I forgot to mention the reason for the incompatibilty of Hornby's live steam with their (or other's) other equipment; quite simply, any DC or DCC loco left on the line and not isolated when the steamer was running would have been fried by the 15 volts!. So everything else had to come off the layout. This lacked appeal for serious modellers.Below is a link showing how it should have worked. If only this rose-tinted picture had been borne out in the ramshackle reality!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7jjJamfl_c
The crash of your Aster Mikado was stomach-churning. Horrifying to watch such a wonderful machine going over the brink, but happily it survived. Asters, in this part of the world, are reckoned to be the Rolls Royce toys, while Accucraft or Roundhouse, say, would be the Fords. Asters, of course, are made available as kits, but they are so darned expensive that many of us would be loath to risk the construction job ourselves, and sure enough, the used ones with the highest values have turned out to be those built by known and reputable kit-bashers, or supplied RTR by Aster. ‘’Built by John Doe’’ is not a high recommendation , however much Mr. Doe might have enjoyed the job and the consequent satisfaction of owning his own work.
But not all Asters are equal. Your Mikado is magnificent, while other are more hum-drum. I’ve seen their Shay, of which two versions were produced over the years, though none recently, and the simplicity of the thing seems to have defeated them; however finicky they are about detail, there simply isn’t that much you can do to a Shay without prettifying it, which is not what it was all about. They even painted the end-boards bright red, something never seen on the originals, I believe, in an attempt to tart it up. And a lot of brightly polished brass and glossy paintwork simply added to the nightclub glitter, which is completely at variance with the battered-hat Hillbilly ambience of the timber (oops, lumber!), cement and general dirt-road world of the real Shays.
Speaking of crashes; I did the same to my Hornby 00 gauge Flying Scotsman, which took off from table-top height at a scale speed of about 75 MPH (like you, and unlike the Canadians, we still cling to the Mile). I wasn’t as lucky as you and needed new bodywork. The Hornby live-steam is something which may not have crossed the Atlantic. It was patented by a private individual back in 1993, who then sold the royalties to Hornby, who launched it in 2003. Unfortunately for the inventor, it was not a commercial success, and died two years ago, making my two locos collector’s items. It failed for a number of reasons: First, it wasn’t compatible with any of their (or anyone else’s) electric trains, although it was electric powered. The boiler, in the tender, drew seven amps at 15 volts to boil the water (distilled!) which was then superheated in the loco, driving two cylinders. The external valve gear was bogus, since the steam was actually controlled by a clever sliding-valve system, which was the really bright idea of the whole thing. But (second big failure) the guy who designed it was not an electronic expert, and all the control systems are simple electro-mechanical, much like a 1950s washing machine! This makes driving it a very difficult and skilful job (hence my crash) .
At a time when all electric train manufacturers had embraced both mutual compatibility and DCC computer control, the Hornby was a sorry anachronism, and failed the big test – would the real fans buy it? What it does do, and spectacularly, is to spray oil everywhere. I never smell hot oil outdoors, but indoors the Hornby makes a real aroma – stronger than coffee – and delivers so much oil over the body that wheel lubrication is unnecessary.
Running well, it can be fun, but a real handful. One of the interesting things about it how, even at such small scale, the awesome power of steam is apparent. I can pull as many as 12 coaches or twice that number of wagons, much more than any electric loco on that scale. It's still open to someone to create a decent control system for it. The original uses a stepping-motor, like an old golf-ball electric typewriter (remember ‘em?) which rotates the valving, so you have to go all the way from reverse through many ‘steps’ to full-steam ahead. Since you never know where the regulator is to begin with, this can mean anything from a spectacular wheel-spinning take-off to an unexpected reverse into the scenery. The more oil she spits, the more the wheels spin. Track cleaning is a chore!
But in spite of my criticisms, it’s a nice piece of precision engineering; pity it was never perfected. But back to the oil; I have no idea what she burns, as she came with a large bottle of something oily, which I still have years later. Hornby, incidentally, charged five pounds Sterling (about seven Bucks-fifty U.S.) for 500 millilitres of distilled water. Whiskey would be cheaper. This is where we came in, i think!
-Al
Well... Originally (1:1 real world) steam operations utilized just animal tallow for lubrication and that worked okay at the low temperatures (250 deg(F) to 274 deg (F)) of the low pressures possible (less than 15 to 30 PSIG). When metallurgy improved such that higher pressures were possible, the temperature went up accordingly and the tallow "cokes" (the dissolving volatiles boil out, leaving behind solid carbon compounds) in the heat. The solids scar the surfaces of the valve and cylinder causing wear and loss of steam pressure.
The tallow was then "compounded" with mineral oils that have higher breakdown temperatures so that problem went away... In the real world, anyway.
What follows is just my surmising as to what the state of affairs are now in our toy Live Steam world:
Many of the companies that make our toys follow practice set by the early individual designers/builders of those that modeled Live Steam. Not all of those people were "Design Engineers". They may have been excellent machinists and modelers but they did not necessarily take into account the things that miniaturization brings to the Live Steam world.
I think it was found early on that putting the actual throttle/regulator in the cab was easier than trying to put it in the front end or in the steam dome (typical real world practices) and making the mechanical connections to a lever in the cab. This required running a pipe from the throttle in the cab to the cylinders at the other end and that pipe is necessarily small (scale) and loses heat rapidly which can actually condense all the steam back to water and water does not work well in the cylinders. Insulating the pipe does not help much because the pipe only has heat applied when the throttle is open so initial starting characteristics would be poor (or really bad!). Putting this pipe through the firebox and a flue cured this problem and most heat sources were wood, coal, or alcohol, which are not all that hot.
Original lubrication was just adding oil to the cylinders manually and short run times kept damage to a minimum when the oil wore away. Adding a mechanical lubricator to pump oil into the cylinders is a good addition, but that is expensive compared to the Roscoe or Displacement Lubricator because the latter has NO moving parts. Adding lubrication on the fly then extended the run times with much lesser possibilities of damage.
Putting the lubricator in the front end may have been problematic because in the early toy locos there was just no room set aside for it. Putting it in the cab was simpler. There is more heat there to keep the oil thinner, too. But this necessitates the oil being in the pipe that passes through the burner area.
When the butane burner came along no thought was given to the problem of coking in the pipe. Partially because they were probably running just Mineral Oil. For the machinist builder, damage to the mechanical parts was not as much of a problem as for the hobbyist that buys the toy. The machinist can readily, through his talent, build replacement parts. The purchaser hobbyist is stuck with a pretty hunk of non-working toy when something breaks.
Better lubrication is part of the answer to the wearing of materials and longevity of the toy. But now there is a problem of the design that puts the dry pipe in the butane fire.
Some manufacturers moved the Roscoe Lubricator to the front or run the dry pipe through the boiler water space (rather than through the firebox/flue) and others have tried putting it outside and insulating it. I think Roundhouse (and some others) moved the dry pipe in the flue to be below the burner, getting it out of the flame itself... But then other design changes have occurred that turns the burner upside-down to get the flame on the bottom of the flue to reduce the possible damage that can occur if the user lets the water level drop too low, exposing the top of the flue. Of course, this puts the dry pipe right back in the flame again.
Roundhouse decided to work with the oil formulation to cure the coking problem.
I suppose I would recommend a formulation that has less tallow for engines that pass oil through the flame area. I think your referenced 220 weight oil is similar to what the numbers mean here. I use Chevron 460 Compounded Steam Cylinder Oil in my Aster locos, but as I understand the need for lubrication, I bet the 220 would work just as well. I happen to prefer the thicker stuff since I think I get better seals in the glands with it so I have less steam leaking there. But I can't say that with any certainty since I have not really tried it.
I also used the 460 stuff as my sealant on the gaskets and I think that would be, at least marginally, better than the lighter stuff. (This was a recommendation from the vendor I bought my first Aster from... Aster recommends (and supplies) a bathtub caulking compound for this purpose but it is more like glue and presents problems in future disassembly needs. I have not had to replace gaskets when I have had to remove the steam chest covers... Just used the undamaged old one, resoaked in oil, at reassembly.)
As I stated in my earlier volumes (I am wordy, ain't I?) the use and formulation of steam oil for our toys have been discussed and cussed many times over the years, and we probably ain't done yet. Our toys are relatively expensive so oil is important to keep them in good working order for many years.
I may have a Lathe and Mill, but I have learned I am NO machinist (I take perfectly good scrap bits and bobs of metal and turn them in to mountains of chips and perfectly useless blobs of plain ol' scrap!) so I pay a lot of attention to the care and feeding of my toys... watching them run is all the fun for me, not the making of replacement parts... or more correctly the purchase of replacement parts!
Well, then again, I don't have good evidence of being all that careful with my toys... See:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PweRsxbN3c
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5eCPWpEAPw
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
That pretty well wraps up the water topic, but i'm still fixated on the oil/tallow subject. Someone here who runs a Roundhouse loco tells me that they changed the oil they recommended for steam running their engines. Change, unless improvement is clearly indicated, often has darker implications. Sure enough, it seems that blockages were the trigger, caused by carbonised oil - the same thing you mentioned. In this case, the change followed the switch from coal or alcohol burning to butane gas. The current oil recommended is 'Compounded Bearing Oil 220' (220 being the weight or viscosity, though I don't know if the USA viscosity name is the same, or if the same system is used. In cars we used to have SAE, for Society of American Engineers, but this is obvously something else). This oil, Roundhouse say, was chosen after they adopted internal gas firing and some engines were experiencing blocked super heater pipes after prolonged use. The blockages were caused by carbonised oil, though this had never been a problem with the earlier externally fired models. The key points that dictated what oil to use were as follows (Roundhouse say).
What was needed was an oil that would be picked up and carried by the (relatively) low pressure wet steam, then travel through all the small diameter piping, through the high temperature of the superheater (without being carbonised), and arrive in the correct proportion in the cylinders where it cools again before doing its job. All of this pointed to a medium weight oil so that it would pick up and pass quickly along the narrow pipes and one with a low 'solids' content so that carbonisation in the superheater was kept to a minimum. The 'solids' reffered to, are additives such as tallow and other fats, which are used as they are a good lubricator in wet conditions.To deliver the correct amount of 220 weight oil, the feed hole in the lubricator had to be reduced (my emphasis) in size as the now thinner oil picked up and flowed far more freely. SO! Just as you suggested, the oil was going everywhere, including over the driver's pants, so they had to thicken it!
Happily for me, my Shay don't have any superheating, but i still wonder about the whole topic.
- Al
I can see where you could run into problems with regulations due to the concern of someone going beyond getting distilled water and concentrating the alcohol content from various organic "stews". We, also, here on this side of the pond have had, and still have, problems with the "Moonshiner", but that paranoia does not seem to have been transfered to the makers of distilled water... nor the regulation of machines to make distilled water.
Using the wallpaper stripper, or carpet steamer, or bathroom steamer/cleaner ("As Advertised on TV"!) one could get a lot of distilled water, but unless you enclosed the capture system in some way you will run the risk of contamination of the output similar to the dehumidifier, though probably less so, since it would produce more output over a shorter period of time.
Another problem is that they tend to spit water (which contains the dissolved minerals and other contaminants) so unless you took care to keep the splashing down or exclude that water from the output you don't get pure water. My sister has one of the bathroom cleaning steamers and I see the light haze of calcium that it leaves on everything. I have read the instructions on a rental carpet steamer and it recommended using steam distilled water in it to begin with to reduce the build up of deposits in the machine itself!
This brings up the cost question... if the machine to make distilled water is more expensive than the train you are making the water for, so as to preserve the toy, then it seems to be counter-economic to do so!
Be careful if you attempt this scheme and try to direct the steam in to a set of pipes to condense the steam back into water (i.e.: the typical coil of tubing of a 'Still) in that you don't want to risk a boiler explosion caused by sealing it up tightly (to keep out contaminants and reduce water losses because the steam drifts out of the system). There have been many a moonshiner's 'Still explode because they are not usually engineered/built as pressure vessels, get clogged due to the solids getting spit into the tubing, and the desire of the moonshiner to increase output or to get the last bit of booze out of the mash in the 'Still and so builds a bigger fire (if a little bit of fire is good, then a blazing furnace must be better... right?) KABOOM!
Then there are those that die because they thought an automobile radiator would make a good condenser, not realizing that the alcohol would dissolve (and thus what they then drink contains) the lead, cadmium and other heavy/poisonous metals use to manufacture the radiator.
Making a 'Still is not hard, surviving it requires some attention to details!
If I could not get distilled water, I suppose I would go for the dehumidifier water if I could not see dust or other stuff in it. Filtered rainwater would be my second choice. Reverse Osmosis water would be next, if I could get it and it were not expensive.
Considering the word "Distilled"s association with your government's revenue generating potential, could it be that "Distilled Water" goes by a different name over there? I mean, we have "GAS" but you have "PETROL", we have a "wrench" and you have a "spanner", "Alcohol" and "Meths", "throttle" and "regulator" - maybe you should be looking for some other name that means the same thing???? "Purified"? "Filtered"? "De-mineralized" (as opposed to Deionized)? What you want is water that does not contain anything that would be left behind when the water is removed by vaporizing it via heat.
That’s an encyclopaedic knowledge of water for steam engines, Semper. I’m amazed that you can buy distilled over the counter . Here, in the country which invented whiskey, and gave it its name, there’s, let’s say, a certain ambiguity about distilling. For teetotallers, it was the devil’s brew; for the excise and taxmen it was heaven-sent; for those in the middle, it was useful for rubbing on a horse’s injured limb. The original stills were known as ‘’pot-stills’’, using a rather tortuous process. When the Scots got in on the act later, they invented the ‘’patent still’’ which produced much more, much more easily , and soon conferred on them world domination in the moonshine business, though seasoned drinkers say theirs is an insipid product, not to be compared to the sharper, more acquired taste, of Irish, which is, of course, why it doesn’t sell so well. Like Heinz Beanz, an unchallenging taste is more likely to succeed in the mass market.
The patent still uses a continuous fractional-distillation process, not unlike that used to make gasoline (and the mineral oil for steam locos), which is cheaper and faster.
Never mind where it comes from now ( I gather that Suntory, from Japan, is now the world’s biggest selling ‘’Scotch’’ Whiskey). Notice how the Scots hijacked the spelling too; whisky, not whiskey as in Irish. One brand of Irish whisky (Paddy) spelt itself Scotch, because the label-artist was semi-literate. Unfortunately this curiosity has disappeared because some busybody decided to correct the spelling. Nowadays, if I visit a bar which has been carefully tricked out to look as if it came out of the Titanic, I can confidently point out to the owner that his antique or ‘’period’’ whiskey mirrors or signs are bogus, as their spelling is correct!
Moonshine, as you will gather, looms large here, though rarely visible, a hangover, so to speak,from an earlier era. It surfaces only at some country fairs, but it would be a brave man who would drink the stuff. Running a still without a special licence is illegal, even if it produces only water for my Shay, so jealously do the taxmen guard this income stream. Even school laboratories have their stills inspected by taxmen to see that nothing illegal is taking place.
Of course, a little imagination goes a long way . Wasn’t it Einstein who said that imagination is more important than knowledge, because knowledge was limited? It occurs to me that a wallpaper stripper, which produces a lot of steam, could be teamed with, say, a metal baking tray sitting in a bath of cold water, to produce lots of distilled water. The freezer ice, rainwater-barrel, or air-conditioner dehumidifier might well be contaminated, as you suggest (and the ice-cubes tray certainly is), but the above method might be purer?
Southern Steam Trains is a great site! It is aimed primarily for Aster locomotives, but the general information is applicable to all of our toys.
It is always a shock to us in the U.S.A. to hear folk from other places lament the difficulty of getting Distilled Water. I just go to the grocery store and get it by the gallon jug, for about a dollar, in the aisle where there are the other types of bottled water, We can get just plain bottled water, filtered water, flavoured water, baby formula water and a couple dozen other water "formlations"... Some are nothing more than somebody held a bottle under the tap in some city.
But Distilled Water is just one of the types on the shelf. Easy to get, cheap, almost always available. (The only time I ever saw the shelves empty was at the end of 1999 when folk were panicking about the "Millenia" computer meltdown.) I have no idea why they sell enough of it to stock so much all the time... I suppose there are people who (like me) like to cook with it because of the poor flavour of the tap water. Not that the tap water here is bad, but I just don't like the taste of it.
If you cannot get true Distilled Water, then there are other alternatives.
Dehumidifier water is probably okay, as long as it does not contain too much dust or airborne grease and other organic and inorganic matter from the air. I'd do a simple inspection of the water to see if there is stuff in it. Fill a good clear glass with water and look at it. Maybe use a magnifying glass. I would not use water from a dehumidifier that is in or near a kitchen (grease and odors) or in a place where there is a possible problem with mold or mildew (airborne spores). If there is any particulate matter, maybe it could be filtered to remove the dust and stuff. Coffee filter? Paint filter? Maybe a good lint free cloth filter? Again, LOOK at it to see if you see stuff floating around. I am fairly certain there won't be any dissolved minerals that you cannot see.
Same goes for rain water. Rain water itself is "sun distilled", but it picks up particulates in the air... as well as acids from pollution. But once it has fallen it can pick up lots of other stuff from the roof to the eaves and downspouts... leaves, bird droppings, spiderwebs, mold, moss, etc. Again, I guess you could filter it well.
You mention you got "Filtered Water"... so what did the water start as? Was it tap water with chlorine and fluoride added in addition to the dissolved calcium and other minerals and then the particulates filtered out? Not quite the same as rain or dehumidifier water so I doubt if it is good enough.
Water derived from "Reverse Osmosis" might be okay as I think that removes most of the mineral content as well as particulates, but I am not sure of that.
I am not sure if defrost water from the freezer is a good source. It usually does not taste good if it is on any food so I figure it contains organic matter (aromas from the frozen food?) and that would just be contaminants in the boiler. (Though I should point out that in the real world of 1:1 scale steamers, they used to put a sack of potatoes in the boiler to reduce foaming! Of course, they also had to do "Blow downs" regularly to eliminate the sludge from the mud ring at the bottom of the boiler!... Something few of any of our boilers are capable of.)
One thing I do recommend is to NOT use "Deionized Water". Water likes to have ions in it and will drag them from anything it touches that might give some up and metals do that readily. You do not want parts of the boiler (especially any bronze fittings) to be giving away parts of itself! Some people claim to use deionized water without problems but others claim to have fittings disintegrate after only a year or so.
Another myth I'd like to dispel here. I have read many places where people recommend that you boil the water before you put it in the boiler. All that would do is concentrate the impurities! I think this got started because someone recommended heating the water to save fuel in the engine by starting with hot water. But someone thought it had to do with "Purifying the water" and that is just bunk... what do you think will happen to the water once it is in the boiler?
And the idea of starting with hot water really does not save all that much fuel. It takes 1 BTU to raise 1 pound of water 1 degree Fahrenheit, so going from, say 70 to 212, takes some fraction of the (142 unit) difference (the fraction being how much of a pound of water is in your boiler). But it takes another 970 to convert that pound of water at 212 degrees to steam at 212 degrees. So it would require 1,112 BTU to make steam out of that pound of un-pre-heated 70 degree water.
When you pre-boil the water, not only does this concentrate impurities, but, note that the water will stop boiling and start to cool as soon as you take it off the heat. Depending on how long it takes to get the "used-to-be-boiling" water to the toy choo-choo, it not be 212 degrees anymore, but could be considerably less - maybe only around 170 degrees (just a 'suppose' guess)... yes, HOT, but you still have to add back that lost heat, so you need to add maybe 40 to 50 BTU in addition to the 970 needed to convert that water to steam. So "pre-boiling" the water saves you maybe 100 BTU worth of fuel out the 1,112 that would be needed if you did not pre-heat it. This discounts other losses that really should be taken into account, like heating the boiler shell itself, but pre-boiling the water is somewhat a waste of time.
I'd rather spend any additional time required to fully heat the water in the loco, by "oiling around" than to spend extra minutes in the kitchen filling a pot, heating it on the stove and then transferring it one more time to the loco... Just not time well spent in my book!
All of this has been argued, hashed, and debated over the years in books, magazines and the internet forums (My personal favourite is "MyLargeScale dot com") and my words are a conglomeration of what I have read, been told, and figured out all on my own. You will have to make up your own mind as to how much store you put into it (and all the other advice you will find on the web).
Hi: Your movie of the Mt. Pleasant meeting was pretty good. I liked the fact that the Shay was the only one of the three locos to *** the hill without running out of steam, so to speak. Not the quickest lady maybe, but certainly the most sure-footed on a steep gradient, which is what this design was all about .
Your strictures about which SCO to use are wise, and I've come across a piece by a guy called Harry Wade, who would seem to agree with everything you say about steam cylinder oil. (web address below). Of course this is not the only vexed question for me. Water, the staple diet of the steamer, also poses problems. I have heard (and read) a lot about distilled water. I asked a local supplier for some and she happily agreed that she could get it. When it arrived it was marked ''purified water''. I eventually got to the guy in the laboratory whose label appeared on the item and he confessed that it was not distilled but deionised. I decided to abandon the whole idea and use either (a) defrost water from my fridge/freezer, or (b) from my dehumidifier/air conditioner, or (c) filtered rainwater. What do you think? There is no queston of my using the ordinary water supply, as this is so calcified locally that it used to turn my late wife's hair green if she used it for shampooing!
regards, Al
http://www.southernsteamtrains.com/misc/steam-oil-hwade.htm
The animal fat is usually beef tallow. The mineral oil does most of the lubricating, but since it won't emulsify with the steam it won't flow to the right places. The tallow does mix with the steam well and carries the oil with it to the cylinder walls and the piston rod gland, but it is easily burnt at high pressure steam temperatures. Thus either by itself does not work... Either, won't spread or will char and become grit instead of lubrication, but together in the "right" porportions does it right. The argument now is what are the right porportions!
REAL "Steam Cylinder Oil" is the only thing you should use. Automotive motor oil contains detergents that remove the oil coating in a steam engine and other oils don't get to the corrrect places in the cylinder. Years ago people used to use plain "medicinal" mineral oil and I guess it did okay in small very low pressure (5 -10 psi) engines (wobblers and other "toy" engines), but in the more modern replicas of Steam Locomotives with their higher pressures (30 to 60 psi) need better lubrication. Some people advocate using Marvel Mystery Oil and Chainsaw oil, but you should stay away from them. They are not designed to run in the wet enviroment of a steam engine and really do not do the correct job.
I get to see a Shay loco about once a year at the Midwest Old Settler's and Thresher's Reunion in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa.
See a video I made on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCp5zhabFig
Love all that action on the side!
I’m very glad to hear that Accucraft have been so responsive to customer ideas and preferences. Certainly the much complained-about howl from the gas-burner has almost disappeared. I bought the Shay following glowing recommendations from people whose views I respected (now including yours, sir). Yep, that website did get a few things wrong, but I felt they had made a brave effort to explain things. Too many times, we have people explaining things when they do not know whereof they speak! (Mainly journalists, in that category – i should know, i was one for 35 years). But these guys seemed to me to have a reasonable grasp of things.
Incidentally, you tell me that steam oil is a mixture of mineral oil and animal fat! That’s news. Not since I visited the Mennonites in Canada (Amish in the US) who told me they used goose-grease on their cart-axles, have I heard of animal-fat as a lubricant. Is it whale-oil? Surely that’s history, although the steam loco driver who could brag that he was burning whale-blubber could surely and proudly believe that he was right back there in 1880, with Ephraim Shay, his hair parted in the middle, standing beside him at the Johnson Bar.
Shay is my minor hero, as he did some lateral thinking and debunked the accepted railway thinking, which was dominated by Brunel, the most significant world influence on railways of the nineteenth Century. They began in Britain, of course, but the Brunel legacy, which dictated that the landscape must be altered to suit the locomotives, and not the other way round, didn't work everywhere. My Shay is a version of one I saw in the Canadian Science Museum a few years back, and which fascinated me, so I made a study of it. But it would have been of no interest at all to Brunel. His locomotive engineer, Gooch, was a clever chap, but he wouldn't have touched it with a barge-pole either, as he knew which side his bread was buttered, and Brunel's sole interest was in getting from A to B, or from Euston to Bristol, as fast as possible (Paddington was second choice, as getting his seven-foot-gauge lines into Euston would have entailed knocking down rather a lot of West London, which was a step too far for the government of the day). Hence the Maidenhead viaduct, which was then (and still is, I think) the longest brick-arch bridge anywhere, the Box Hill tunnel, then the longest in the world (only one per cent downhill gradient from East to West), the Telford Viaduct etc. Everything was subordinated to the needs of the ever-quicker but gradient-shy locos, a practice which was then copied all over Europe. Whether you were traversing the Alps or the Pyrenees, you flattened or dug up the landscape, rather than climb over it.
But Shay, a schoolteacher who fancied he could make a fortune in the timber business after the Civil War, did a bit of lateral thinking and decided that the orthodox locomotives, which used rod-drive, and (after Gooch) employed ever-bigger driving wheels to achieve high-gearing and thus high speed, were incapable of tackling either steep inclines or tight-radius curves, both of which would be part of any mountain-logging operations. So Shay's design, which he patented in 1880, was geared at 3.3:1, used a drive-train of sliding-joints and universal couplings with bevel-gear drive to the wheels, and rode on articulated bogies so that it could turn corners. Drive to all eight one-foot diameter wheels (later there were 12) gave it the very same characteristics as a 4x4 road vehicle (Jeep and Land Rover, circa 1945), but did it 60 years earlier. ''Rail-hammer'', the scourge of conventional railways, was absent, as was wheel-spin, and smooth torque from three cylinders gave 6 power impulses per revolution of the crankshaft, the same as a Vee 12 Jaguar unit, and this was then multiplied by 3.3 at the driving wheels, yielding power approximately every 18 degrees. The Shays were capable of tackling 5 per cent gradients, or even steeper, didn't need brakes on down-grades because of the ''engine-braking'' effect, just like a car, and could navigate the very tight curves necessitated by lines following the contours in rugged country.
It was a great success in mining and logging in central and South America, as well as the US and Canada, where I stumbled on it, but never caught on in Europe, where all the tunnelling and bridging and cutting and embanking had already been done, at great cost. But even in Indian hill-country, Glasgow-built conventional steam locos used endless switchbacks to climb mountains, some (incredibly, even to this day in Darjeeling on the DHR) employing men to scatter sand on the lines to improve traction!
Originally i had meant to find a single-cylinder Shay, which would have been the machine drawn in Shay's original patent. However, a voice from the past (my own) reminded me of my childhood encounters with a local steamroller driver, whose machine, like many traction engines, had a single cylinder. This old boy tutored me in the importance of seeing that the engine stopped with the piston in a mid-cylinder position. If it stopped at either end of the stroke, he cautioned, it could only be restarted by pushing it, a feat which would have required a herd of Indian elephants! A multi-cylinder steam engine, on the other hand, can be restarted in any position.
Best regards,
Al
Yes, the Accucraft Shay has the simplified valve gear reverser that just reverses the flow of steam to the steamchest. The same method as used on the Ruby and it variants. My comments were directed at the web site's missnaming of their diagram of valve gear. I have a friend that has an early Accucraft Shay but I have not inspected it all that much to know for sure if the steam line ran through the flue, I didn't think it did, but as a general comment I thought the coking of the oil in the steam line was important to mention.
People do use the steam reversing valve as the throttle and it works well, but then others extrapolate that method of controlling the speed of a steam loco to a machine that has true valve gear and it doesn't work the same. I have control of both the throttle and the valve gear on my locos because they both do what the prototypes do and "notching up" on the valve gear can sometimes speed up the engine, rather than slow it down (as it would with the simplified system)! The two reversing methods just ain't the same animal!
The application of the valve on the lubricator is, in my opinion, a direct result of the customer finding a "fix" to a common problem. Manufacturers in our Live Steam toy nitch are responsive to customer comments but Accucraft is VERY responsive! They have updated their products many times over the years based on what the small cadre of gurus in the customer base have found to improve their products after the sale. Larger cylinders, burner anti-howl baffle over the air intake, and this valve on the lubricator are all the result of what the user community has induced in the next version of the products. The Ruby has especially been a proving ground for such improvements. And where applicable, these improvements migrate to the other Accucraft engines as new production runs are started.
The term "Mayonnaise" describes the frothy stuff quite well. I had never seen it in a car before (I generally don't mess with IC engines) until one time when I withdrew the dipstick to check the oil in my car (which I seldom do) and the "Helman's Best" coating the stick indicated that a gasket had failed such as to mix the water and oil in the engine. Oops! Time for a new engine!
Thank you for a most succinct explication of the operation of the Stephenson valve gear. However, the Shay has a simplified system, with just one eccentric operating each steam-valve. Reversing is performed by the Johnson bar (‘Reversing lever’ on this side of the Atlantic) which operates a sliding steam-valve, switching the steam and exhaust pipes. This also gives it a handy function as an alternative Throttle (‘Regulator’ OTSOTA), which makes radio control possible with just one channel, the regulator and butane supply being fixed in advance by the operator. The ‘displacement lubricator’ is , indeed, inside the cab, but since the Shay cylinders are on the starboard side, and not at the front end of the locomotive, there’s no risk of superheating and frying the oil en route through the boiler.
I’m grateful to you for the clear outline of how the lubricator works, and the probable reason for this modification (including the valve). However, in my experience of manufacturing practice, after many years monitoring the car trade, changes like this are most usually dictated or driven by serious problems, and not mere preferences of the customer. I may be overly suspicious, but it seems possible that a lack of oil, rather than too much, dictated the change.
Your advice on finding the correct level of oiling is very sound, and appreciated. I am tickled to note your description of the ‘white frothy’ substance round the stack, due to over-oiling. This is, I think, what we used to call, in the car engines of the 1950s, ‘mayonnaise’, and was due to condensation in the rocker-boxes of the tall long-stroke motors of that era. It was, of course, the same mixture of oil and water you describe.
While that web site is nice, and has some drawings, the descriptions and terminology is slightly in error.
My quick perusal reveals some minor mistakes.
1. the valve gear drawing identifies it as a "Slip eccentric" and that is not the correct drawing for that term, or not the correct name for that drawing. The drawing is of Stevenson's Valve Gear. A "Slip Eccentric" does not have what they named the "Quadrant" (the Quadrant is in the cab of a locomotive and is where the control lever (Johnson bar or Reverser) swings in an arc and the Quadrant has notchs in which a pawl fits to hold the bar at that position). BTW, the part should be labeled the "Link Block". A Slip Eccentric has a slot in the that extends 1/2 way (or a bit more) around the eccentric (the offset wheel-like part on the axle) and the valve rod rides in it such that if the engine is manually pushed in one direction the rod slips in the slot so that it is pushed in such a way as to provide steam to the cylinder to keep the engine running that same direction. If the engine is pushed in the other way the rod "Slips" to the other end of the circular slot, 180-deg. away, to provide steam in such a way as to keep the engine running that other direction.
2. the answer to your question, as described in the article is a bit off also. The valve is not to shut off steam so you can add more oil, it is to regulate the amount of oil that leaves the container to lubricate the engine.
It does not take much oil (Steam Oil, which is a mixture of animal fat and mineral oil) to lubricate the engine and most small models tend to put way too much oil in the steam line and it spews out (as tidy folk describe it) the stack and coats everything around. Lots of folk don't like that to much.
The lubricators (known as Roscoe or Dead Leg lubricators) that do not have a valve, have only a small hole where steam enters and oil returns (yes, two way flow!) and the hole is quite large (to most peoples thinking) and so they silver solder it shut and drill a much smaller hole. The size of the hole is much discussed and it seems to be an engine specific size that works best. People try different sized holes to obtain the optimum amount of oil... but how do you know the "optimum"?
Good question! Most people say that the tank should be emptied in about an hour or running the engine (but that depends on the size of the tank!) Others say that you should see just a small amount of oil around the stack (okay, what is a "small amount")? The best answer is that too much oil is better than not enough, so take your best guess on your locomotive.
Also, some models have the lubricator in the cab and as such the oil is added before the steam pipe passes to the front of the locomotive (I don't believe the Shay does this) and it usually passes through the flue where the burner is. This arrangement provides some "Superheating" of the steam, but it also runs the risk of causing the oil to solidify (burn) in the pipe and clog it up. Less oil is better in this situation.
The valve you have is the manufacturers answer to the solder it shut and re-drill the hole problem or the "I'm getting oil all over the roses in the garden/track/my shirt" problem.
YOU will have to learn the "best" setting for YOUR engine. Other owners of the Accucraft Shay (and other engines that are now coming with the valve on the lubricator) will have to chime in here with their "best guess" for their engines.
Since I don't have this adjustment on the engines I have, I cannot tell you my best guess, but I can offer the advice to open it a couple of turns and run the engine a while (1 to 10 minutes). If you are getting a white frothy substance (water and oil) around the stack, then close it a wee bit (wipe off the froth) and run some more. When you get just "some" froth in a couple of minutes of running, you have it about right. Just make sure that after you have run out of fuel (usually in about 30 to 45 minutes or more) that there is little oil remaining in the tank (1/2 tank or less). Your run times will probably get better as the engine "runs in", depending on how much train it is pulling and more or less oil will be "required".
Hi Two-Tone: Obviously something wrong. here's the website address pasted from their own site - regards, Al
http://www.the-nerds.org/Steam-101.html
Hi Al Is the web address right tried it but can not get it to come up.
Age is only a state of mind, keep the mind active and enjoy life
Problem solved at www.the-nerds.org/steam-101.html Great site, very informative, recommend it toi all.- Alan
Thanks very much Two Tone, I appreciate your help. Unfortunately, I live in Ireland, and there are even fewer repair centres here than Accucraft owners! Anyway, I have always found that amateurs (like yourself? ) are much more knowlegeable, as well as much more generous with the info, than the trade. Thank you again - Al
Hi Al to the forum The only advice I can offer is try your local repair centre, Also if you show on your ID where you are there maybe some one close who can help
I have a new Accucraft Shea (3 cyl) and the layout of the loco does not match anything on the net, or anything inthe manual. The notable difference isthe lubricator, which is of a new design. The filler and blow-off valve are obvious and familiar, but there is a new screw-type valve fitted to the side of the lubricator, which has no obvious function. If this is some kind of continuously adjustable ooiler, then how do i know if it's correctly set? Or is it some kind of valve to prevent ingress of oil to the boiler through vacuum developing after shut-down? The loco runs fine, but there is a suspicious lack of oil fall-oout from the steam exhaust.Can anyone help? Accucraft haven't replied - yet. - Alan Wilkes
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