Tender water taps kit 8

Hi All,
Having just unpacked kit 8 and admiring the quality of the castings I have noticed that the tender water level taps do not appear to have been drilled. Is this an oversight,is it just mine or are they not functional ?

Colin

Have you ever used the ones on your current engine? I fiddled with the ones on Madeline and cross pinned them to stop the nuts undoing: I've never used them, so being dummy is no issue by my reckoning. Not sure where to put the water indicator float, however, as the brake shaft may interfere.

Tim

You can't beat a dipstick, simple & effective, low maintenance and used on the full size engines!

HI
If its any help I put my taps one facing up and one down and connected them with a piece of clear plastic pipe between.

I have a water level gauge which can be turned on and off as required. Cost zero and no extra work.

Just checked my taps , same as yours no way through.

Mike

The level taps on the side of the tender are meant to be decorative only. We did start off with making them functional but we couldn’t prevent the solder blocking off the pipe. Therefore there was little point in putting the through hole in the tapered plug. I wasn’t particularly worried about it because there is a much better way of determining your water level. You can isolate the belly tank from the tender tank, so once your tender is empty you can open up the isolation tap and let the belly tank water fill the tender. The only problem with this approach is that the belly tank water will be quite warm which will probably affect the operation of the injector so you’ll be reliant on just the mechanical pump.

Once you’ve emptied the belly tank, you’ll know that its time to start thinking about getting fresh water supplies.

Regards

Steve

My tender taps arrived on Christmas Eve as a separate delivery. Look a bit like horse's willies. I think I'll need to do something about them...

The other castings in the tender fittings kit are superb.

Tim

All I can say is you must have some rather odd looking Horses in Bucks then!!!!!

Have a good new year and lets see some Photos when you get around to some lining. Going by Madeline it should look really special from you.

Kev.

After a day in the workshop, I have modified the taps to look more like the ones on Ex Mayor. I turned off the copper pipe and exposed external screw thread, counter-bored the round valve body with a centre drill and then made a solid brass extesion with a spigot to locate in this counter-bore. This extension was annealed and then bent through ninety degress. It was then silver soldered to the valve body and the shape of the tap carved out with stones iwith a dental engine. The top of the tap handle was also modified to make it more discrete and the handle shortened by 4 mm. Finally, I ran a 5/16th 40 die and tap through the screw threads to make them work better.

Result below:
https://i.servimg.com/u/f69/14/59/25/36/photo_10.jpg

The engine I am doing will be equivalent to Edward V!!, in terms of type, but will be finished in the livery of William V. If you go through the Steam Scenes gallery of Burrell showmans, that is the best painted engine in terms of closeness to Burrell specification - although there was huge variety between showmen of course in what thay specified.

Tim

Hi Tim,
What can I say - what a superb job. but will they work ??? !!!

No, see above!
Tim

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the mail on the water taps, I then decided to have a go. I cut the copper ends off, faced the tap and centre drilled right through the valve as well with a 2mm drill.

Machined back to then put a 4mm thread on the outlet side and now making up some brass tube to fit over and bend to shape. The taps now actually work, well they don't flow air when shut off so should be ok now.

Also been busy making the rollers and pins in stainless, just the two smaller pins to go now, so no rusting problems, and looks really good.

cheers

Rick