Brakegear
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Conway is fitted with a simple handbrake. A vertical column mounted handbrake in the cab pulls the brake blocks against the wheels. No return spring is fitted but this shouldn't be a problem. I quite fancy building a combined steam and vacuum brake system - if anybody has got any plans or information on such a system I'd be interested to hear from you.
I started work on the brakegear by machining the pins for the hangers. These are threaded 4ba at one end and fit through the frame while the other end is threaded 6ba. The brake hangers pivot on the 'shaft' section of the pin with a 6ba nut to secure them in place.
The brake hangers are made from a piece of 3/8" by 1/8" bms strip. As you can imagine they involve plenty of filing work - and building 2 engines requires 8 of them !!!!
The brakeblocks are then fitted to these hangers.
The tapered rear section of the blocks were machined in the 4-jaw of the unimat using the compound slide. After this had been completed the holes were drilled and the slots milled on the vertical slide using a long series 1/8" diameter (the slots are 3/8" deep).
Quite a while ago I machined some forks to fit around the brake hangers but I've actually only just got round to taking the pics !!
While back home for Easter I thought I'd quickly knock out the bushes for the brakeshaft. These are phosphor bronze bushes that are simply pressed into the frames. I began machining the outside to shape and it machined beautifully - but when it came to drilling it to take the boring bar what a nightmare! Despite using brand new drill bits the material continually snagged and generated an enormous amount of heat! Eventually I got them all done and pressed into their respective holes :-
NEW 13/08/02
While work has proceeded on the rest of the chassis work on the brakegear has started to slow down until the wheelsets are finished. One job I am currently working on is the forked lever for the brake column. The pin which screws up and down the brake column has to be made from solid (it's got to have a hole up it's middle with two pins perpendicular to it), hence there is no way to actually fit the pin into a 'normal' fork. Hence it is neccesarry to make one side of the fork removable. I have currently machined the basic shape of the forks and just need to fit the side plate and finish the external shape :-
