Friends, After some correspondence with Vance Bass and with his kind help getting over some initial problems with my Ruby, I'm on the list. Ruby is my second live steam locomotive - my first is a scratch built "dickins" based on the articles that appeared in "Live Steam" back in 1976. Some images of that model, along with some images of the frame of a 4-6-4 in 1-1/4" gauge that I'm building, are posted at http://privat.schlund.de/h/hubertwetekamp/oscaletrains/casey.htm. My adventures with Ruby started out with some problems. It would take 8-10 minutes to get steam up and I had a very hard time keeping the flame going in the boiler flue. It kept insisting on burning in the smoke box. I consulted with Vance and he made several suggestions, one of which was to ensure that the burner had an airtight fit in the boiler flue. (Just as an aside, some of Vance's e-mail to me had time stamps showing 2:00 AM. You KNOW he is a dedicated fan!) That suggestion made sense since the burner was loose in the flue. By this time I had done 4 or 5 test runs with Ruby up on blocks. Performance deteriorated on each successive run. By the fifth run it was taking 12 minutes to get steam up and even with the throttle open only 1/4 turn the boiler quickly ran out of steam. To seal the burner in the flue tube I tried wrapping some asbestos thread around the burner flange. That bunched up when I inserted the burner back in the flue and did not seal the opening. I then cut a strip of aluminum foil 1/8” wide and put two turns of this over the burner flange. That worked – sort of. I discovered the burner would not burn too well. No matter how high I turned up the gas valve the burner would just sort of sit there, acting like something was blocking the fuel line. It still took well over 10 minutes to get steam up and, with the wheels turning, the boiler would run out of steam in a minute or two. When the fuel was exhausted after an 18 minute burn there was 50 ml of water remaining in the boiler of the original 80 ml. Hmmmmm. Something is still wrong. I pulled the burner and removed the tube between the fuel tank and the burner to inspect everything for blockage. Nothing apparent. I pulled the screen off the burner and everything looked OK. I even removed the throttle stem and the filler valve from the fuel tank to inspect them. Nothing amiss. I put everything back together, except that I left the burner out in open air to see how it would work. It took 2 matches to get the burner lit and it burned very softly for about a minute, even with the fuel valve opened two full turns. Then, the burner began to “wind up” until it was roaring. I hurriedly turned it down and now had full control over the burner from a very soft flame (with the valve barely opened) to a solid roar (with the valve opened a half turn). I conjecture that, with my initial difficulties and the flame burning in the smoke box, the burner screen got clogged up with carbon deposits or something from incompletely burned fuel and oily water spatter from the steam exhaust. Once that stuff burned off the burner began to function as it should. All this took about 2 minutes of burning. I shut down the burner and got ready for a test run. I had Ruby on blocks over a metal pad on my work bench so the wheels could turn freely and so the oily steam condensate could be easily be cleaned up. I rewrapped the burner flange with a fresh piece of aluminum foil, then inserted the burner into the boiler flue. The burner lit off immediately on the first match and burned correctly in the boiler flue. This time the safety valve was popping off in about 5 minutes and the wheels were turning a minute later, after I worked the water out of the cylinders. With the fuel valve open about 3/8 of a turn and the burner at a soft roar I could keep the engine at full throttle (two turns on the throttle valve) and still have the safety lifting. The two foot high plume of steam from the stack showed up nicely in the cold air of my garage. Very, very satisfying. Not counting the initial 2 minutes with the burner going in open air, the fuel lasted something over 14 minutes, most of the time with the burner at a soft roar. Cutting that back would doubtless add many minutes to the burn time. At the end of the run, with the throttle cranked up high most of the time, there remained about 8 ml of water in the boiler. In a more typical situation, with the wheels turning at an equivalent of about 20 mph the water should remain at quite a safe level throughout the burner operating time. With the burner at a lower setting I won’t be losing steam through the safety valve and with the throttle at a lower setting I won’t be using quite so much water. Those are things I'll try another day. So, thats the first steps for me with this new machine. I'm looking forward to putting together an outdoor track to let Ruby exercise on something other than test blocks. I'll go back to the archives on this list to see what else I can learn about this little gem. I hope the info I am posting here could be of some service to others. Casey Sterbenz ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
