Lube It Up!

Been getting emails about folks liking what I've been doing and the "different" ways I've been doing them.  Here's more.  After I made the axle pumps, I wanted to find a way to lube them and the eccentrics without having to get under the engine every so often, so I came up with a way to do this and minimize the plumbing.  I hollowed out one brake hanger bracket, drilled, tapped and inserted tiny hose fittings.  I then silver soldered a thin piece of metal to cover up where I milled out the center so you can't see what I did.  Here's a picture of the bracket.    

The plan is to extend an oil feed line to an oil cup in a more convenient location.  Will determine where once I get the boiler on.  Here is the setup with all the oil lines.  I have one oil feed line and 4 oil lines out, 2 going to each axle pump piston housing and the other 2 going to each eccentric. 

As you can see in the picture that I added a cross member to stiffen up the frame.  When this thing runs on air, there's some heavy torque going on.

I have ball/roller/needle bearings on everything except the front truck.  The Little Engines design used plane bearings.  I made them with an oil cellar stuffed with velour cloth.  Again, I didn't want to try and oil these things once the boiler and everything else was put together so I came up with this setup.  I made a manifold and bolted it on the front truck.  I then used the same miniature tube fittings I used on the axle pumps and screwed them in the 4 journals and manifold.  The plan again was to position an oil cup somewhere where I could easily get to it once everything was assembled.  Here's some pics.  If you look close enough, you'll see the manifolds and the tubing, etc.