South Don and Flingel Railway
Home

Up

 

 Ruby Project
  I purchased an Accucraft Ruby/Ida and was inspired by the many contributors on My Large Scale to have a go at making it into something a bit different.  The Ruby is a fine little locomotive, but I wanted it to have longer duration and settled on converting it to a tender locomotive so that it could carry additional water and a pump to top up the boiler.

  After considerable research I selected an 0-4-2 prototype used by the Goldsboro Lumber Company. 

 

  The first task was to strip the bodywork from the Ruby and enlarge the appearance of the boiler.

This was achieved by adding lagging and a sleeve formed from a 2" diameter brass tube.  The tube was cut along most of its length and prised apart to slip over the safety valve and filler fittings.  Once in place it was pressed back into shape. 

 

 
  Work has continued with building a wooden cab, a new smoke box door and boiler fittings.  

 
  Further work on boiler fittings and cab roof.  The next stage is to fit out the cab.  This will include a new larger gas tank.

 
  First test steam with the new gas tank in place and the water fill system tested and fully operational.  Now on to refitting the radio control and painting
  First showing of the completed locomotive.
 
  The locomotive will run with a tender taken from a Bachmann locomotive.  This has been fitted with a water tank (actually a model aircraft fuel tank) and a Bill Ford water pump and water level detection system.  It also carries the radio control receiver and batteries.  This installation was tested before dismantling the Ruby/Ida.

 
 

In order to avoid having to drill the boiler and solder in a fitting suitable for a clack valve, I devised a solution by replacing the banjo bolt that fastens the steam manifold to the top of the boiler.  The new banjo bolt has an enlarged head into which the water feed pipe is fastened (just after an in line clack valve), and a pipe through the centre to avoid water mixing with the steam in the manifold.  The first photograph shows the first prototype of the new bolt and the original (I later modified the bolt by turning down and tapping the top of the bolt to take a standard pipe union).  The second photograph shows the modified bolt and clack valve installed during initial testing.
  The Bachmann tender proved to be a weakness in the design in that the plastic trucks were not strong enough to carry the weight of the water tank, pump and batteries.  The plastic truck sides flexed too much allowing the axles to drop out of the axle boxes.

The solution was to design and construct new trucks from, mainly, brass.  Bending brass strip to the correct profile for the arch bars and drilling for bolt holes was achieved using press dies cut from 1/4 steel plate.  The axle boxes were also drilled and milled to shape on a CNC mill.  The wheels have been modified by fitting ball race bearings on the axles.  This has resulted in strong free-running trucks.