Advance Rail

Advance Rail Railway contractor for locomotive, rollingstock, and infrastructure maintenance

Boiler repairs completed. đź‘Ś A reasonable amount of work to repair some issues that this boiler had, leaking stays, strip...
16/11/2025

Boiler repairs completed. đź‘Ś A reasonable amount of work to repair some issues that this boiler had, leaking stays, stripped threads, regulator main steam pipe needed to be longer to have more threads engaging the regulator body for a better seal, other bits needing some TLC, and a few studs, nuts and firedoor hinge fasteners made.

One challenge repairing previously-fired boilers is getting them clean enough for solder to take to the base metal and get a good clean joint.

It passed an in-house hydro test to 200psi. Next step is to get the boiler inspector to check it over and customer install it back in the loco!

A little something different. The new Maitland Hospital had some window problems and a friend who’s a contractor there r...
16/10/2025

A little something different. The new Maitland Hospital had some window problems and a friend who’s a contractor there reached out to see if I could help make some bits that are not commercially available. They are an aluminium ferrule that drives the curtain mechanism.

One challenge to making these is the internal hex . After a raid of my spare Allen key collection, I found a cheap Allen key that was made to an odd size of 3.05mm, which fortunately makes a perfectly oversized broach to force the Allen key into the aluminium to make the hex for the 3mm driving rod.

Extra belts and braces were added to the lathe to enable the tail stock to have the driving force required to force the Allen key into the hole. To remove the Allen key, the whole setup was removed from the lathe and given a small tap with the hammer on the outside of the aluminium to swell it slightly and release the Allen key.

Some more of Ben’s work on his Juliet. The axle pump stretcher was fabricated from flat bar, and silver soldered togethe...
20/09/2025

Some more of Ben’s work on his Juliet. The axle pump stretcher was fabricated from flat bar, and silver soldered together and milled to final size.

The buffer beams are underway requiring milling down from larger and thicker angle. He used the vernier height gauge to measure and mark off the amount to remove to make them 1-1/4” x 3/4” plus a bit of “green” for machining allowance.

It’s been a thrill teaching him basics and he’s getting the hang of setting up the job in the vise, doing the math to convert fractions to decimals, and discerning the difference between climb milling and conventional milling. Also, to learn about thread pitch as threads per inch. Fortunately we had a 9/16” x 26 TPI tap to thread the hole for the axle pump body in the stretcher.

One challenge. I asked him to shut his eyes and assemble nuts and bolts in different order as often times we have to fit bolts into places we can’t see, so we have to “see” by feeling and imagining what’s going on. It’s good to set challenges to make it interesting.

Drilling the 6 holes for the pump stretcher, after Juliet frames have been milled to overall size. The digital readout o...
30/08/2025

Drilling the 6 holes for the pump stretcher, after Juliet frames have been milled to overall size. The digital readout on the mill has saved some of the marking out of the frames by being able to do it by calculation. All good experience!

28/08/2025

Benjamin making a start on his 3.5” gauge live steam “LBSC Juliet” frames. He’s cut the 3mm plate to size, and cleaned the black mill scale off so that they are much nicer to work with. First step is to mill the top and bottom faces and ends to size, in the one setup on the milling machine table.

The new bush has been silver soldered to the boiler barrel, thanks to the help of the young fellas. It was a hot job but...
26/08/2025

The new bush has been silver soldered to the boiler barrel, thanks to the help of the young fellas. It was a hot job but thankfully didn’t take long. Important to flux up surrounding areas to prevent oxidising the adjacent silver solder and evenly heat to prevent stress in the barrel and tubes.

26/08/2025

The 9th year apprentice annealing a piece of copper tube to make a flat sheet, so we can make a boiler for a Tich. This is a simple job of heating and quenching and then opening out as much as it will open up by hand. Repeat a few times and finally finish off the flattening by a hammer and block of wood on the copper to prevent local bruising.

25/08/2025

Needle guns for removing old paint and rust!

Copper boiler repairs. Wall stay replacement, top feed bush replacement, main steam fl**ge repairs. Removal of longitudi...
20/08/2025

Copper boiler repairs. Wall stay replacement, top feed bush replacement, main steam fl**ge repairs. Removal of longitudinal stays prior to hot work.

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North Rothbury, NSW

Telephone

+61421344325

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