Friday, August 07, 2009

Fag paper clearances


Cylinder backs
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker
You don't get a lot of space between the back of the cross heads and the front of the leading crank pin on this Garratt locomotive. In fact unless you do some serious fiddling, the clearance is nil or less than nil - the crank will wallop the bars as it tries, unsuccessfully, to rotate.

On one end a combination of things (error probably, but fortuitous ones) allowed me to cheap and fit the slide bars to the outside edge of the cylinder face. This bought me enough space - just.

On the other end this ploy wasn't going to work so off came the cylinder ends courtesy of the RSU. The holes were elongated towards the outside edges and the spigots thinned down on one side. This bought me about 1.5mm on each side, enough for the wheels to rotate freely. Wish I'd thought of this before I put the thing together first though !

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