Norman’s V2….

Norman C. has dropped a line & some photographs of his recently completed 5″ Gresley V2 and a beauty she looks too.  Norman must like the Gresley conjugated valve gear as this is now the second 5″ model with the full 3 cylinders and valve gear he has built.  Norman has spent several years working on the model having to make the odd tweak to the Martin Evans design which, as Norman says ‘It’s not as detailed or accurate as Hyperion, which was to the Don Young design.  One or two details were borrowed from the latter and incorporated as appropriate as basically they are the same engine.’

‘My next job is to strip it into manageable chunks, clean and degrease it, and paint.  It’s too heavy to move as it is, so the chunks will be reassembled in the garage once they’re painted … and I’ll never be able to get it back in my workshop again!  Never again will the metal be seen!!’

 

 

 

 

Norman is an innovative engineer, always keen to experiment to make life easier.  With that in mind, Norman takes up the story:

‘Reaching over a 5 inch gauge tender to manage the boiler is becoming more difficult; so, with that in mind, I’ve fitted a remote operating mechanism for an injector.  This is experimental, it’s not been proved in practice.  And I’ve only fitted it to one side.

This is the mark 3!  The first was not sufficiently flexible; the next worked fine, but looked clumsy & I couldn’t get a good grip on the shaft, so put some 3mm id silicone tubing over it to discover there was more than enough friction to transmit sufficient torque to lock up the valve.  So Mk 3 was created.  It works over angles much more extreme than are likely in service.  I hope the accompanying photos will fill in any gaps in my description.

 The steam valve is located on the top of the rear of the tender.

The water valve, normally located at the front of the tender, is now at the back – and submerged in water.

The handwheel drives through a pair of bevel gears, through a horizontal shaft running the length of the tender,

and through two flexible couplings,

to a steam valve located at a suitable location on the backhead.

 

You’ll see that there is also a conventionally located steam valve, so the choice is still there (I may have to fit a dummy spindle if it restricts the steam flow ).

The flexible couplings are nothing more than 5 mm rod: the link piece has a 3 mm square in it to allow for fore and aft movement. Where the two rods meet, one has a hemispherical depression, which roughly fits with the matching shaft.

A photograph to remind you of Norman’s other Gresley product which with a true Gresley syncopated beat can be heard whispering her way around the track at Almondell.  Current owner Jeremy has suggested that once these Co-Vid19 restrictions are eased then we should get the two locomotives running together.