Yet more progress on John Heald's Darjeeling B class  ●  Progress update on John Oxlade's 2-8-0 'POEM'

Yet more progress on John Heald's Darjeeling B class

(I wish I could work at this pace, but for me it's lack of time! ... Ed)

The pattern for the brake-shoes

Note that the steam dome is well towards the front of the boiler. The maximum capacity of boilers in NZ must not be over 50 litres, so with a 10" diameter boiler a 200mm extension is fitted onto the end of the tube plate to mate up with the smoke box.

Words and photos by John Heald

Yet more progress on John Heald's Darjeeling B class  ●  Progress update on John Oxlade's 2-8-0 'POEM'

Progress update on John Oxlade's 2-8-0 'POEM'

I have been "manically busy" for the last year or so on our business so I haven't had much time to work on POEM. However, the replacement cranks are almost done and she's nearly ready for a steam test.

For a little background info... POEM's valvegear was built undersize in relation to the size of the D-valves. This put a lot of unnecessary load on the cranks and over time they worked loose. A number of temporary measures were tried but the decision was made to replace them with oversize components to see if this solves the problem - it should. If not, then it the next logical step is to rebuild the steam chests and D-valves.

A lot of people have suggested simply replacing the Allan straight-link valve motion with Walschaerts. There is nothing inherently wrong with Allan motion (plenty of full-size locos used it successfully), so I intend to persevere with it.

Photo of POEM at Hamilton Model Engineers prior to replacing the cranks

Words and photos by John Oxlade

Yet more progress on John Heald's Darjeeling B class  ●  Progress update on John Oxlade's 2-8-0 'POEM'

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Website developed and maintained by John Oxlade of john2consulting who is a member of the Cambridge-Rotorua Live Steamers Inc.