NP Woolley in North Rothbury | Railway company

NP Woolley

Locality: North Rothbury

Phone: +61 421 344 325

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• Travel and transport
• Railway company

24.01.2022 Little oil check valve made. A phosphor bronze spring made as well, and the little follower to hold the ball down. Tested on water with 100% success, not a drop leaks past it. Nothing worse than foaming lubricators and steam in the line preventing them from adding that all important oil to the cylinders.

22.01.2022 Some pictures silver soldering up this boiler for repairs, going well so far. Good to be careful with the heat not to disturb anything else except the area being worked on! I always flux the adjacent work just in case some silver solder melts.

21.01.2022 Some old and unfinished patterns turned up the other day for a 5" gauge Britannia locomotive. They are made of Jelutong timber. A nice finely-grained timber that is perfect for patternmaking. Smells great too, possibly much nicer than sniffing 3D print fumes!

20.01.2022 This 3.5" gauge LMS Class 5 locomotive looks like it is ready for some action. It's had work done to the boiler and the regulator, water gauge, and the lubricator plumbing, and is now reassembled for testing.

20.01.2022 Exciting - we have added an online shop to our website! You can find physical and digital products that will help your endeavours, with more to come! As a feature for our project clients, we have added a "Resources" tab, providing exclusive downloads for their benefit. A log-in is required for accessing this area. There is a pop-out messaging widget, that allows you to easily enquire about services or products.... See you on the Interwebs!

20.01.2022 Remembering the SMR anniversary 8-9 December 2018. I think Maitland deserves a 10 class in regular steam. It would be awesome to see something great happen with the SMR Heritage, to regularly remember it and experience it in some way. It would make a lot of people happy and provide opportunities, and I think that is a good enough reason. There is a lot of work involved with events and the situation of the 10 class, but I believe Miracles can and do happen! (Maybe with a lot o...f hard work involved as usual ) There was a fantastic team of people involved with the SMR anniversary putting it all together, with many great guys I got to work with on #18's mechanical parts. Different organisations and individuals worked well together contributing their knowledge and the Rail Regulator and was satisfied with the groundwork to interface together. I enjoyed every minute of the experience, and also the opportunity to remember the last place that provided commercial steam locos on standard gauge in NSW. I am sure many others had a great time too. I think the cohesion and friendliness across so many groups and working together is a special bond that makes good times worth doing again. Hopefully that can happen again in the future.

20.01.2022 It is a model engineer's sworn mission to work late into the night!

19.01.2022 Ever wonder why the live steam Boiler Code specifies a minimum of 3mm internal passages in a water gauge glass? The capiliary action of the small gauge glass internal diameters give a false high reading, the true level in the boiler is lower than the glass shows it to be. Thanks to Jono for the camera work!

19.01.2022 A special jig for setting up boiler guides on this boiler and transferring dimensions. It's a dummy set of frames in the sense it sets out the space of the guides where they used to be attached to the boiler, and eliminating some guesswork. The guides have been repaired and the loco chassis is with the customer so it's a case of measurement and making the dimensions work in isolation. The old holes will be plugged and re-tapped once the correct position is known.

17.01.2022 Some extra stays added to support the backhead, and tapped LG2 inserts to replace the snapped studs that were directly into the copper. Also the boiler guides screw holes have been drilled out to be able to silver solder some copper back in, and re-tap. Also there was a counterbore around a wall stay that had cut about 1mm deep into the copper, and so a copper washer was machined up to be able to silver solder in and restore the original thickness.

16.01.2022 Plenty on the go at the moment but one of the jobs I took a look at for a family member was the regulator in a boiler. It's a rotary disc type which needed a stop for open/close positions. I thought about making one on the backhead flange but that would involve a bit more work and need rework to the regulator handle etc. The handle goes from horizontal as closed to vertically down wide open. So I opted for a simple stop arrangement and a quadrant on the rod. Its just a bit of 1/8" brass plate silver soldered to the body of the reg and a bronze quadrant a tight fit on the rod so I can muck around with the setting of it and silver it up when happy. Photos explain it. Seems to be nice and definite. See what happens on the hydro!

14.01.2022 Adaptor made for the square headed plugs on the gauge glass fittings on this boiler. Goes in a 3/8" socket, and square just hand filed. A lot better than using a shifter on these plugs in my opinion. Keeps them nice.

13.01.2022 A snifter made for this boiler! A little fella, 1/8" plumbing. Next job!

13.01.2022 I don't know if I've showed this one before but here's a way to test your superheater elements off your loco. Basically a tapered bung made out of something (this case was Teflon) and held in place with the G clamp. Another way is if you get some insertion rubber and clamp that on the header fitting with a bit of stuff behind it for strength. A piece of steel will do. If the rubber is thick enough you may not even need it. For testing the elements if you don't have tails on ...the ends of them, just blank them off with blanked rubber hose and hose clamps. Easy! If you can't get a hand pump for these tests see if you can rig up your tender hand pump, or even a garden hose will give some sort of indication depending if you have a decent pressure at the tap. They aren't "part of the boiler" after the regulator but good to know what's happening...especially on copper ones. These elements were out of a little boiler, and just wanted to find out if they were good before putting back in.

12.01.2022 Gotta give a shoutout to Hare and Forbes. I went down to H&F in Sydney last weekend, and bought a bunch of stuff, amongst the goods purchased was a nice keyless chuck for the lathe. Long story short I bought the chuck and the arbor separately, hoping to get a 3MT-JT6 arbor to suit the lathe and the chuck. Getting it home I realised the arbor fitted neither the chuck or the lathe, as it was a 2MT-JT3 arbor in actual fact. Someone had put it in the wrong packet.... So after a phone call they arranged a speedy delivery of the correct arbor (arrived the next day) at no cost and also said I was welcome to have the incorrect one, which so happened to suit the drill press and ex lathe drill chuck nicely. Top customer service!

11.01.2022 Some quick jobs to this live steam Gauge 1 K28. The regulator flange had a snapped off M2 brass screw stuck in it. The remedy was to make a drilling jig that locates off the other holes and drill and tap all holes to M2.5 and fit stainless cap screws. The o-ring was replaced also. Other jobs included sorting out the gauge glass assembly and lining up the fittings vertically with some 5mm silver steel. Replacing some of the fibre washers for copper to improve the appearance. ... Also the smokebox had a conduit junction box that had come off, and so a new one was made out of brass and the smokebox tapped M2 to fit it. Next job!

10.01.2022 The spark of life what's some of your favourite things about Steam Locos? 1) Smell of coal, steam, hot oil, and hot soapy water 2) Sound of the air compressor ticking away (exhausting up the chimney sounds better) 3) The visual impressiveness of all the parts working together

10.01.2022 Ahh...Some cab numbers for a 36 class bedroom?

09.01.2022 4 jaw chuck mounted up on the Ward Capstan today. Last night it got a rebuild. I took it off the other Capstan I have and stripped and cleaned it. One of the problems was the square drives for the screws were all rounded off, so they went in the mill for a cleanup cut. The squares are reduced in size, but that's to the benefit of the key fitting in there with a bit more meat on the key square socket. The key was made from bits of stuff, and silver soldered together. The squar...e filed before soldering. The spindle has a mounting plate that was drilled and tapped 3/8 Whitworth, and the back of the chuck skimmed 0.02mm on the recess to give a better fit on the spindle. The chuck is a Pratt and the joke today is a flogged out Pratt is still better than a new Chinese one! Onward with wheel machining!

08.01.2022 Had some fountains coming out the snifters on this loco with a garden hose test before we tried the pump. Pulled the dome apart to see whats happening. A bit of a look at a Regulator valve and the way it wears. You can see the light under the steel rule. Parts are bronze. Possibly not as much surface area at either side of the opening to spread the load. Quite scored. Ahh well... I start to think along the lines of "how much fun has it had as is?" Faced the valve on the lath...e and dressed the seat on the loco (an earplug with a self tapper in the back of it down the main steam pipe to block the swarf) and ran a parallel strip with fine emery across the seat to give it a final dress. Checked the overlap in the closed position...it seals by 1/16". A bit of a guess as to how much, don't want the handle to have humungus travel before it opens...see what happens on the test! See more

05.01.2022 Trying out my new 13/16" tailstock die holder I made to produce some LG2 countersunk screws for a boiler. Works well. Has a #3 morse taper to fit the tailstock. The setting screws are made from M4 Grade 8.8 hex heads (from those handy packs Bunnings sells). Handles are made from 5/16" Whitworth hex head bolts turned down to form the knobs.

05.01.2022 I thought I might do some Flashbacks to some of the jobs that have happened over the years for a bit of fun! 2014. One of the jobs that came in was to machine up a set of NSWGR C38 driving wheels and tyres, axles, and canon style axleboxes. They were to 1-1/8" scale. The boxes were Cast Iron, the tube between steel, and the total end float was only a few thousandths of an inch so that it forms a naturally purging seal against the back of the wheels. Grease lubrication. Ste...el tyres made from hollow bar and shrink fitted to the wheel centres. Another part of the request was parallel axles, and quartering on the axles (rather than keyways at 45 degrees). I quite enjoyed doing that job, as they are a really solid unit ready for some serious haulage.

04.01.2022 Some orders for Railway Signs have come our way again! Some stuff on the CNC router, ever since I bought this machine it's been such a useful tool for us to do different materials and enter the CNC game in some sort of capacity. I've made patterns, MDF replica plates, MDF loco numbers, station signs, and brass loco numbers for 5" and 7.25" gauge locos, brass odds and ends for detail parts for model locos. I wonder how many revolutions the screws have done

02.01.2022 Couple of tank bodies folded up on size with the former. It's fairly crude but worked 100% just fine after annealing the 1.2mm brass. The former was pine timber milled down in the milling machine and some 1" steel tube glued to it with No More Gaps!