Official publication of the Queensland Society of Model

and Experimental Engineers Inc.

September 2014

• Saturday 11th October: Family run day, BYO meat for BBQ

• Saturday 25th October: Sunshine Coast Railway Modellers Society Invitation Run

• Sunday 09th November: Trophy and Exhibition Day

At the Track and Tent Saturday afternoon tea, four members were acknowledged for theirextraordinary term of membership. Left to right: Eric Evans 57 years, Ray Parrinder 50 years,

Jim Jackson 60 years, Lloyd Dannenberg 60 years. That is a total of 227 years!

Track and Tent 2014.Track and Tent 2014.Hugh ElsolTrack and Tent was a most convivial gathering with visitors from South Australia, Victoria, the ACT, NSW and other Queensland clubs as far north as Innisfail. Sadly, Jeff Wakeham from Lake Macquarie passed away on the Wednesday beforehand. A minute’s silence was observed at 1230 on Thursday and the fl ags remained at half mast throughout the event. Jeff had been a strong and consistent supporter, having attended the inaugural event in 2003 with his 5” G NSWGR C32. He and Lake Macquarie club members occupied all rooms in a motel and on departure would book it for the following year. It has become a tradition that Lake Macquarie provides the highest number of visitors each year, so much so that the seating between the canteen and toilet block came to be the ‘Newcastle Terrace’; Jeff could often been found there with a cuppa on the second seat which afforded excellent viewing of the track. A plaque remembering Jeff will be fi xed to that seat.

“In memory of Jeff WakehamPresident LMLSLSA strong supporter of QSMEE”Vale Jeff.

Pre-registration gives the organizers the numbers for providing the needs of all, such as how much milk to purchase, and we thank those who did. Even if you are not having any meals, the registrations are important in our planning. We do not provide stocks by guesswork.The numbers of members and ladies who assisted was pleasing and if you did not help this year become inspired for next year to help further lighten the load and share the pleasure of mixing with the visitors. Yes, there is work to do, but all enjoy themselves.

Support from the model engineering trade was DNC from Sydney, our own Queensland Hobby Mechanics and Hare and Forbes: all appreciated by visitors and club members alike.

From the records, there were visitors from 20 clubs. The number of attending locomotives was: 11 in 7¼”; 41 in 5” G; 4 in 3 ½” G; and 1 traction engine. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were available on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, with breakfast on Sunday morning and lunch without charge on Sunday for those who attended from Thursday. More than 150 people attended on Saturday, the busiest day. On site were 6 caravans, 1 camper trailer, 7 tents and 3 motor homes.

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Warwick Allison gives his 3 1/2” G B2 ‘Royal Sovereign’ a spin.

Warwick Allison from Sydney is preparing his 3 1/2” G B2 4-6-0 while his Bolton Trophy winning 5” G NSWGR 411 4-4-0 rests in the foreground.

Regular visitor from Victoria, Ross Walker, stands at left in “Black Five corner” while his 7 1/4” G “green” Five begins raising steam amongst the three black versions.

Roger Kershaw from Orange moseys downgrade with his 5” G C34 and goods.

Four long serving members were acknowledged at Saturday’s afternoon tea: Jim Jackson, 60 years; Lloyd Dannenberg, 60 years; Eric Evans, 57 years; and Ray Parrinder, 50 years. That is a total of 227 years! Fittingly, a huge celebratory cake marked the occasion.

As in previous years, the warm days mixed with the camaraderie of visitors from other clubs was a powerful combination: next year will be 06, 07, 08 and 09th August. Mark it in your calendar.See you there,Steve Smith, Wayne Sue Tin, Noel Eberhardt and Hugh Elsol, organizers.

Vic joined the club in 1990 as soon as he retired. From that moment he was a “doer”, not a “gunna”. We quickly discovered at the elevated track that he was always cheerful and was pressing on with his locomotive construction. During his life he ‘made things’ and had fi nished his working life in the technical side of the University of Queensland’s science laboratories.

Since he had trained as a fi tter and turner during the Second World War, Vic knew his way around tools, but wisely selected a construction series from ‘The Model Engineer’ because he had to learn about steam and boilers. For a man new to steam and model engineering this revealed the common sense that meant he had a loco chassis to display by Trophy Day in 1991. By the June of 1992, he had her in steam on the track!

Yes, he machined all the chassis himself and had formed and silver soldered the boiler himself with oxy-propane in his own workshop. When asked about the boiler construction, he simply remarked that “Mum (Alice, his wife) had to hold some things for me”. He was ever modest about his achievements. If he needed help he

Vale Vic Lythal, 1927-2014, Vale Vic Lythal, 1927-2014, A Model Engineer. A Model Engineer. Hugh Elsol

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Triple 5” G QR PB15s pass under the main station’s footbridge:Bruce Hielscher from Maryborough; Geradus Mol from Canberra; and Garry Menzies of QSMEE.

This superbly built and fi nished 5” G three cylinder LNER V2 2-6-2 is the work of Doug McLeod of Bundaberg seen here driving across the double track bridge.

John Griffi ths travelled from Nambour to run his 3 1/2” G VR R class which runs as well as it looks.

Our ladies are busy serving the chicken dinner for Saturday night’s meal.

At the 1991 Trophy Day, Vic had the chassis of his 5” Rail Motor on display.

would ask advice, but mostly he read up ‘The Model Engineer’ and worked it out for himself.

Vic had so much fun with his loco at the track, often with his family there, that the second locomotive was slower to emerge from the shops at The Gap. His health did slow him in latter years, but his mind was always active.With his interest in reading for the hobby, it is no surprise that he was the club’s librarian for about a decade. Model engineering and QSMEE were richer from his presence.

Works Co-ordinators Report.Works Co-ordinators Report.Noel EberhardtIt is normally a very dry time at this time of the year, particularly so this year, so we need the leaf cover in the car parks and the elevated picnic area to stop them developing into dust bowls and eroding severely when the rain eventually comes.

Please refrain from raking leaves but pick up sticks wherever possible - these must be taken to the incinerator! On the tracks use the blower to move the leaves into a pile and remove by barrow or bin to the incinerator with minimum removal of ballast.

This is a great time for maintenance - The major projects are well underway and don’t need an army of advisors! - there were up to 15 at the crane project alone!

All the gutters need cleaning to enable maximum retention of rain water.

The Gobi needs regular watering to keep the grass cover.

All the Gardens need weeding and dead plants removed

need to be taken to the incinerator. There is no use leaving them in little piles for someone else to remove.

A major effort should be made to paint the Container Shed, Carriage Shed and the Signal Box, preferably with a prior water blasting. If more paint is required see a committee member for permission to purchase.

The Main Bridge project is nearing completion and Jess has assembled a team to work on the Pedestrian Bridge, so it would be a big help if you could spare some time to tidy up the gardens and improve the paintwork.

This piece of equipment is a little different from what you may be thinking. The dimensions are 2 ½” X 2 ½” X 22”. It was made mainly for machining the side-rods of my loco. The angle plate itself has square stiffeners on the back. This makes it able to be placed on the mill on any of its four sides

To size a rod, fi rst machine your rod for the bearing. Also make a bush the same size as the bearing hole. This is bolted to the angle plate. Centre this on the mill and bolt on your rod. Now you can machine as many rods as you need to the same length.

The angle plate is intended to be drilled through as these holes become the clamping points when you turn the angle plate through 90 degrees in order to reduce or fl ute it. Using the stops on the table, machining radii on the ends as well as all other operations are easily repeatable and all identical.

When machining long thin components, jacking screws can be placed at appropriate points to prevent to prevent defl ection of the work-piece under cutting loads. If you have an odd-shaped item, bolt a length of cast iron or aluminium to the angle plate. Machine this to conform to the job you’re machining. If the item is to be tapered, run a dial gauge along the angle plate to get the correct taper. With careful placement, the angle plate need not end up having too many holes thus rendering it fi t for re-use many times over.

Paper Railroad Wheels?Paper Railroad Wheels?Neville RobertsonWith acknowledgements to the Pietermaritzburg Model Engineering Society.In 1867 Elisha Waters made his fi rst paper rowing boat by moulding large, single sheets of paper over a suitable mould and then varnishing them to render it watertight. Suitably reinforced, it proved light, strong and durable. Production commenced shortly afterwards. Such was the popularity of these vessels that the Waters family turned from their erstwhile trade of box-making to becoming full-

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A Useful Angle PlateA Useful Angle PlateNeil Dannenberg

By June of 1992, Rail Motor was completed at running!Here is another photograph of Vic enjoying his locomotive.

time boat manufacturers. At the peak of their popularity their paper boat range encompassed everything from simple single-person rowing shells to a 45-foot “pleasure barge,” it could comfortably accommodate twenty-three, six of whom were oarsmen. This use of paper merged with other evolving technologies of the time, resulting in more than one historian dubbing the second half of the Nineteenth Century the “Age of Paper.”

The success of the Waters family’s endeavours may well have provided the inspiration for that most unlikely of creations, paper railroad wheels. Manufactured in Hudson, NY, not far from the Waters boat building facility in Troy, NY, they were in fact, not made totally from paper but consisted of a metal rim, a metal hub that contained the axle bearing, and a compressed paper disk that connected the two together. A ring of bolts connecting rim to paper and paper to hub which assured the mechanical integrity of the wheel. Large metal discs covered the paper, but only served as protection from the elements, as the load was actually carried from hub to rim by the paper disk.

As one might guess, paper wheels were not immediately accepted but eventually became standard equipment on Pullman cars during the late 1800’s and found their use elsewhere as well. They were claimed to provide a quieter and smoother ride than conventional cast iron wheels hence the application to Mr. Pullman’s “sleepers.”

A former locomotive engineer, R. N. Allen, invented the paper wheel. At the time of the invention he was part owner of a strawboard paper mill in Pittsford, Vermont. As a result of inspiration or perhaps of sheer necessity, (there was a glut in the strawboard market), he invented the paper wheel and in 1869 he obtained a U. S. patent. He began the wheel business as the American Paper Car Wheel Company in Pittsford. Initial tests on the Rutland and Burlington Railroad in 1868 were, to most people’s surprise, a complete success. In 1870 Pullman ordered a set of wheels and after a successful trial period they were eventually incorporated as standard items on all Pullman cars. The volume of business with Pullman caused Allen to set up a factory in the company town of Pullman, Illinois. Others adopted the wheel and by 1886 there were reported to be 115,000 paper wheels in use on American railroads.

The paper portion of the wheel began as common commercial straw board, cut into circles slightly larger than required for the eventual product. Three disks were glued together with fl our paste and the triple sheets were piled together into a stack three to four feet tall. These were compressed by a 650 ton hydraulic press and then dried. The process was repeated, this time gluing three sets of the three-layer sandwiches together. After a third pressing, a disk four to fi ve inches thick was obtained which was suitable for the fi nished wheel. The disk was

turned to proper size on a lathe, painted with two coats of paint, and then pressed into the rim of the wheel. The hub was also pressed into place and the bolts and iron face plates were attached.

Success of the paper wheel drew imitators and variants upon the basic design concept. These included wheels with various cushioning materials, such as rubber or hemp, at some location between hub and rim. In 1897 the nine major manufacturers of “tyred” wheels, including the Hudson company, combined as the Steel Tired Wheel Company. As this included all major manufacturers, an effective monopoly was created which continued to operate for at least a decade.

The demise of paper wheels came after the turn of the century, in large part because railways switched from wood to steel cars. These were considerably heavier and produced far greater braking loads on the wheels. There had been a number of accidents attributable to wheel failure in the late 1800’s, but Pullman and others had remained fi rmly committed to their use, blaming failure on poor maintenance. However, by 1915 paper wheels were declared unsafe by the Interstate Commerce Commission and in 1923 the Allen plant in Pullman Illinois was abandoned. While no wheels remained on the main lines, they were still in use as late as 1960 as shop trucks at the St. Louis Car Company.

To read more and see some photographs of the paper wheel visit the following site: http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi758.htm

Bill Grulke’s Areo EngineBill Grulke’s Areo EngineNeville RobertsonEarly in September I paid a visit to the workshop of the QSMEE’s resident master craftsman, Bill Grulke. There he showed me the progress he’s made on his one-sixth-scale 14-cylinder aero engine since my last visit some months ago. All major ctrankcase components

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are now complete as are the cylnders, connecting rods and pistons. The unfi nished cylinder heads were fi tted to the barrels and all fourteen sub-assembles had been temporarily inserted into the crankcase. As can be seen from the photograph of the full engine, it makes for impressive viewing.

I would however, draw one’s attention to the close-up of a few of the cylinders and heads and particularly the fi nning detail most clearly seen at about the four-o’clock position in this picture. Each of the fourteen steel barrels has sixteen fi ns, each of which is just 0.3 mm or 0.012” wide. To get some perspective on this, visualise a twelve-thou feeler gauge. Each groove is 1.5 mm deep and 0.55mm wide. Again, think of the twenty-two-thou wide parting tool required to perform this operation. And then consider that this had to be repeated 224 times and that all the spacings had to absolutely identical.

Anyone for tool grinding and machining lessons? Please join the queue forming behind me.

Sleeve ValvesSleeve ValvesNeville Robertson

One could be forgiven for thinking that this photograph forms part of an advertisement for a gear-cutting

company. It shows, in fact, the internals of a sleeve-valve wheel-case of a 14-cylinder Bristol Hercules aero engine dating from the war years. The Hercules’ larger brother, the 18-cylinder sleeve-valve Centaurus which ultimately put out in excess of 3200 horsepower, went on to power what is regarded as the world’s fastest production (non-experimental) piston-engined fi ghter, the Hawker Sea Fury. This aircraft was capable of 485 mph in level fl ight. Amongst the operators was the Royal Australian Navy who fi elded two carrier-borne squadrons.

The sleeve valve was invented by the American, Charles Yale Knight, a printer and publisher by profession who’d had no formal engineering training of any kind whatsoever. He was, however, an inveterate tinkerer. Dissatisfi ed with the valve gear in his Knox single-cylinder three-wheeler, he set about designing a form of valve gear that would do away with the excessively noisy cam-operated poppet valves that were a standard feature of car engines at the time. He received a patent for the concept in about 1904. Small scale commercialisation was achieved with the “Silent Knight” car shown at the Chicago Auto Show in 1906.

American motor manufacturers showed little interest in Knight’s invention. The exception was Willys who manufactured the Willys Knight range starting in 1914. The vehicles, however, were priced at the luxury end of the range. By 1933, four years into the Great Depression and with the company in receivership, the Knight engine was shelved in favour of something simpler and cheaper to manufacture. In England, Daimler adopted sleeve valves for its Double Six V-12, a vehicle intended to compete directly with Rolls Royce’s offerings and priced accordingly. The company continued to make sleeve valve engines until the mid-Thirties when the concept was fi nally abandoned in favour of poppet valves. The change-over was inevitable. Although the sleeve valve engine was exceptionally quiet, it was also an oil guzzler, suffered gummed-up sleeves after extended periods of non-use and was expensive to produce due to the high precision requirements involved in having twin sleeves sliding smoothly in the cylinder, against each other, and with a piston internally.

In the Nineteen-Twenties Roy Fedden was chief engine designer at the Bristol Aeroplane Company. Acting on a technical paper written by Harry Riccardo in the same decade which declared that the volumetric effi ciency of internal combustion engines would be improved through the use of sleeve valves in place of poppet valves, Fedden set about designing his fi rst sleeve valve radial. Fedden though, did not opt for the Knight system of twin sleeves. His preference was for the somewhat simpler Burt-McCollum single sleeve system which had been used with success in the Scottish-built Argyll car.

The development of the Bristol engine was fraught with

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problems but was a testament to both Fedden’s dogged perseverance and Bristol management’s deep pockets and always-borderline tolerance of its chief engineer. Sleeves tended to burst during the power stroke whilst drive gears constantly stripped. It took six years of endless design upgrades, metallurgical changes and the expenditure of two million pounds – around eighty million pounds in today’s money - before all the problems were solved. The engine that fi nally materialised was the somewhat underwhelming 9-cylinder Aquila. Despite the poor result Fedden was sold on the sleeve valve principle.

Development of the Aquila increased power from an initial 375 bhp to a more respectable 500 bhp whilst it’s successor, the larger 9-cylinder Perseus, produced an initial 580 horsepower but with development, 930 horsepower. Enlarging the Perseus to 26.8 litres from its initial 24.9 litres saw output further increase to 1200 horsepower. This compared favourably with the output of the similarly-sized Rolls Royce Merlin of the same period (circa 1940) and no doubt spurred Fedden to outdo Bristol’s arch rival by building the ultimate aero engine - the Centaurus.

The 14-cylinder twin-row Bristol Hercules was essentially a development of the single-row 9-cylinder Perseus. Starting off at 1290 HP in the Hercules I of 1939 it was developed to ultimately produce 1735 HP in the Hercules XVII by the end of the war. Amongst the aircraft powered by the Hercules were the Bristol Beaufi ghter, Short Stirling, Vickers Wellington, one mark of the Avro Lancaster, as well as about twenty other types. With close to sixty thousand manufactured, the engine is regarded as the second most important war-era British aircraft power-plant after the Rolls Royce Merlin.

One of the interesting aspects of Bristol-type sleeve valves is that they make use of fi ve ports. Two of these are for induction, two to deal with exhaust gases, whilst the fi fth port is shared between inlet and exhaust functions. The ports are also irregular in shape - in other words, they’re not simple circles, ovals or rectangles but more complex in form, probably to provide overlap between inlet and exhaust events as in poppet valve engines. The cylinder heads are known as junk heads, presumably because their only function is to cap the cylinders and provide a mounting point for the spark plugs.

Sleeve-valve engines don’t translate well into miniaturised versions unless they’re built to a relatively large scale, say, one-third upwards. The reason for this is that scale effects kick in with a vengeance on smaller models – power developed barely overcomes frictional losses unless the sleeves are made an unacceptably loose fi t. That in turn leads to heavy oil consumption, excessive blow-by and the sort of smoky exhaust emissions that might delight coal-fi red steam loco

enthusiasts but severely embarrass any self-respecting IC engine devotee. Nonetheless, successful models have been built.

Footnotes: 1: Sleeve valves describe an elliptical path that combines semi-rotary motion with a reciprocating movement. For an insight into how these fascinating mechanisms function, go to YouTube and do a search under, Bristol Hercules sleeve valve animation.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vrvep_YOio

2: The most-produced engine of the war was the Rolls Royce Merlin with over 168 000 being made. Of these, some 82 000 were manufactured by RR at three locations, whilst Ford Great Britain contributed 30 428 and Packard Motors in the USA made 55 523. Engineers at Rolls Royce’s head offi ce in Derby later conceded that those made by Ford’s Manchester facility were amongst the best of the type.

3: There’s a very good chance that we’ll be seeing a functioning sleeve valve model engine at our Trophy Day in November. Be there to see this rarity!

Ball-seat size calculation.Ball-seat size calculation.Bill WilliamsWe’re often asked for the correct size of balls and ball seats, especially when the valves are leaking. The formula shown here provides guidelines.

Simply, if you have the ball diameter, divide it by 1.414 to give the diameter of the required orifi ce.

Example:

Ball diameter = 3/8” Then 3/8” divided by 1.414 = 0.265” and this is the orifi ce size.

Similarly, if you have an orifi ce diameter of ¼” then multiply by 1.414

Example:

Orifi ce = ¼”

Ball diameter = ¼” X 1.414 = 0.25 X 1.414

Ball diameter = 0.353”

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President: Jess Balcolme-Jestico (07) 3286 2639 V-President: Noel Eberhardt 0412 118 859 Secretary: Chris Hillyard (07) 3269 3239 Treasurer: Ian Crawford (07) 3351 7574 Boiler Inspectors: E. Evans, (07) 3800 4164 R. Jones, (07) 3349 9443 L. Dannenberg, (07) 5497 9405 B. Teasdale, (07) 5545 2201 Committee: Rhys Jones, Don Bell, Nathan Kay, Hugh Elsol, Andrew Sturmey

Please address all correspondence to:

The Secretary, QSMEE PO Box 322 Everton Park, Qld 4053 Email: qsmee@tracksandtrains.com website: www.tracksandtrains.com/qsmee

REGULAR CLUB TIMETABLEOctoberWorking Bee: Sunday 05th Family run day BYO meat: Saturday 11th (contact Noel Eberhardt 0412 118859) Track Day: Sunday 12th Committee Meeting: Monday 20th Member’s Gathering: Monday 27th NovemberWorking Bee: Sunday 02nd Trophy and Exhibition Day: Sunday 09th Committee Meeting: Monday 17th Member’s Gathering: Monday 24th Senior’s Day: every Wednesday

DecemberWorking Bee: Sunday 07th Christmas Tree: Sunday 14th Committee Meeting: Monday 15th No Member’s Gathering Senior’s Day: every Wednesday

Coming Club and Coming Club and Model Engineering Events.Model Engineering Events.Hugh ElsolQSMEE EVENTS IN 2014• The website ‘Bulletin Board’ has event details, too.• Family Run Days: check the calendar for dates: BYO meat for an evening BBQ, but contact Noel Eberhardt for further information. • Show and Tell nights at gatherings: January, May and September.• November 09th Trophy & Exhibition Day: what are you going to exhibit this year?• December 14th Christmas Tree.

MODEL ENGINEERING EVENTS04-06th October, 2014: Pacifi c Coast Railway Society, Casino NSW; October Long Weekend; 5 and 7¼”; camping available; Bill 0427 624 796.

04-05th October, 2014: BlueScope Western Port, Victoria; All Comers Weekend; 5”gauge; camping available; Barrie Olney 03 5977 6212, 0403 918 016 or Neil Warren njwcfw@yahoo.com.au

18-19th October, 2014: 26th National Miniature Traction Engine and Road Steam Rally; Clare, South Australia; Dean Manderson 08 8842 3407, 0417 859 659; editor@ameng.com.au

18-19th October, 2014: Cobden Spring Festival, Victoria;

South Western Model Engineers; 3½ & 5” elevated, 5 & 7¼” ground; Beryl 03 5595 1812 or Graham 03 5595 1664.

24-26th October, 2014: Diamond Valley Birthday Run, Eltham Victoria; 7¼” G; Sam Daly 0402 836 450; sam.daly@dvr.com.au

25th October, 2014: Sunshine Coast Railway Modellers Society, Nambour; Invitation Run; 5 & 7¼”; lunch at $5 donation; Ed 5450 8340, www.scrms.org.au

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