Table of contents for October 2025 in Model Engineer & Workshop

The Northern Association of Model Engineers (NAME) is a group founded in 1945 “to promote, encourage, develop and organize the model engineering movement in the North of England”. NAME supports local model engineering clubs and organises events, including an annual rally where members display and operate miniature locomotives and engines. This year’s event took place on 19-20 Jul at Urmston and District Model Engineering Society’s track in Abbotsfield Park, Flixton, Manchester. The family friendly event included a broad range of live steam attractions and was open to clubs and individuals.…

This rally is a regular annual event for the Echills Wood Railway, located in Kingsbury Water Park near Tamworth in the West Midlands. Held over the weekend of the 11-13 July it was well supported and provided a veritable feast of 7¼” gauge locomotives covering a wide range of prototypes well suited to the site’s 1¼ mile track. The railway has an extensive preparation and storage area for the locomotives, and provides a wealth of features for visitors to enjoy. This year over 40 engines were registered to attend and over the three days most of them were able to enjoy good track time. Friday and Saturday operations are reserved just for visiting engines but on Sunday the railway is open for public rides. This provides many of the visiting…

PostBag is one of the most popular sections of the magazine - readers want to hear from you! Drop us a line sharing your advice, questions or opinions. Why not send us a picture of your latest workshop creation, or that strange tool you found in a boot sale? Email your contributions to meweditor@mortons.co.uk. SLURRY PROBLEMS SOLVED Dear Neil, Laurie Leonard's article “A Suds problem” (ME&W, 4768, September) reminded me of the difficulties that I had with cleaning integrated slurry reservoirs within machine bases, and the large volume of soluble oil needed to fill them to a depth that would submerge the pumps' suctions. The far reaches of my Colchester Master lathe's slurry reservoir were awkward to clean, so I cropped the top off a square polythene oil drum and…

The next job was running the length of Key Steel – proto ‘gauging scale bar’ – very lightly under the surface grinder to produce a finer finish on the face for the scale. It also needed machining on the back face to reduce the thickness and overhang. I then drew up a list of a gauge scale steps and lengths from ‘20’ to ‘85’ (to overlap the one I had) on a sheet of paper. It is an easy job to cut the 1/16” divisions. The scale was finally engraved using my vertical mill on what becomes the vertical face of the gauge, a slow job. These lines are normal to the base of the gauge bar NOT the base plate. This was too awkward for an old “Taylor Hobson”…

I made this boring head a good while ago on my then Dore-Westbury milling machine. At that time I did not have a dovetail cutter, so this explains the simplified design. It has well proved its worth. I have used it as a boring head to make the smallest bores and as a trepanning tool for cutting out 5-inch holes in 6mm thick aluminium sheet, and fly cutting numerous surfaces. I have yet to use it as an offset tool in the lathe tailstock for taper turning but this is also a possible use. It is reasonably balanced for most operations, of course it cannot be balanced for all settings, it obviously will get more unbalanced at large tool offsets but they are usually carried out at lower speeds, so…

The impetus for the project described here was the acquisition of a cylindrical master square and there being some uncertainty as to its accuracy. This master square was obtained to use as the in-house reference standard for squareness. Markings on the end of the square reveal the maker to be the venerable Coventry Gauge and Tool Company, the serial number is 18B, and that this is a reference grade 6” square. A reference grade square is intended for calibrating other squares, not for routine measurement of squareness in the workshop. The age of the square is unknown, at a guess, more than 50 years. Perhaps a reader could shed some light on its age? Photograph 1 shows the square in its original storage box, the quality of the box is…

I want to get on with the valve liners, valve bobbins, valve guides and pistons now. I first of all used the Don Young method of fitting the valves in the bores by making them a very tight fit and then tapping them backwards and forwards until they became a good tight fit in the liners. I think you know by now Eddy and Joe Gibbons are looking after my 4MT at present and had other ideas. I have to say that Eddy worked on Sir Nigel Gresley and gained a tremendous amount of knowledge from so doing. Eddy made new valves for my 80080 and at the same time he said that he used the ‘Doncaster method’ for timing the engine. This meant the timing was done on the…

Firstly I make no pretence that this is a Treatise on Foundry Practice, and nor should it be considered as such. Rather it should be thought of as a, “Well if he can manage to do it perhaps, I'll give it a try.” sort of article. So these are just word to encourage you. There were two things which influenced me to don the leather gauntlets and eye protection and try my hand at metal casting, well, that is apart from the obvious juvenile lure of fire, smoke, fumes, heat and a modicum of danger. Firstly as a newly retired jobbing electrician I had a large amount of scrap copper cable and converting it into neat little copper ingots held an appeal, and secondly, living where I do, there was…

The subject of this review is a recent addition to the range of lathes and mills offered by Amadeal Ltd. in the form of their AMAB210E lathe. The ‘B’ indicates that it is powered by a brushless motor, the ‘210’ is the maximum diameter it can swing above the bed and the ‘E’ represents the Electronic Lead Screw (ELS) which is a first for hobby lathes being brought into this country. Full specification and pricing can be found on Amadeal’s web site. INITIAL THOUGHTS AND SETUP The lathe arrived promptly by pallet delivery service and the driver was able to wheel the crate straight into my garage on a pallet truck. After removing the screws from around the bottom of the crate it lifted off to reveal the lathe bolted…

Following the Yield Point Method article by Alan Brown and Les Smith in ME & W 4765, June 2025 and Mark de Barr’s response in issue 4767, August, there has been a considerable amount of discussion on the issues raised. These issues are important for our hobby, as people running model steam engines depend on their ability to make or obtain safe, durable boilers. This in turn demands a widely accepted and usable standard. In the UK hobby this is provided by the Boiler Test Code, which is accepted by all the major organisations involved in this side of the hobby and test certificates to the code are accepted by insurers. There are additional requirements for certification of commercially made boilers. Although there is a section on design in the…

I prepared a platework general arrangement, but this transformed into the full general arrangement views which were published as figs 1 and 2 in Model Engineer 4752, 20 September 2024. Anyone not sure where the cab goes can refer to them. There are an awful lot of laser cut parts in the platework and so I’ve divided the job into three batches. This part (17) covers the running boards, footplates and things directly attached, Part 18 will be the cab, and Part 19 the tanks and covers. There are so many parts for laser cutting that my rather haphazard drawing numbering system broke. In my working days there was a predetermined (industry-wide) system for numbering drawings for parts and assemblies which covered every aspect of a project. So a gearbox…

The air pump/spray condenser casting was rough in many places, photo 331, but fortunately the outer cylindrical surface was sufficiently smooth, straight and parallel-sided to serve for clamping down, photo 332. Following some careful checking and aligning to get the cylinder centreline centred under the cutter, photo 333, the lower surfaces were milled to size and to provide initial datum surfaces, photo 334. The feet had the most generous machining allowance I found anywhere on any of the castings for the engine. Whilst the casting is in the mill the holes for the holding down bolts as well as those associated with the condensate outlet flange should be drilled, photo 335. Once again, the ‘ring of holes’ function of a DRO comes in very handy, without a DRO then a…