More Band Brake & Shutters

Progress is being made on a number of fronts at the moment and it is reassuring that not only are jobs being started but they are also being finished.

This is the actuating crank for the band brake after some fettling by Mr Bishop:

The new pin on the clevis end (shown fitted in the above photograph) is held captive in the crank by what the drawings refer to as ‘a feather’:

Milling out the slot for the 3/16” feather:

This is the feathered pin in the hole:

The completed assembly:

The band brake assembly has now been fitted to the layshaft, alongside a reminder of how things looked at the start of the project.
The chain is new, the hanger from the rear bracket has been replaced, all of the other components are original.

Elsewhere Clive Bickley has finished transforming our begged stock of teak into a beautiful pair of shutters for the cab:

These contain no original parts, the originals only lasted 6 months as they were removed when the cab was cut down to allow it to run on the Ffestiniog.

They are going straight to the finished parts store; we are a little way off cab re-assembly!

Making a Start

This is almost literally a side project. In 1927 a starter motor man enough to turn over a 60HP Diesel did not exist. Kerr Stuart claim to have solved this problem by fitting a petrol donkey engine. It is a strange coincidence that the solution they arrived at is the same in every detail as that offered by McLaren.

On KS4415 the donkey engine is a 4HP Blackburne engine which makes a rather coy appearance in 15/- Change:

This is the same type of engine as that Rick modified to make into the vacuum pump. With the cash from the FR Society we have sent the magneto for this Blackburne engine away for overhaul, but to make progress with the engine itself we need to make a stand. The base for the stand looks like this:

Rick, cast iron, meet milling machine…Drilling to form the upper radii:

Rick, cast iron, meet milling machine…

Forming the bottom radii to clear the channel which supports the Diesel engine:

The finished product:

Another component ticked off the list.

Putting up the Shutters

Disclaimer first! No rain forests have been harmed in the restoration of this locomotive. Drawing 21372 is quite clear what material the cab louvres are made of:

Teak is a hardwood that comes from Burma. So at one level sourcing it is both politically and environmentally insensitive. Fortunately, a form of ‘carbon capture’ popular with men of a certain age is to store away nice looking bits of wood in garages with that false promise to the wife that "I’ll do something with it someday". Thirty odd years and no bookshelves later, the spectre of 4415 has lumbered over the horizon.
We don’t need a lot of teak, but we do want teak because we’re trying to get those details right.

There must be quite a lot of those unstarted bookcase projects out there, as an appeal in the Ffestiniog Railway Magazine brought in more offers than we could possibly expect. So, with materials to hand, Clive Bickley has set to and made the frames.

As Clive said in his e mail with the progress photos, that’s the easy bit done, now he has to make 42 slats and then the 84 mortise and tenon joints!

This is the finished product we are looking for.
Feel free to correspond re the above photograph. It is of 4415; yes, we are fitting the shutters and no, we are not fitting the double skinned roof.
Will we be putting 24nr ½” holes in the roof for no particular reason? Of course. I assume that the double skin roof would not go under the NWNGR bridges, as in the photos of the loco at Dinas it does not have a second skin.