Wow! This really is good, Clark! Why didn't someone think of this before? Not a bad idea to turn this into a SITG article, either. Even if you know this, it is nice to have an occasional refresher! Especially if you have a new locomotive and you haven't steamed it yet. Clark, we missed you at Diamondhead. Love and aloha, Vickie-Marie ----- Original Message ----- From: Clark Lord<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Live Steam Railroading and Model Engineering<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: Small Scale Live Steam List<mailto:[email protected]> ; Bob Sorenson<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 8:53 PM Subject: [SSLiveSteam] Small Scale Steamup Advise
Hello all: I thought I would make a listing of items dealing with the care and feeding of our gauge one live steamers. I'm addressing this to a first time owner of a Accucraft engine who is a large scale ride on engineer. First of all it is a live steam engine. Even though it is smaller it does get hot and care is needed when handling the operating model. Steam up supplies Use only distilled water in the boiler. Not de-ionized or tap water or treated water with a boiler treatment. Distilled water. Use only steam oil in the lubricator. Not 30wt motor oil, caster oil, mineral oil or some other concoction. Sulphur Springs Steam Models http://www.sssmodels.com/<http://www.sssmodels.com/> provides it in quart cans at a very nominal cost. Lubricate the motion, wheel bearings and other moving parts with a 20 wt machine oil. I use what is known as 20wt turbine oil. Too thin (red can 3&1) will fly off and too thick (30wt motor oil) will collect grit and gum up the works. I lubricate (oil around for you ride on folks) every other run. Our gauge one steamers can run on alcohol, butane or coal. Most of the Accucraft brand engines are gas fired and use butane. Gas firing is popular because of the ease of use. Just press the supply can filler onto the engine tank and wait. One of the items needed in your steamup kit is a filling adapter for the gas can. They come as a plastic nozzle or a screw on adapter. I use the screw on adapter made by Roundhouse and is available from Sulphur Springs Steam Models, LLC. Another supplier is Texas Roundhouse in Seabrook TX. [EMAIL PROTECTED]<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> You can see the entire Roundhouse line at http://www.roundhouse-eng.com/<http://www.roundhouse-eng.com/> Some notes on gas firing. Butane comes as straight butane. You can find it as the Ronson cigarette lighter skinny cans, cooking gas sold in Asian markets and as iso-butane in sporting goods stores. The Ronson variety is very expensive where the cooking gas is least expensive. It all works. Butane gas boils at around 22F. That means on cold days the output gas pressure will be very low. Some folks put warm water in the tender so that the gas tank is warmed a bit. Another fix (the one I use all the time) is to use a butane/propane mix gas found in sporting goods stores. This is sold for back packers to operate their camp stove gas burner. Because of the butane/propane mix (80%butane/20%propane) the output pressure is much higher and solves the cold weather problems. Again the screw on adapter works for these cans also. Get in the habit of always following the same routine when preparing your engine for a run. That way you won't miss an important item. I start at the front and work back. I usually encounter the cylinder oil lubricator first. After every run you must suck out or drain out the water that displaced the oil on the previous run. That's why Accucraft gave you two syringes. The small one is used to suck out the gunge and water left in the lubricator. The larger one is use to fill the boiler with distilled water. Look down in to the lubricator. If you see the steam line passing through the side of the lubricator, fill with steam oil so that it is even with the steam line. Don't over fill. There is a small hole in the steam line which allows the steam oil to enter and be carried to the cylinders. After the lubricator you might find the gas tank in the cab. Screw on your filler adapter, invert the gas can and press down. You will be transferring liquid butane to the on board tank. Be patient. If it is hissing a lot, move the nozzle around a bit until it seals better. When the tank is full you will get a positive liquid flow from around where the nozzle and tank filler connect. At that time remove your supply can. (A safety note here.) When outside there is no problem with a build up of fumes. Indoors you can have a "pool" of fumes on the track and when you light the engine burner you will get quite a flash. Before lighting inside simply blow the area with fresh air for a few seconds. I mean just use your lungs to blow the area clear of pooled gas. It only takes a few seconds. Another rule about alcohol firing, always move the engine one or two feet from where you fueled before lighting the alcohol burner. Water filling. Some engines require you to remove a filler plug on the top of the boiler or sometimes near the backhead. Use the large syringe to fill the boiler. I seem to recall that some Accucraft engines have a overflow valve in the back head. So you put water in until it comes out the overflow. If you have a water sight glass, fill to 3/4 glass. If you have none of these just fill it to the top and suck out 30 ml of water. This will provide steaming space and you won't have a lot of slugging water going to the cylinders when opening the throttle. Some engines have a water space in the tender and you use the tender hand pump to fill the boiler. Again you must leave steaming space. Firing the engine. First disconnect your engine from the train leaving about a foot space. This is done so you can clear the cylinders of water before attempting to pull the train. On gas fired engines you open the smoke box, light your fireplace lighter wand, open the gas valve in the cab and you should get a pop sound and when you look in the flues you will see the blue flame on the burner. Some engines have two burners and both need to be lit. Play with the firing valve until you get a steady flame, then close the smoke box door. As you gain experience you can "stack light" the burner by leaving the smoke box door closed, turn on the gas slowly and have the bar-b-que lighter flame up next to the stack. Again you will get a pop sound when the burner lights. Learn how your engine sounds when the burner is lit and not lit. There is a difference. Because I run both alcohol and gas fired engines I use the small butane soldering torch that Burns-O-Matic sells. You still need the filler adapter and gas can to refuel your micro torch. Waiting for steam pressure to rise. On Summer days from cold we are talking about 6-8 minutes. On Winter days its more like 10-12 minutes. On Winter days I shorten the time by filling the boiler with warm distilled water. Here we use a dedicated coffee pot to keep the water warm. But you can microwave yours in a Pyrex measuring cup and fill from that source. I always wait until the safety pops off before attempting to move the engine under it's own power. Do this at least once each day. After you proved that the safety works you can skip this part on later runs that day. But on another day, wait until the safety pops. Now that the engine is hot and pressure is up, you can put the engine in forward and open the throttle a bit. You will have lots of water gurgling at the top of the stack as the cylinders warm. Push the engine forward a bit and then put it in reverse and push the engine back. Again have the throttle opened just a bit. Soon the engine will begin to move smoothly. Now you can backup and couple to your train. I put the engine in forward and open the throttle just a bit and wait. If no movement open it more until you get moving. A good speed is a slow walk by you. I have found that a normal walking speed is around 50 smph for a 1:32 scale engine and 25 smph for a 1:20 scale engine. But you are the engineer and you can run as fast or slow as you like. Most dedicated live steam tracks are level and you can set the throttle and just let it go. If there are tight curves or grades then you will need to adjust the throttle setting. Each layout is different. I am a purest so I manually operate my engines. Many folks install R/C control for throttle and reverse. I would think this is a good idea if your layout is on the ground and has grades. Length of run. Accucraft (and many other manufactures) engineer their product so that fuel runs out before the water is exhausted. You can expect upwards to 1 hour of continuous running on the larger engines. The little Accucraft Ruby will do about 15 minutes on a single filling. Large engines like the 4449 Daylight have an axle pump so you can fill the boiler from the tender while moving. Things to watch for. IF the engine stops suddenly that usually means it's out of water. Go over and turn off the burner. Allow the engine to cool naturally and then push/carry your engine back to the steamup location. A gas fired engine with burner on and no water can be ruined in about 60 seconds. IF the engine slowly coasts to a stop that usually means it's out of fuel. You will need several runs to see just what your engine likes. They are very forgiving and you will have hours of fun. Trains. A engine with a train behind it will perform better than when running light. My little Ruby is happy with just 2 or 3 cars. But with my Aster Western Maryland Shay I can easily pull 50 ore cars on level track. Lastly, find and join your local garden railway club. I'm sure you will find others with engines just like yours. And if you are lucky, a purpose built elevated live steam track to run on. You need to know that there are national and regional steamup conventions you can attend. I am very much involved with the National Summer Steamup held in Sacramento CA each year. http://www.summersteamup.com/<http://www.summersteamup.com/> The granddaddy of them all is the International Small Scale Steamup held in Diamondhead MS each January. http://www.diamondhead.org/<http://www.diamondhead.org/> Take care and Happy Steaming. If you have further questions, email me and I'll try and answer them for you. Clark Lord Las Vegas Live Steamers Las Vegas Garden Railway Society Riverside Live Steamers Marcopa Live Steamers Train Mountain Museum _______________________________________________ SSLiveSteam mailing list Send messages: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Cancel subscription: http://postfix.45mm.com/mailman/listinfo/sslivesteam<http://postfix.45mm.com/mailman/listinfo/sslivesteam> Rules: http://www.45mm.com/sslivesteam_guide.html<http://www.45mm.com/sslivesteam_guide.html> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://postfix.45mm.com/pipermail/sslivesteam/attachments/20070208/e3e768fa/attachment.html _______________________________________________ SSLiveSteam mailing list Send messages: [email protected] Cancel subscription: http://postfix.45mm.com/mailman/listinfo/sslivesteam Rules: http://www.45mm.com/sslivesteam_guide.html
