rods which doesn't leave much space for the rear bogie wheels to move when cornering, I have not addressed this problem yet. The chassis seems to run smoothly without binding under finger power; putting the motor gearbox in place and adding the pick-ups is the next step.
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| Safety Valves modified. |
The safety valve castings supplied in the Lochgorm kit looked very nice on first examination but when I matched them to the drawing to my annoyance I found they were oversize. I cut the base in half, removed a slice of metal and soldered it back together. The resulting shape was then filed to shape. A new lever had to be made too which slotted into the spring casting, the lever protrudes into the cab through a slot in the cab front plate and still needs a little more refining to look right.
This is my second HR fish wagon, I completed it recently as light relief from the Yankee Tank project. There are only a few additions and improvements needed to the Lochgorm kit to build a good scale model of a Jones d.12 fish wagon. It's a good addition to my on-going Highland Railway train which now numbers four wagons, two coaches and a choice of either of two goods brake vans or a passenger brake van.
I hear that Andy Copp at Lochgorm Kits is releasing a kit in September of a HR open goods wagon which will build several variants...I'll have one of those Andy!
I returned briefly to a project that has stalled at the moment for lack of an engine. This is my LNWR 1800gall. tender which is still sitting in a siding in my studio looking forlorn. I found some little padlocks on Martin Finney's website and added them to the tool boxes as a finishing touch.
