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Build Diary entries for January 2019

Here are the diary entries for this month. You can use the forward and backward links to see the next or previous months. Most photos taken before 2018 are small size. From 2018 onwards, most photos you see below will have a link to a full size image by clicking on the photo.

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Cylinder Pattern Making
23/01/2019
  Highslide JS
  Tony Dance is our cylinder pattern maker. He's just finished the second half of the main motion cylinder pattern and the photo shows the pattern ready to be removed from the lathe. The pattern has to be made in 2 halves as it's too long to fit on Tony's lathe. The 2 halves of the pattern are joined together by a taper plug and socket joint. You can see the female joint in this photo. If you want to see the story, so far, of building the pattern then follow this link. The next stage in the process will be to make the pattern for the valve cylinder which is smaller in diameter than the motion cylinder.
   
Getting the Foundations Right
28/01/2019
  Highslide JS
  Accuracy of frame alignment is critical to the locomotive's future reliability. CTL have now set up this foundation frame which has been levelled accurately. The rear cast steel frame stretcher has been positioned and you can see the individual plates which have been fitted to each of the spring hanger "feet" to ensure that the stretcher is level. In front of the stretcher, you can see the first of the four plates that will support the central stretcher. The middle stretcher has 2 small jobs that require finishing off in the machine shop. They have been very busy, hence the slow progress on our project which has to tke its place in the queue.
   
Axle Alignment
28/01/2019
  Highslide JS
  When the frame plates are put in position on the stretchers, a key alignment requirement is to ensure that the 3 driving axles are in aligned in a horizontal plane. The British Railways frame drawings provide 6 datum point holes, 2 each side of the driving axle centre line. When all 6 of these datum points are in line, the frames have been set up horizontally. Here Keith and Alan inspect the datum point markers which CTL Seal have started to make. The 3 datum point markers are the dark coloured material which Alan has his hand on. We're aren't sure what the 3 silver/yellow markers are for.