This simple locomotive was built primarily as an exercise in machining coupling rods.
To keep things simple it was designed to be battery powered rather than use a line pick up system.
Coupling rods are tricky components to make. They are ideally loose enough to be a running fit but are not so loose that they rattle or have slop in them. This is difficult because of the build up of tolerances which occur in the whole system as shown by the diagram on the left.
To get a smooth running fit........
- The PCD of all the crank pins must be the same. The exact distance is not important but they all need to be the same.
- Each crank pin must be parallel to the main axle, which should also be perpendicular to the wheel.
- Each axle must have one wheel's crank pin, set at 90º to the other. This exact angle is not important but again all the axles must have the same angle (known as wheel quartering).
- The distance between the holes in the coupling rod must be the same as the distance between axle centres.
If all these parameters are exact, the coupling rods should run smoothly.