BAT

THIS IS WHAT IT WILL LOOK LIKE, HOPEFULLY!

BAT is the name LBSC gave to the meths fired 'O' gauge schools class locomotive he designed for use indoors during the blackouts! Crazy or what, just imagine the health and safety brigade with that! Anyway, I managed to pick up a bag of unmolested wheel castings some time ago and found some just the right size for this locomotive. Oh well another project then!

PART MACHINED WHEELS

The wheels here are part machined and slightly less on the diameter than the drawings required but I don't think it will matter much. You can see that I still need to drill the crank pin holes, but I need to make a jig first.

WHEEL AND PART MADE CYLINDER

The wheels have now been jig drilled ready for the crank pins and is shown together with a part built cylinder I have made. I didn't have a small enough milling cutter to mill the ports so made do with drilling and gently chipping out the unwanted material. Seems to have worked reasonably well.

ECCENTRICS

The design uses slip eccentric valve gear and here are the finished items ready for fitting.

TRIAL ASSEMBLY

This is what it should look like when assembled for keeps although I have yet to fit the crank pins and axle boxes.

 3/8 VITON 'O' RING

I bought the 'O' rings today from MACC MODELS ready for installing on the piston assembly.

NEARLY THERE

Both cylinders are now complete with valves, steam chests and covers. Just a little more work and they will be finished ready for mounting onto the frames.

TRIAL FIT

I was now at the point of needing the frames so placed an order with Blackgates Model Engineering. A couple of hours later and I had a set of frames to play with.I now need to make the bearings, buffer beams and frame stretchers.

FRAMES

I have been busy and managed to assemble the frames, I had a small issue as the metal turned out to be 1.5mm rather than a 1/16th which meant I couldn't use my newly purchased 1/16 slitting saw for the slot in the buffer. There is a deviation to the plans in that I just turned plain round bearings that will be held in place by keeps rather than make the fully sprung axle boxes.

FINISHED BOGIE

Another order, this time to WALSALL for bogie wheel castings. A few hours machining and filing and this is the result. I opted to give the frames a coat of paint before pressing the wheels on to make final painting easier.

START OF BOILER

A quick rummage in the scrap box produced enough copper tube for the boiler shell. I am going to make this a single flue gas boiler rather than a meths version.

COMPLETED BOILER

I didn't take any pictures of the build, but here is the boiler complete and ready for testing.

CHASSIS SO FAR

Now sold to fund other projects.