Chris's Great Western Paddlewheel Engine

[cnr6400]

  Like that right angle attachment ! It's already coming in handy. 

[propforward]

Could you make it a bit more ornate, maybe? 

[bent]

Agree with Propforward, it needs more Goth.  Maybe some black eyeliner?   

[crueby]

 


Great, a surly engine that just says "Whatever..."

[crueby]

Like that right angle attachment ! It's already coming in handy. 

It was perfect timing. Hope it gets used more than once every 10 years...   

[kvom]

I just hope to be around in 10 years.   

[crueby]

Got the rest of the panels notched for the cross panels, next will be to drill/tap for the screws to hold them together. No ne pics, looks same as yesterday. Got another event this weekend, won't be back in the shop till Monday...

[steam guy willy]

Hi this is going to be an interesting and great build...incedently the big photo of  Brunel with the chains has now been photoshopped to remove his cigar due to anti smoking laws in the UK >????!!!!

cheers
willy

[samc88]

Lovely start Chris, incidentally airfix make/ made a plastic kit of the great western if you wanted a model of the ship to go with it

[crueby]

Hi this is going to be an interesting and great build...incedently the big photo of  Brunel with the chains has now been photoshopped to remove his cigar due to anti smoking laws in the UK >????!!!!

cheers
willy

Brunel would have choked on that!  In a lot of the pictures he has a satchel slung over his shoulder. Thats supposedly  where he carried his big batch of cigars! I hate the smell of tobacco,  but thats going too far. Next they'll  show diapers on Genghis Kahns horses...

[crueby]

Lovely start Chris, incidentally airfix make/ made a plastic kit of the great western if you wanted a model of the ship to go with it

I've seen that,  don't  recall if its still made or n9t, but I  don't have  the space to show it with the engine. Imagine models of the Great Western, Britain, and Eastern at the same scales as the engine models...  They'd  be sticking out the house windows!   




 

[Charles Lamont]

Looking at the panels makes me think of the draughtsman at Maudslay's. He was pleased with the symmetry of his finished drawing of the frames, but his boss took a look at it and said "Nice, but I think we are going to want another cross tie on the outside of the crankshaft. Oh, and the pattern shop needs it yesterday." The draughtsman says to himself "Well sod that for a game of soldiers, I am not redrawing this lot overnight." So he just adds in an incongruous bracket hanging off the side, and calls it done. "Sometimes I don't know why I bother."   

[crueby]

Looking at the panels makes me think of the draughtsman at Maudslay's. He was pleased with the symmetry of his finished drawing of the frames, but his boss took a look at it and said "Nice, but I think we are going to want another cross tie on the outside of the crankshaft. Oh, and the pattern shop needs it yesterday." The draughtsman says to himself "Well sod that for a game of soldiers, I am not redrawing this lot overnight." So he just adds in an incongruous bracket hanging off the side, and calls it done. "Sometimes I don't know why I bother."

There's  actually a  good reason for that bracket hanging off the back rather than having the crossbar on the main frame. The crank webs have a long throw, and if it was any closer the webs would hit the crossbar. There's  another bar down lower as well, and one up forward. 


Telling the draftsman a big change is bad enough. Imagine telling the mouldmaker to redo everything after making it all in wood!  Oh, the language!   


And then they find out its all going to be hidden inside the hull of a ship!  Not like the monster sewage pumping staions with similar  fancy frames.

 

[crueby]

Back home from the logging museum in Maine, we just held the big two day event, perfect weather, great turnout, lots of laughs!  Will be posting some pics and movies later, for now catching up on the last work on the Great Western engine from just before I went off on the trip...

The side frame panels were all notched/drilled/tapped for screws to hold them to the rear cross panels. To hold them in place, I used a couple of long bolts with nuts inside/outside of each panel, to hold them parallel to each other while drilling:

And a picture after drilling/tapping and assembling the cross panels on the two frame sets:

I still need to make the cross rods to hold the two frame sets together, which will lock in the one wider panel between the pairs at the back:

Looking pretty cool!  They will get a coat of dark green paint at some point...

[crueby]

And as promised, some pics/videos from the event this weekend at the Maine Forest And Logging Museum just north of Bangor Maine.
First, a video of the Lombard Log Hauler trundling by with our chief engineer John at the wheel and Mark at the throttle
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4VRy9zd1-g" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4VRy9zd1-g</a>
and a shot of me in my happy place!

Early in the day, the machinery barn has LOTS of fun toys ready to go:
A few gas engined Lombard trucks


A pair of steam powered Lombards

and a Cletrac tractor

A Ford BB truck from 1930 (or was it 32?)

a Ford Model T on tracks (skis are off of it for the summer)


the line shaft machine shop



some excellent magazine covers on the wall...   

a pavilion with some of the collection of log sleds that would be loaded up with lotsa giant logs and towed behind the hauler - up to 300 tons worth at a time on the iced roads

several sawmills and shingle mills


Water powered sawmill on the right, covered bridge on the left

Nice morning light on the boiler backhead in the Lombard

with the mascot duck engineer in the oil can tray, AKA the ConDuckter!

While waiting for steam pressure to come up (wood fired, takes a couple hours to get up to 150 psi)

nice weathervane on the roof (I had it laser cut from Stainless a few years back)

and one of the horse drawn wagons also trotting around

We also had cooking demos, crafts, all sorts of stuff.