Nov.2016

Some of us arranged to meet for lunch in Strathroy beforehand and one key point was the need to wear safety glasses during the visit.

Stu Brownlow talked about the London Model Train Club that holds monthly meetings 7:00 – 9:30 on a Tuesday evening. They meet somewhere off Warncliffe Road. There was some discussion about going along so Stu will get more details, including an address, with a view to doing this at some point.

We had our annual "election" during the meeting. As mentioned earlier Nick Jonkman has taken over from Larry Walker as Treasurer. Bruce Mannerow was very happy to remain as President and Events Coordinator. I remain as Secretary/Newsletter Editor. The current executive has already been to the bank, along with Larry, to complete the necessary paperwork for Nick to become Treasurer.

There was further discussion about the club logo. It looks as if there would be a set-up cost of ~$50 to generate the software to print/embroider shirts. Then there will be a cost per shirt to apply the logo. The work can either be done in London or Sarnia and Bruce will investigate further.

Bruce talked about KBC (their closest branch is in Windsor) who are apparently offering a 15% discount on all purchases until December 23rd.

I talked about the Rough and Tumble Show in Pennsylvania that I went to in August. I included something about this in the first meeting notice and there are a few more photographs later in this newsletter.

Several of us also went to the Ontario Model Engineering Meet in Hamilton at the Steam Museum. Members of the Toronto club, Richmond Hill Live Steamers and the Golden Horseshoe Live Steamers were running the "show." Again, a few pictures will be included later.

Bruce talked again about Cherry Hinds Hill and her skills as a model engineer. Her models are known for their intricate detail and her approach of making just about everything (including rivets) from scratch.

The pendulum is a "seconds" pendulum typical of a grandfather clock and has to be about 39" long. Time keeping of these clocks varies with the ambient temperature and they tend to lose time in the summer (because the pendulum rod lengthens slightly) and gain in the winter. All sorts of ingenious ways have been used over the years to keep the effective length of the pendulum constant but a good start is to use a low coefficient of expansion material like invar (or wood.)

Here is Stu Brownlow giving the clock a good looking at.

Stu's clock

We also had the opportunity to see Don’s extensive basement model railroad layout.

Don's train layout

After this Don brought out coffee etc. and we chatted for a while about the normal model engineering topics (and all the peripheral things that come up.) Many thanks to Don and Anne for hosting the get-together.

The October Meeting

The first item discussed was the upcoming visit to Wolfe Heavy Equipment set up by Tony Koolen.

There are a few items on the internet that are worth checking out:

http://speedreaders.info/15592-cherrys-model-engines-story-remarkable-cherry-hill/

http://www.homemodelenginemachinist.com/showthread.php?t=19685 Apparently she is now in her 80s and her husband is over 100!

Another frequent topic at our meetings had an airing; that of sourcing materials for our hobby. (The usual discussion of American threads v BA v metric also came up.) In terms of people who are happy to supply hobbyists with pieces of metal The Metal Supermarket in London is OK. ALRO in Ann Arbor are probably better but not as convenient. Good things were said about Micro Fasteners in New Jersey who supply a lot of different miniature screws etc. both with American and metric threads. They are used to dealing with hobbyists and ship to Canada using US mail so that one is not hit with a brokerage fee at the border. If you cannot get what you need in N. America there are lots of suppliers in the UK where you can mail order a wide range of model engineering items. Most are geared up to supply international customers and parcels usually arrive inside a week. There is always discussion about the cost of the stuff we buy but my view on this is that if you put some notional value on the time you spend working with what you have bought (even less than minimum wage) then unless we are looking at something like a copper boiler, the cost of the materials is usually fairly trivial compared with value of the time spent making use of them.

Brian Lawson talked about the Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo Railway that served his home town of Dundas and where his brother Doug had his first job. The TH&B Historical Society held a "field trip" in September at the main building of the Ontario Southland Railway near Salford ON and Brian and his brother went along. The OSR is a "short line" operation running on former CP track, using mainly ex CP locomotives but they also own the first diesel locomotive the TH&B ever had. This was the main reason for holding the meeting there and the main attraction was a showing by John Spring about the operations of the TH&B in its later years. Apparently it was very well done and enjoyed by all who went along.

A few more Pictures from Rough and Tumble

Show and Tell

This is a 1910 MAN, air injection diesel engine:

Going back to the uniflow theme, Baker used this type of arrangement on some of their traction engines and there were several at the show. They set one up with a dynamometer to measure the power developed and it was interesting to hear the exhaust note because it is quite different from a normal steam engine. In fact it sounded very much like a Field Marshall 2 stroke diesel tractor (and there is a good reason for this!)

Here are a couple of unusual ones; firstly an Avery under-type:

Moving on to early internal combustion engine tractors; they had a good collection of Rumely Oil Pull tractors, here is one of them:

And this is a Huber, it is unusual because it has a return flue boiler (rather like single furnace, dry back scotch marine boiler :)

Moving back to an earlier era they have a horse gin driving a threshing machine:

Some Pictures from the Ontario Model Engineering Meet in Hamilton

Tony Koolen, Keith Orr, Brian Lawson and I were there and we saw quite a number of people from the other clubs we knew.

This is a model of a steam truck made by Bill Clothier and driven by Eric Motton:

Now a Fowler road locomotive:

Here is Brian being taken for a ride:

Of course there were numerous rail locomotives being run:

There were a couple of really nice English style traction engines; firstly a Burrell:

Tony Koolen had his electric locomotive there but I did not get a picture- sorry Tony!

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The TSME Newsletters

https://sites.google.com/site/tsmeweb/the-modeller

Meeting Schedule for the remaining 2016-2017 Season

2016

November 14th

December 12th

2017

January 9th

February 13th

March 20th (13th is March Break)

April 10th

May 8th

June 12th