Garden Railway Forum

I have a silly question: what are the holes in the flue-tube? I speculate they increase heating surface by allowing water to flow through the flue itself? I've never seen this before.

What an excellent job. The glowing ashpan is a very interesting detail. I think also it bears repeating how realistic your track is. The rails themselves are a modelling triumph.

If you're doing water connexions between the tender and the loco, perhaps you'd like to make these dummy injectors to go along with it. Here is a link to the post I made about how I did mine. I think it adds some visual appeal to the locomotive. https://gardenrails.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t...

"Simpling valve" is a term I'm familiar with from marine compound engines. I had no idea locomotives employed this as well. At the risk of sounding over-enthusiastic, I am really enjoying your efforts to include these "complications" (and I'm deliberately using a watchmaking word...

I am always astonished at what people can make at home when they have the appropriate skills. That little pump is a miniature marvel.

Ace, I've been looking for a Mamod/MSS body and frames for a while now, because I've got a set of Wilesco cylinders and eccentrics laying about and I've not made up my mind to turn them into a boat or a twin-cylinder steam tractor or locomotive, or what. If you're done playing with this corpse, I wo...

Aaron, I'm enjoying watching your work on the locomotive, but I think someday you must write a bit about how you've laid the track in your garden. It looks absolutely real- in fact in the first picture the only thing that gives it away as being a model is the locomotive sitting on it and the fence i...

It may be a good idea to ask Accucraft to provide a set of instructions when they return the locomotive to you.

It boggles my mind that anyone thinks this could possibly be anything BUT a total scam. Every day my "face book" page features these obviously Asian adverts featuring things including: a large tandem-rotor radio controlled helicopter an all-metal radio-controlled bulldozer large enough to ...

The drawings showed 8BA grub screws holding the eccentrics. I adjusted them initially at dead centre. When assembled I adjusted each one until the valves were opening just after dead centre, and closing again after about 75 - 80% of the travel. A bit crude I know but it seems to have worked. Trevor...

I don't have any useful advice: I just wanted to wish you good luck with it and may you have patience until the project is successful and satisfactory.

I, too, absolutely loathe painting. Especially metal.

May the force be with you.

That second video (the full lap) shows you have a talent for railway videos too; I can't imagine anyone would fail to enjoy that. It shows the railway, wagons, and locomotive from all the angles and vantage points one could wish for in order to get a good idea what it's really like- even a bit of fl...

I know you didn't really ask for opinions, (but since this is social media you'll get them anyway) but I think the bottom two pictures in the post above are the most aesthetically pleasing. I do like round spectacles and a curved roof. I especially like the green one, as it has a tender like yours. ...

Seems to run quite well. How odd. I wonder how it came to look like that?

I thought the black rings around those bolts on the Slomo were rubber dampers of some sort. I think it's a good idea like you say to put a rubber pad under the machine where it sits on the tender frame. I was reading Chris Bird's article on the Slomo he mounted in a tender- he said it worked well bu...

I don't know if you're already planning to do this, but the heavier you make that vehicle, the better it will work. I have two steel plates inside my "flywheel" van, about 3/4" thick and approximately 8"x3". I tried to weigh it for you, but it maxes out my kitchen scale and ...

I think you will be satisfied with the flywheel device being mounted in the tender. With the device not being on a driven axle, of course there is the possibility of wheel-slip on the loco itself when starting, just like you would get with a full-size locomotive. Depending how you feel about it one ...

For whistles, many people install a DJB resonator whistle. They are interesting because the part you can see is mounted on the front of the cab, and looks close to the proper size. In order to make a nice tone, the whistle has a separate resonating chamber hidden in the cab. It comes with a spring-l...

As things heat up, the gas pressure rises, and the fire gets hotter. On these engines you must keep an eye on the pressure-gauge and safety-valve and turn the fire down progressively during the first part of a run. With practice you should be able to find a gas-regulator setting that keeps the engin...

[quote=tom_tom_go post_id=152022 time=<a href="tel:1584777506">1584777506</a> user_id=395] Why does the prototype have that cut out, is it purely cosmetic? I don't know. Perhaps it's to give it a graceful swallow-like appearance befitting a mainline engine ;) [/quote] The Ffestiniog locos...