Restoring Lady Frankannestein

[musket the dog]

Evening all,

I've posted some of the progress I've been making with restoring my vintage Roundhouse Lady Anne over in the Daily Workbench thread, however in the last few weeks I think I've started to make enough progress to justify starting my own thread.

For a while, when I was quite young, I used to 'work' occasional Saturdays in the model railway shop where I spent a good amount of my pocket money. For many years up on a tall shelf stood a strangely modified Lady Anne (or Dylan). It was one of the earlier ones, with 4 wheels and a meths burner. It looked as if a previous owner had tried to make it into an approximation of a gauge 1 locomotive. It had a very low cab, and new cast brass buffer beams with twin sprung buffers and a chain coupling.

It looked very well used and very well made, but being a bit of oddity, out of proportion with everything else around it, she sat on the shelf for years. That was until several years ago, when I began my apprenticeship. A couple of months later, with a bit of money saved up from my starting bonus and my first paychecks, I asked how much the shop's owner would sell it to me for. With my 'staff discount' applied it turned out to be a very good price and I left with my first live steam loco.



Once I had established in an old thread that no one knew what it was, I started to plan what to do with her. My basic, quick plan was to chop off the top of the cab and extend the chimney to make something akin to a open cabbed quarry loco. I quickly ran out of the necessary skills as the only thing holding the bunker on was where it attached to the rear of the water tanks. University came and went, I bought a house and started working on that and nothing really progressed on the loco. This year though I have been making a concentrated effort to finish off unfinished projects.

 

[Paul M]

I do like the look of that model

 

[musket the dog]

When I first started one of the jobs I had pondered on the most was what to do about the buffers. I had worried that I would need a milling machine to take off the cast buffer cases. Once I had got my head around how to dismantle the loco, I removed the first beam and took it into my workshop while we were quiet during the lockdown. In the end I was able to cut the largest chunks off using a hacksaw and then file off the rivets and the buffer bases. The hooks, buffer heads and springs have been saved for the useful parts box.





The front end would possibly be the most complex as I would need to figure out a way of extending the funnel. Each rivet on the foot plate and the tanks is a brass pin, drilled and soldered in place.



While the buffer beam was away I made some efforts to improve the running of the loco. I had run it on blocks before, but it had always been lumpy and stuck frequently on a low regulator. There were several loose fixings in the valve gear that needed to be tightened and secured. Additionally the centre frame spacer was in the wrong location and pushed the burner tube down, causing the front wick to flood. The meths tank sat too low and was very close to the railhead. To fix this, frame bolts had to be shortened where the excess protruded through. There was an additional support on the back of the tank that had to be shortened. Following the changes, the loco ran smoothly at all speeds on the blocks.

 

[musket the dog]

The front buffer beam was returned and the rear was treated in the same way. The dome is held on by the boiler strap which is tensioned town against the centre frame spacer. Moving the spacer meant that the dome and strap have moved forward on the boiler a bit. The o-ring under the safety valve was replaced and the drain plug on the back of the boiler was freed off, so the water level in the boiler could be judged correctly. The oil reservoir was removed, cleaned of gunk and scale and replaced, with new o-rings for the filler and drain. Whilst doing my welding training at work I made up a temporary bunker for the loco while I figure out how to reattach the original.

 

[musket the dog]

With the loco back in one piece, Casey Jones of the CFR kindly allowed me to bring the engine over for a test run. It wasn't completely unsuccessful, but the loco struggled to manage more than a couple laps of a time with a train attached.



It raised steam fine, but once the regulator was opened, it just couldn't keep up. When it stopped, it just wasn't regaining pressure. When it was stationary there still appeared to be quite a noticeable volume of steam coming through the funnel. This lead me to believe that it must be escaping past the pistons. It wouldn't cause an issue with the regulator closed, but it would never make as much power as it should and it wouldn't be able to build up steam when stationary. Therefore it was decided to risk screwing up the timing, and take the cylinders apart for inspection.



This revealed that the piston rings were life expired. Most of the gaskets were shot and some were missing altogether. Otherwise, the mechanicals and valve gear were in very good condition. One at a time (so I can remember how to put it back together) the cylinders were disassembled and given a 24hr soak in dettol to strip the paint.





I'm not sure if it is better to rebuild the cylinders and then paint them all in one piece, or paint all the parts separately and then reassemble them. I can't get ahold of a rebuild kit at the moment, so it's a quandary for another day.

 

[musket the dog]

I wanted to add some stiffness back to the tanks as removing the cab meant there was to cross bracing to support them. Two M2 holes were drilled and tapped into the top of the tanks. A suitable strip of aluminium was cut to length and bent to the shape of the boiler using the outside of a 42mm hex socket. Matching holes were drilled and the braced secured into position.

 

[musket the dog]

Finally for tonight, I've been attacking the front end. The oxy-acetylene was wafted over the smokebox which separated it into its individual parts, including the smokebox door, which at one point was hinged. I will try to restore this as it will make accessing the wickes for lighting a lot easier. A piece of 15mm copper pipe was sourced for the extension.



I made up a conical punch to begin to swage the pipe. The round end of a ball peen hammer was placed in the cone shaped swaged end, and driven in with the rubber mallet to create the beginning of a bell shape.



The internal pipe was soldered back into the smokebox to help align the funnel.



I've had some very good guidance from my friend at work who has been helping me with a lot of the metal work but the next stages were really testing the limits of the skills I've learnt so far. The bell shaped end of the pipe was heated using a blow torch to cherry red. Over a few attempts it was gently pressed onto the smokebox, and tweaked with pliers to create the shape for the funnel saddle.





It's not the prettiest, but no one can argue that the funnel isn't now soldered to the smokebox. Really my blowtorch isn't powerful enough to keep all the metal hot enough to solder well, even with the assistance of a tea light burning inside the smokebox. It was cleaned up with a file and the chimney cap expanded and fitted over the top.



This is the loco as she stands at the moment. Paul sold me one of the weatherboards from his now-cabbed Millies. This will be fitted behind the safety valve but needs a slot cutting to clear the regulator pipe. My next job will be to remove the frames to clean and paint them, followed by the boiler and smokebox. Hopefully once I can get the rebuild kit I will have a fully restored rolling chassis I can put to one side while I concentrate on the body work.

 

[musket the dog]

I do like the look of that model

It was quite handsome in a robust sort of way, and very well made. I hope my changes can do the loco and the builder some justice and build on what's there, but in a model that isn't destined to gather dust on a shop shelf.

 

[dunnyrail]

Evening all,

I've posted some of the progress I've been making with restoring my vintage Roundhouse Lady Anne over in the Daily Workbench thread, however in the last few weeks I think I've started to make enough progress to justify starting my own thread.

For a while, when I was quite young, I used to 'work' occasional Saturdays in the model railway shop where I spent a good amount of my pocket money. For many years up on a tall shelf stood a strangely modified Lady Anne (or Dylan). It was one of the earlier ones, with 4 wheels and a meths burner. It looked as if a previous owner had tried to make it into an approximation of a gauge 1 locomotive. It had a very low cab, and new cast brass buffer beams with twin sprung buffers and a chain coupling.

It looked very well used and very well made, but being a bit of oddity, out of proportion with everything else around it, she sat on the shelf for years. That was until several years ago, when I began my apprenticeship. A couple of months later, with a bit of money saved up from my starting bonus and my first paychecks, I asked how much the shop's owner would sell it to me for. With my 'staff discount' applied it turned out to be a very good price and I left with my first live steam loco.

View attachment 276740

Once I had established in an old thread that no one knew what it was, I started to plan what to do with her. My basic, quick plan was to chop off the top of the cab and extend the chimney to make something akin to a open cabbed quarry loco. I quickly ran out of the necessary skills as the only thing holding the bunker on was where it attached to the rear of the water tanks. University came and went, I bought a house and started working on that and nothing really progressed on the loco. This year though I have been making a concentrated effort to finish off unfinished projects.

My thoughts are that it could be a modified Dacre. This is a loco that was scratch built to plans by Peter Jones using Roundhouse parts. There is a small book about building the project. The main difference other than the standard gauge bits are the lack of rounded up footplate at the front just over the cylinders. Sorry about the poor pic it is a screen grab well blown up.

 

[Paul M]

My sort of engine, not fancy but a proper workhorse

 

[musket the dog]

My thoughts are that it could be a modified Dacre. This is a loco that was scratch built to plans by Peter Jones using Roundhouse parts. There is a small book about building the project. The main difference other than the standard gauge bits are the lack of rounded up footplate at the front just over the cylinders. Sorry about the poor pic it is a screen grab well blown up.

No, that's really useful, thank you I've heard of the Dacre, but I've never been able to find any real information or pictures at all. I'll have a look around for a copy of the book

 

[Paul2727]

This may be a handy resource to have too:
Written by Peter Jones. Read the reviews first though.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Building-Small-Steam-Locomotives-Practical/dp/184797029X

regards,
Paul.

 

[Rhos Helyg Loco Works]

It has the very earliest of Roundhouse cylinders. These have a 1/2-inch bore, instead of the 9/16-inch used on later models.

 

[dunnyrail]

Just looking further on this the original Lady Anne had Slip Eccentric Gear and was an 0-4-0, just found this by this query.

pictures of roundhouse lady anne - Google Search

www.google.co.uk

but if you get hood of the Dacre book it will certainly give you lots of pointers to work on whatever you have.

 

[Gizzy]

She will soon be a thing of beauty Ricky....

 

[casey jones snr]

Great thread Ricky, very interesting and informative.

 

[musket the dog]

Just looking further on this the original Lady Anne had Slip Eccentric Gear and was an 0-4-0, just found this by this query.

Thanks for digging that up Jon, I had studied that page a lot when trying to figure out where the frames spacers should be and how the burner should be positioned. I'm afraid it threw up more questions than it answered though, trying to figure out where the Roundhouse influence stops, and the freelance starts