Chris Cooper modifies his Roundhouse Fairlie
DLG lubricators
Since my Roundhouse DLG was delivered last year I’ve had in my mind to try and make dummy cranks and drive rods that would ‘operate’ the lubricators mounted to the motion brackets. The images above show what a feature they are on the actual loco.
I started by shaping the cranks from sheet brass and soldering them to the top of the crankpin bolt, first having marked the correct position when the bolt was tight on the loco. From the image, the crank looks to be set just a fraction forward facing with the crankpin at bottom centre, so I tried to do the same.
I then soldered a 14ba bolt through from the back for the drive rod to attach to. To make the drive rod itself I soldered a piece of brass square onto the end of a piece of 1/16” mild steel rod. By filing down each by half and overlapping them, a strong joint was created, which is hidden facing rearwards.
Then I had to find a place for the drive rod to run, somewhere behind the lubricator casting. I solved the problem by running the rod through one of the existing fixing holes of the lubricator bracket. I drilled and tapped a new hole for the fixing screw a little lower so that the bracket still had two screws holding it square in place. In the image below the drive rod runs through the original fixing hole, and the brass screw is the new addition. This involved removing the lubricators and motion bracket which luckily was a simple process.
Once Id worked it out, the process was repeated on the other power bogie and was inevitably much quicker!
Here a few pictures of the finished result.
April 2020