Green Dragon

[laurence703]

The latest member of the fleet is Green Dragon... Its pretty much your usual run of the mill Mss Green tank loco at the minute.. but I have a few plans for her.

At the minute it has a meths burner, water top up and a DLRdan special safety valve under the dome set to 25psi, it will be keeping its whistle and I have one untested from RWM so fingers crossed it works... if not then help?

It may gain a tender but this is dependant on if and when I'm happy with it... its not set up right at the minute...

Here's a pic!

[Chris Cairns]

I trimmed the long screws in the cab roof of my green MSS kit built loco and re-fitted the whistle operating lever. So the whistle is now steam tight but it is still the usual 'waste of time Mamod/MSS whistle' which just wastes boiler pressure for virtually no sound.

Still not found that Topic regarding modifying these whistles so they sound better.

Had an interesting flare up using some old solid fuel last night with flames well above the top of the boiler that even ' Britomart ' would have had difficulty reproducing - sadly no camera to hand at the time!.

Chris Cairns.

[Lner fan Sam]

That's a very nice loco there Laurance

Does any one know whyflare ups and cab fires happen?

[Chris Cairns]

Solid Fuel was originally not supplied in zip lock bags so once a pack was opened the solid fuel draws in water. When you use this in a burner the water heats up and the tablet usually pops apart with bits flying out of the burner tray and starting a lineside fire or two. When I receive a 2nd hand Mamod/MSS loco the first thing I do is remove any remaining tablets as they can be very corrosive to your loco, particularly the mazak diecast parts. I have a large box full of old solid fuel which I usually keep for my stationary engines but they have not been used much recently.

With the current meths burners you tend to fill it up to full capacity due to their limited capacity. Thus as the burner heats up the meths produces a vapour which needs to escape somewhere so it either leaks out the burner tubes if these have loose wicks, or out of the filler hole, particularly if it has lost it's cap/bung. Another problem is a small steam leak from your reverser/regulator valve or that solder joint on the bottom of the boiler is enough to blow the flames past the inadequate deflectors fitted just in front of the meths tank and you end up with a melted sight glass plastic.

Have a look at your solid fuel burner tray - it has a deflector which closes the gap below the sight glass plate so no solid fuel flare up reaches into the cab.

Chris Cairns.