Elmham Market in EM

Dave

Many thanks for your advice, and in particular for the help you gave me via a separate message; all much appreciated and it shows the value of a good forum such as this.

As a result of the advice, my current thinking is to lengthen the radius rod. It does seem to be the correct length already (if a trifle long, based on Dave’s measurements) and I think the slots that were milled into the frames to accept the motion bracket were cut in the wrong place. However, if I try to cut another pair of slots a couple of mm in front of the current set, I think I am likely to end up with a massive gouge in the frames and no real meat to hold the brackets in with. I might turn my attention to something else for a bit, to clear my head, then devise a way of stretching the radius rods.

Cheers

Nigel

I have been a bit distracted from the Ivatt recently. Last weekend a group of us worked on line side clearance on the Ffestiniog Railway (good fun and a good work out as well). The photo shows several of us removing trees that have the capability of bringing down the telegraph wires for the ETS system.



On my return I have been catching up on ‘stuff’ so it’s only this weekend that I have been able to turn my mind to the valve gear. At this point I must record my thanks to @Dave Holt and @dibateg for their help, advice and also etchings to get me through this stage. In the end I concluded that the principal issue was the slot in the frames to hold the motion bracket was in the wrong place (a point confirmed by Tony) so the logical thing to do was a bit of open heart surgery on the frames, which I did with my piercing saw.



Having moved the motion bracket forwards towards the cylinders things seemed to fall in place much better (unsurprisingly really I guess!). Reading the instructions carefully, there still didn’t seem to be any valve spindle or arrangement for holding the front end of the radius rod/top of combination lever in place so I have fudged that by cutting off the top of the combination lever and holding the spindle hole in place with a piece of 0.8mm brass wire. I will need to do the same for the front of the radius rod but can’t until I am sure of the location of the hole I need to drill for the wire (as the cylinders and motion bracket aren’t soldered in place yet). I have managed a trial assembly of the right hand valve gear and it seems to work OK. I’ll take the left hand assembly to the same stage then solder up the motion bracket and cylinders, keeping my fingers (metaphorically!) firmly crossed. The trial assembly of the right hand valve gear is in the photo below.

Nigel

Some more progress this evening. The driver’s side valve gear has been brought up to the same stage as the fireman’s. The cylinders have been tacked onto the smokebox saddle casting and the whole shebang trial assembled. There are one or two places where a bit more filing is needed to get a free running set of motion but I think it is progress.

Nigel

Nigel.
If it's not a silly question, what's that vertical bit attached to the back of the LHS cross head?
Dave.