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Trevor gave us his slant on solving some of the problems he has come up against in his long experience of building locos from scratch and began by explaining that his main inspiration was from narrow gauge subjects and showed us some of the models he had build over the years including Talyllyn and Snailbeach.

Making his own wheels was the first subject that Trevor explained to us; which is an ingenious and intriguing method of slitting spokes into basic wheel blanks and then turning tyres in a mandrel on the Unimat lathe often using a rotary index table to establish the degrees between spokes.

Some of the tools he used were explained which included jewellers piercing saws with various blades and even ‘skip tooth’ blades which reduced the amount of snagging when cutting thin plasticard. The addition to one of his saws was a large file handle which was passed around and everyone agreed about what much better control was gained over the saw.

Gear trains were discussed with most of his gears coming from broken Hp and Epson printers which he acquires.  Fisherman’s fly tying over glasses were a recommendation that I particularly like the sound of for something to help when working with fine detail.

 

Folding and Forming sheet metal and soldering where also subject that Trevor got to before we broke for tea and cake. I particularly like the Paxolin solder table he had made up to hold everything perpendicular while soldering.

All in all it was quite an in depth look at how Trevor has worked out how to do things his way and one in which there were some valuable tips and techniques for the rest of us to pick up on.

 

 

Scott Stephenson.