Something old, something new, some things bodged and some things askew. A steamy saga of masochism & scratching.

[Mad Steve 1,520]

ahhhh, that was my thinking as well Jesse, but that Gorby chap is far too clever for us.....

[Gorby 1,673]

Not a steamroller @Jessie_C

 

But getting warm.

[RWG686 4,103]

It's all smoke and mirrors..

He makes us think he is building this:

when he is actually doing this:

The clue was given earlier when he said that you won't see much of the gears.

 

Haven't a clue Gorby but I do like your dedication .

[Gorby 1,673]

7 hours ago, RWG686 said:

he said that you won't see much of the gears.

That's only because I don't know what I'm doing. 

I've fitted the gears now and they are quite visible so it's just as well I spent a bit of time getting them right. I hope to get another update on here today, unless there are any more server upgrades planned. 

[Gorby 1,673]

As to you're guesses – all wrong, but one was closer than the others (but I'm not telling you which one). I'd never heard of this class of transport before I stumbled across an image of it, so I'll be dead impressed if you can guess.

Anyway, back to the build…..

Mrs Gorby is getting suspicious where all the lids are going. She's developing a haunted look, so I needed to find a good (easy) way of making reasonably accurate cylinders/tubes. The lids I originally pinched for the two main wheels turned out to be unsuitable – the plastic was too thin and poor quality. Fortunately, along came a brain wave of truly tsunami proportions (although in hindsight it was more like a ripple that'd be unlikely to make an ant loose it's balance). Remember back when we were at primary school learning about dinosaurs and other current events? We used to use scissors to curl paper and stick them to other bits of curled paper for our parents to throw in the bin when we got home. Using the same method 0.25mm styrene curls very easily (I used the brass rods as I'm more likely to injure myself with scissors than when I was five).

0.5mm was a bit more effort (using the back of a scalpel blade) but still worked well.

0.75mm was equally successful but required a stronger device (the gouge/chisel).

Even when I trained as a draughtsman I rarely used pi. I've used it more on my last three scratch-builds than since I left school. It's almost as if it was worth going to school. Not a lot of my education seems to have stuck, but is it my fault if I haven't got a sticky brain? Rather than use the currently known 31 trillion digits of pi, 3.142 was close enough to find the length of the side walls then a narrower tab was glued to the inside so that when the full circle was done the front and back face could slot inside using the inner tab as a stop/spacer. I didn't take any photos of the assembly as I'm giving you credit to be able to understand written instructions (okay, I forgot to take photos).

The single small wheel started it's modelling career as a Micro Sol lid. Little did it know when it was young that one day it would be discovered and go on to achieve great things. Unfortunately it got that wrong as I chopped half it's body away, drilled holes in it and hid it's natural beauty behind layers of plastic. Here it's been shown having a face lift. Originally I'd used double sided tape (as in my A7V build) but it wasn't up to the job. I had to apply super glue to it as you would normally use Tamiya Extra thin. Bit messy, but worked well.

A little clue with the wheels temporarily in place:

The blob in the middle of the deck (?) is a drop of water to see if everything is level.

 

The thing I thought would be the next most difficult bit turned out to be quite easy – if a little fiddly. It's what I believe is called an 'elliptic leaf spring'. Only one of my reference pictures shows this springy thing, the rest don't, but I like it so it's in. First I made a simple, and pretty tiny jig.

Over the two bits of tube 0.5mm on the jig slip two fatter bits of tube and the first strip of 0.3mm plastic gets wrapped around.

Then:

Off the jig so that I don't end up with a nice springy thing – but stuck to a bit of wood:

Looks a mess as it's before it got cleaned up. That's just a wooden 3mm thick spacer in the middle:

Front wheel assembled and primed:

[Toolmaker 1,083]

Looks like a steam tractor or early commercial vehicle. Nicely done either way. I notice your a slave to rivets these days 😂

Edited November 17 by Toolmaker

[Grunhertz 4,489]

That's interesting gorbs watching with interest mate 

[RWG686 4,103]

I was also thinking early tractor like this one as its got plenty rivets

but obviously not..or else you've got the wheels wrong 

 

[Jessie_C 1,410]

I thought it would be this one.

[Toolmaker 1,083]

During a nocturnal internet session I think I have further narrowed it down to a Robert William Thomson of Edinburgh design Road Steamer circa 1870. Likely built by Robey & Co in Lincoln.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robey_%26_Co

Check out the Robey Steamer picture.

Edited November 18 by Toolmaker

[Gorby 1,673]

I said I'd be dead impressed, and I am. Someone has got it spot on….

 

@Toolmaker!

I thought there would be a couple more posts before someone would get it, but I underestimated you lot. Some very good guesses as well.

This is what I'm (sort of) working towards:

It's the first “Robey road steamer”, built in 1870 and it was the forerunner to traction engines. As I mentioned before, there are a decent number of reference pictures (even some photos) but it seems that every Robey/Thompson steamer was different.

Thanks for the interest.

[RWG686 4,103]

6 hours ago, Toolmaker said:

I think I have further narrowed it down

You're a better man than me...I lost the will to live after half an hour looking at early 'targets' 

3 hours ago, Gorby said:

This is what I'm (sort of) working towards:

Sort of ?..we'll have none of that subversive talk on here if you don't mind. 

The good patrons of this site expect nothing other than the usual 'Haynes  Gorby Manual of Superior Riveting' standard.  

 

[Walrus 1,627]

I don't know why I said "steamroller" 
What I meant to say was, “Robey road steamer” 
You can see how I got it mixed up.  

Actually I meant to say "traction engine" which was still not right but closer!

Great work Gorbs! 
Looking forward to the next installment

ps Toolmaker is a swotty swot
 

Edited November 18 by Walrus
Don't know the difference 'twixt swat and swot

[Gorby 1,673]

44 minutes ago, RWG686 said:

Sort of ?..we'll have none of that subversive talk on here if you don't mind. 

The good patrons of this site expect nothing other than the usual 'Haynes  Gorby Manual of Superior Riveting' standard.  

When I said “sort of”, I was hinting at the possibility of getting this spot on, is zero. Not because I'm not up to to it, but because of the lack of reference pictures that actually agree with each other. As an example, in the engraving I've shown above, you can clearly see something clinging to the back of the boiler. I can only find two other pictures of this and ALL three of the pictures are completely different, so I can't use those pics to work out what this one looked like. Every other picture I have doesn't show anything attached to the back of the boiler at all. Add to that, they all disagree on the shape of the body; the details on the boiler; the funnel; the wheel details, the steering wheel etc. etc.

Other than that, the biggest problem is that there isn't any pictures that I could find (and I've spent hours looking) that show the top of the deck of the first Robey steamer – again, all the other pics show a completely different arrangement and none agree with each other. That's why I said at the beginning that this is going to be in the flavour of the subject rather than an exact likeness. I'll probably be showing some more images of the steamer during the WIP and you'll see what I mean.

As you may have realised by now, I'm not that fussed with total accuracy – which is just as well really. 

[RWG686 4,103]

Have you seen this?

https://mdtemg.org/home/events/past-events/club-events/otherclubevents/oce2017/cv17b18/

Plenty of lovely machinery in there.

Would the engine in your machine be the same as their other engines of that period but mounted vertically?

[Gorby 1,673]

1 hour ago, RWG686 said:

Have you seen this?

No I haven't seen that page before, and that inevitably lead me on to another googlising session that eventually lead me to a new image of the first steamer – the one I'm basing my model on, so thanks.

It looks like it's a copy of the engraving I showed earlier (or vice versa) but oddly, there are minor differences such as the funnel, no name plate and the box like things either side of the deck. On one they look rounded at the front and on the other they are definitely squared off.

It pretty much confirms what I'd already been thinking, that some of the differences are down to artistic licence – sort of what I'm doing in 3D form.

1 hour ago, RWG686 said:

Would the engine in your machine be the same as their other engines of that period but mounted vertically?

Until you pointed me towards that page I didn't know there was a 'Robey Trust'. Their website shows a similar vertical boiler that may of be use to me as I'm mainly struggling for clear rear views. What amused me was the steamer was built in 1870 and the vertical boiler in 1935 – 65 years and they were still making a visually similar boiler!

[Toolmaker 1,083]

10 hours ago, Walrus said:

ps Toolmaker is a swotty swot

Sad git more like.

 

 

The Road Steamer was more successful than their aircraft design. I’m sure the gunners sat in the pods built into the wings would have had an interesting ride;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robey-Peters_Gun-Carrier

Another similar style to yours here;

https://fineartamerica.com/featured/india-omnibus-1871-granger.html

 

The Robey Trust. Perhaps they might have the plans you see;

https://sites.google.com/view/therobeytrust/

 

[Jessie_C 1,410]

20 hours ago, Gorby said:

As I mentioned before, there are a decent number of reference pictures (even some photos) but it seems that every Robey/Thompson steamer was different.

 

I wonder if that's because it being experimental, it kept changing as they added things and removed things which didn't work?

[Gorby 1,673]

10 hours ago, Toolmaker said:

Another similar style to yours here;

At the start of the project I intended to do the omnibus bit as well:

But my mojo has waxed and waned so much during the build, it isn't likely now. Maybe at a later date perhaps.

I was thinking yesterday about asking them if they have any plans for this thing, but then I started thinking that if I've got everything wrong, I'm likely to be a seriously pissed-off bunny. I now think of it as a sort of steampunk, what-if project. That way it doesn't need to be accurate.

3 hours ago, Jessie_C said:

I wonder if that's because it being experimental, it kept changing as they added things and removed things which didn't work?

That's quite possible Jessie. Even though I mentioned that they produced a visually similar vertical boiler for 65 years, apparently Robey was an innovative company so the later boiler was probably as similar as we are to the first Australopithecus. Obviously it was before mass production and I assume that each one was made to fulfil a specific job, which may have some bearing on their design as well.

[DC3 690]

One's the L , one's the Ghia sport , don't you guys no nuffink!

Edited November 19 by DC3

[Walrus 1,627]

I reckon the gubbins at the rear is for baking spuds.
It was the closest thing in Victorian Britain to an ice cream van 

Sadly the concept of mashed potato atop a waffle cone never really caught on.

Edited November 19 by Walrus

[skwonk 854]

I thought it was going to be a Landwasserschlepper.

[Gorby 1,673]

6 minutes ago, skwonk said:

I thought it was going to be a Landwasserschlepper.

No I couldn't do that. There are too many useful photos, plans, diagrams and actual dimensions for those. No, I didn't want all that useful information, I had to choose something that no longer exists and all the documentation is crap or was destroyed many years before any of us were even born.

Perhaps I should break all the finger on my right hand so that the build isn't so easy. *

 

* Fortunately, the walls here are padded. I've often wondered why?

[Mad Steve 1,520]

24 minutes ago, skwonk said:

I thought it was going to be a Landwasserschlepper.

I thought i had that once 🙄😁

[DC3 690]

21 minutes ago, Gorby said:

No I couldn't do that. There are too many useful photos, plans, diagrams and actual dimensions for those. No, I didn't want all that useful information, I had to choose something that no longer exists and all the documentation is crap or was destroyed many years before any of us were even born.

Perhaps I should break all the finger on my right hand so that the build isn't so easy. 

Wow, can't wait for your next project.