Here, some days later, at the "Riihimäen Muottivalu" foundry, is a whole bunch of cores made with the core boxes shown above. These will suffice for four pairs of castings.

The sand molds are ready for assembly - this is for one of the two cast parts for the front truck.

The cores are carefully placed into the molds.

The pins that will keep the two mold halves together are also installed. Note that this mold has no frames - the sand is mixed with a resin, and hardens so that it can be used without cope and drag frames.

A special glue is spread on one half of the mold...

... and the other half is carefully placed upon it.

Here are to lower mold halves for the second cast part of the front truck.

The top half can be seen in this shot, in the hand at right. Again, the cores are set into their recesses...

... and glued in place.

In a few days time, Veijo hopes he will have four nice pairs of castings for his loco - one for his own use, one spare, and maybe a couple for the other builders who are currently building or planning to build a similar Tk3 2-8-0 engine...

Less than a week later:

Here are the castings! Not machined yet, just cleaned up and sprues removed...

There's quite a bit of work still to be done until these parts are ready to be attached to the loco!

Here is the machined casting, with axle boxes and hangers:

While in Riihimäki, we checked out a preserved narrow-gauge loco that was in heavy passenger use decades ago. This engine was made by Tampella in Finland...

... and, as can be seen from the stack, it was a wood burner!

Outside Stephenson valve gear!

A nice little coach...

... with two-axle bogies. The gauge is 600 mm, just under two feet.

Returning home via Veijo's worksop, I took a few shots of his "Quickie" loco, which has received a few more details.

At a flea market, Veijo found a "Navigator" (a controller for a trolling motor) which will enable him to control the engine from a car coupled to the loco. The original controls in the cab are for diminutive-sized engineers only, see this page!

The electrics are getting more complicated!

The paintwork has also progressed nicely.

Well, since his 2-8-0 steam loco to-be is a wood burner, Veijo has started making fuel for it...

... here's a bunch of split logs! Note the scale - the cigarrette lighter gives you an idea of the size of this firewood...

A car is also in the making. The frame is welded from 15x15 mm L-profiled hot roll iron.

I helped by making the pattern for the axle boxes, which are cast iron. Real leaf springs here, too!

More info & photos to come in the future....