Sunday, June 24, 2007

Emu Bay Railway - 12 Class Beyer Garratt - 6

And then there were two.......changes to the second engine unit (foreground) to bring it up to the same level as the first were slightly quicker as I had a pattern to follow. I sincerely hope the next stage is likewise.I have fitted the LH cylinder casing and commenced reproducing the Walschaerts valve gear of the prototype recently, a picture of the incomplete installment is above. The slide valves are from Mainly Trains, the driving rod is cut down rail, and the "Walschaerts" (parenthesis as it is a close approximation rather than a scale copy) is a heavily modified set from a 4mm Alan Gibson etch for a Southern Railway (UK) U/U1 class. While the U/U1 was a very different locomotive, I chose it as the basis for the EBR 12 Class as the Walschaerts configuration was visually quite similar, and the etch readily available.

3 comments:

stephen said...

Very encouraging progress, I'm enjoying watching this develop.

Andrew Collier said...

Thanks Stephen, good to hear it's of interest and particularly encouragement to you. This is all new to me, I was'nt sure I would be able to get a Walschaerts set up and running, so was quite happy with the progress also, just want to get better at it! The Garratt of course provides three more practice runs....By the way, what surprised me is how simple it was to get the basic (main rods, slide valve & cylinder) valve gear running - this bides well for future EBR locos, all of which (excluding the Australian Standard Garratts) had "simple" motion.

Andy said...

Hmm... All the same I think I'll stick to diseasals for the time being. I'm having enough trouble with slab-sided vans...