Thetford Works (Cornwall)

It's a big help having a brake man when driving a DCC, John's on the wheel here.



Here's me checking the fire & Malcolm & Ruth having lunch

Wow Steve,just read through all eleven pages of this thread and I'm in total awe of your skills and comitment to these engines, hopefully soon to embark on a road loco build,and knowing I shall run into problems and frustrations, I will re read your thread and other stw builders who have taken the time and effort to document their builds to pull me through.
Terrific inspiration!!
Marek

Thanks for that, I'm glad I did it, it's very satisfying seeing the engine gradually take shape, I'm having a final steam up tomorrow with a run around my village before it's drained down for the winter period. Then it'll have a deepish clean, wheels off, nooks & crannies cleaned & polished. I want to do little mod on the doors, if the top nut gets slightly slack the levers come off the doors which is a fiddle to get back on. On the Aggi there are split pins/R clips holding them on, not with the RL. My task is to either thread the end of the stud to fit a pan head bolt on to stop the bars coming off or extend the stud so an R clip will fit. That's what I like about this hobby, there's always ways to make the engine unique to you!.

Had a nice run down to the beach for an ice-cream, came up Tregea Hill slowly but steadily.  Nice day out
On the sea front at Portreath

Heading back up the hill to Illogan, good view of Gull Rock

Trundling along nicely.

Back home for winterisation.

Had a problem with the fusible plug, went to take it out and being very stiff the brass thread was left in the boiler.  Tim lent me his tap to clean the thread but I wanted good access to make sure it went in cleanly & didn't cut a new thread!  Fortunately the old Landrover came to the rescue and I was able to crawl under the engine, clean the thread with a bent spike & a pipe brush then run the tap up with some oil.  All good now so hope it doesn't happen again!  I have a lot of faith in plasma rope even so I did put a secondary strop around the engine before I crawled under it.
The plug had been in there since I first assembled the engine so in future it's coming out every year.  It's definately worth checking as although it hadn't dropped there was some wastage on the outside so it had come close to dropping.  Cornwall is very hilly as are most Rally sites, driving around it's either all or nothing in the gauge glass!

Some of the more observant readers will see I've had the back tarmaced. Makes life easier pushing the engine away after a rally & no more weeds!

Steve Traill wrote:Some of the more observant readers will see I've had the back tarmaced.  Makes life easier pushing the engine away after a rally & no more weeds!

But a complete nightmare when you have that "little accident" during an oil change on a vehicle not that I've ever had that happen at all thank the lord for pea shingle
But I know what you mean, our drive is all pea shingle and as much as I would love to tamac the lot, I feel the advantages of being able to push the engine about are out weighed by the fact its almost impossible to walk over it with out going scrunch scrunch (added bit of security) the complete in-ability to move any vehicle in 3-4" of pea shingle be it a trailer, caravan or car without actually using power (again further security, you can see a trend here ) and lastly any "little accidents" are easily covered up
OK the engines a bit of a handful on it and needs palming on the flywheel to move it anywhere if not under steam and I also have to get off it when under steam or it just bogs down but I can live with that.

The front drive is still gravel, it's just around the back is now tarmac. I know what you mean though about gravel being self cleaning (eventually)

I agree with the pea shingle argument and it looks nicer in my opinion.

If you use grid force under the gravel it is very easy to drive and push and engine around on.

Its like a corrugated plastic grid that you lay down on hardcore and then poor your finish stone into.

http://www.gridforce.co.uk/

stops the stones from moving around and allows then to compact down into a solid surface.

Steve Traill wrote:
I know what you mean though about gravel being self cleaning (eventually)

Depends how bigger "accident" happens

sonick45 wrote:I agree with the pea shingle argument and it looks nicer in my opinion.

If you use grid force under the gravel it is very easy to drive and push and engine around on.

Its like a corrugated plastic grid that you lay down on hardcore and then poor your finish stone into.

http://www.gridforce.co.uk/

stops the stones from moving around and allows then to compact down into a solid surface.

I've wondered about this stuff on the lawn area that we regularly drive on or park cars etc as it can get rather boggy during the winter, not sure I'd want it on the gravel as I can see it being a lot harder to cover up errrrrr those little "accidents"

This stuff is excellent with gravel. As for those accidents, you just scoop out where the mess is and back fill with new or washed stones.

Its great at keeping the driveway where you want it rather than it spreading out due to weight of vehicle. So long as the sub base is prepared well you can drive a tank over it and it wont budge.

I have friends who have it and I intend to use in down my garden path to my engine shed and use it outside the shed also.

One little problem I've had a couple of times as had Tim is the fire doors can disengage from the opening bars. It only takes a half turn of slack on the nut holding the door opening lever for the whole thing to be slack and the bar drops off the pin in the centre of the door. On the agricultural engine there is a split pin/ R clip & washer but not with the RL/Showmans. To overcome this I drilled and tapped a M3 thread down the centre of the stud, then with a 10mm M3 SS bolt and washer it has a physical restraint against slipping off.
I was going to show some pics but the box with that facility seems to have disappeared?!

What is happening to photos now, some I posted before have turned into links to rubbish adverts!!!!

All box options are available to me.

Strange! first time I've not had the tool bar at the top?

Still no tool bar so no more pics I'm afraid. Dean has tried his best but it seems Cornwall can't send pics now to the forum. Also my iPhone won't log in any more so whether its a 'Mac' thing I don't know.

Over & out
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I seem to have a tool bar, but these days use the Tinypics app for loading images - I find it simple to use.

Herewith Steve's pictures

Tapping


Reinforced handle


End result: no more losing the handle from the door.

I did a similar exercise on Frederick, but just drilled and tapped for an Allen bolt. The head extends the spigot sufficient to stop the pivoting arm from coming off. Easy to remove if you want to get the doors off.

Tim

Thanks for putting those pics up, I've identified the problem in that if I use a PC the tool bar is there but not with a Mac. Also my iPhone won't log in to the forum. These problems have only recently become apparent. I suspect that the people that run the forum have done an update which has screwed with the system. Hopefully someone will tell them so it can be sorted.

Steve Traill wrote:............. I've identified the problem in that if I use a PC the tool bar is there but not with a Mac.  Also my iPhone won't log in to the forum.  These problems have only recently become apparent.  I suspect that the people that run the forum have done an update which has screwed with the system.  Hopefully someone will tell them so it can be sorted.

More like the fruit based product has been updated causing the issue rather than any update here, I dont think the forums softwares been touched for some time, this version of phpBB 3.0 'Olympus' goes back to 2005, although 3.0 support looks to end last year for it ?

There is one thing which could be causing problems is the new https feature which "apparently" means its more secure but means features need to be called on via https more info here http://help.forumotion.com/t150283-information-about-new-secure-connection-protocol-standards

Dunno if that helps or not ??

Hi,

Had the same issue some time ago, too. On my Mac it worked, but neither on the iPhone nor iPad. Could not login anymore / noticed also that the time was off by several hours. Tried different things but in the end I was able to get back on track by deleting the cache of the browser. Seems like that did the trick.

Cheers

Elwood

Thanks, but what is the cache?

Hi Steve,
Usually browsers use a part of memory to temporarily store data to speed up work, like going back to former page in the browser, so no need to reload the page via internet again but just reload from memory. It seems (at least that was my problem I think) that the browser kept going back to the locally stored file (in the  "cache") instead of reloading when requested. So file still was the old (means erroneous) one instead of the correct one after some update.

Usually you find the cache under properties or settings, look for something like "clear cache", that did the trick from me.

And before anybody starts yelling and shouting due to my (surely partly inaccurate) explanation above, I am not a IT specialist, only a user  

Hope that helps.

Elwood

The web page has an incorrect "Time To Live" setting. So your local machine does not refresh when it should.

Apple products.

Press Settings > Safari.
Scroll down and tap Clear History and Website Data.
Tap Clear History and Data.

Hi Lynn
Thanks for that, the iPhone is back to normal and I even have a tool bar back for posting pictures! Can't seem to find the same sequence on the Mac, the symbol for settings on the phone is similar to the mac but the menu that comes up is different, any guidance on that gratefully received!

The only MAC I know is the HGV version

Lynn, Steve,

Let me try to jump in:
In Safari go to setings - in the pop-up open extended or enhanced (sorry my menu is set in German, but should read quite similar) - anyways it is  the rightmost dropdown, at the bottom of the pop-up window click on "show developer menu", then a new menue appears at the top menue row "developer", in which you should be able to erase cache and history. Should do the trick.

Hope that helps.

Elwood