A Great Day Today When I Ordered The Little Samson Traction Engine Boiler
Continuing with the story of building the 6″ scale Little Samson Traction Engine model at my model engineering workshop in Thailand. With the castings now on a ship bound for Thailand it was time to turn my attention to obtaining the boiler which I would be unable to do myself because of all the stringent requirements of insurance companies for pressel vessel manufacture.
On Tuesday 13 May 2014, I had a telephone call from Tony Baldwin of AJB Engineering in response to a message I had left him on his answerphone.
Ajb Engineering (Ripley) Ltd is a company that is well respected for making large traction engine boilers and was recommended to me by Edward George of Little Samson Models (where I bought my Little Samson Traction Engine castings).
We discussed building the boiler and Tony said that he could build it for me but that it would take up to 9 months before it was ready.
Tony explained that it only takes two to three weeks to build the boiler but he needs to get a batch of six to eight boilers finished so that RSA Inspector can inspect them all at the same time. This saves a vast amount of money – to have individual inspections for each boiler would be prohibitively expensive Tony said.
(At the time I hadn’t heard of RSA but assumed they were the boiler inspectors. A quick search on the internet found the RSA website. It seems that RSA is a huge inspection company created in 1996 following the merger of two of the largest insurance companies in the UK, Royal Insurance and Sun Alliance.)
By the way my father used to be a boiler and pressure vessel inspector for Sun Alliance. I guess that’s where I got my engineering tendencies from.
Tony quoted me a price for the boiler which was within my expectations and the next day Wednesday 14 May 2014 I sent off a cheque for 20% of the total price as a deposit.
My boiler for the half-size Little Samson Traction Engine was now on order!
I have also arranged to go to see Tony next Thursday. I found out that Ajb Engineering is at Codnor only about 10 miles from my house in Nottingham.
Some Facts About The 6″ Little Samson Traction Engine Boiler
Here are some facts about the boiler for the 6 inch Little Samson Boiler to give you an indication of the size:-
| Inches | mm | |
| Barrel Diameter | 12 | 305 |
| Barrel Thickness | 0.375 | 10 |
| Overall Length | 42.5 | 1,080 |
| Tube Plate Thickness | 0.5 | 12 |
| Backhead Thickness | 0.375 | 10 |
| Working Pressure | 125 PSI |
And here are a couple of photos of a 6 inch scale Little Samson boiler made by AJB Engineering:-
(With thanks to Edward George of Little Samson Models Website)
Hi Alan
Just to let you know that I hope to be back in Thailand on the 4th of June for 26 days. Just let me know when you want to visit. When I shipped my stuff to Thailand I always used the wife’s name. So she could do all of the paper work. As soon as they see an Expat the tea money required tends to increase.
Best of luck.
George
Hi George the timing is good this time. You’ll be in Thailand until 30th June. Our container arrives on 15th June. Allow for a week for unloading and I expect to have to go down to customs on customs around 20th or 23rd so that should fit in nicely with your visit.
However I do have some reservations about combining the two activities on a single day as explained at http://modelengineeringinthailand.com/models-alans/building-little-samson-6-inch-scale-traction-engine/boilers-for-6-inch-scale-little-samson/#comment-583
Hi Alan and all fellow model makers.
It looks like your dream is well under way.
The nine months waiting time should fly by as you will be very busy with machining the casting you have.
Keep the photos coming helps brighten up my time at work. Twenty days to go then back to Thailand and my workshop.
George
Hi George,
Thanks for the comment. I’ll keep the pictures coming as soon as I have them.
I visited AJB Engineering (Tony Baldwin) yesterday and saw plenty of large scale traction engine boilers being built. There are a lot of photos of large scale traction engine boilers under construction on the Boilers For 6 Inch Scale Little Samson” web page
Tony will be building the boiler for my Little Samson Traction Engine.
The nine months will fly by. I was in Thailand for eight months on my last visit and no where near completed the Stuart Turner Victoria mill engine I am building and that’s a miniscule project compared to the Little Samson traction engine.
According to my calendar you should be in Thailand around the 5th of June. We arrive on 8th June and our container arrives on the 15th. We have to go to the Laem Chabang container port to show my passport. I’m not exactly sure when that will be but the container arrives on 15th June.
Since Laem Chabang is close to Pattayah perhaps we can meet up again. I’d like to take some photos of your models and ypur model engineering workshop.
Best Regards
Alan Brown
The boiler in the photos looks quite nice…right out of the 1800’s.
Should look very nice on your scale tractor.