Garden Railway Forum

Now I feel rather stupid. ... and lost.
When filling the boiler using a syringe with a quite short hose,
the hose fell off and is now inside the boiler.
I have removed the safety valve and drained all the water.
I have shaken the engine upside down for a while,
but there is absolutely no sign of the hose.
Not much to see down the filler hole and safety valve hole anyway.
Maybe the hose is heat resistant enough, but I am afraid it
will melt or make any other trouble if I fire up.
What should I do?

I think I would invest time with a fine bit of wire and fish it out doing it upside down. Can you get someone to hold the loco upside down for you. I would not heat it!

PANIC!!

Does the plastic you used float? If yes fill it with water and go fishing the right way up. If no Pour water in turn upside down let water flow out (Steam reg open) and then fish keeping the loco upside down letting the water drag it to the safety valve.

MDLR:95650 wrote:PANIC!!  :laughing3:  :crybaby:  :dontknow:

Not helpful...

Do not fire the loco. Fish it out with wire as suggested. Can the safety valve be removed to give you an extra drainage hole?

Hang on let's start with this the easy way. What loco is it? Does the boiler have a centre flue? Is there a sight glass of any sort?

Your problem is going to be getting the tube on end as the when you tip it upside down the tube will lie flat against the boiler and against the safety valve bush so the chances of it dropping out on its own are very low. Have you got some very fine nosed pliers, fine enough to put them through the hole and open the jaws abit? There's 2 ways of this that I can think of, if the pipe floats fill the boiler to a bit short of full and whith a fine bit of wire and a torch go fishing till you can encourage the pipe to the bush and go for it with the pliers. Have a clamp handy so that if you do 'catch' the pipe but your hands are getting tiered and you need to let go of the pliers you can clamp the jaws together while you readjust yoursel.

The other option I can think of is fill the boiler, insert pliers and tip upside down so the boiler empties dragging the pipe to the bush, once you feel it knock the pliers try and grab it with them.

Good luck and don't light it. It might be fine while the pipe is in water but if the water level dropped and the pipe ended up sat on an exposed part of the boiler it's going to get very hot very quick.

I also thought if you have a dyson duck tape a smaller nozzle to the hose and suck the pipe out?

Small forceps may give more "clamping spread" than pliers.

4 options:

1, the most extreme of the options available. Melt the solder to one of the end caps on the boiler and dismantle the boiler. You can now remove the plastic. Then clean up the boiler and re-silver solder the boiler. Be sure to have it pressure tested before running.

2, attach a vacuum to the boiler and suck the pipe out.

3, go fishing.

4, replace the boiler and sell this one as in need of repair to recoup some of the money.

This happened to me quite some time ago, I got it out by fishing with some wire after dismounting the boiler.

Thanks. I have already tried most of what you suggest. The loco is my Roundhouse Charles 2012 version. I have small tweezers and forceps, but I'm not able to locate the hose. Can't see it, hear it or feel it. Next step will be to dismount the boiler, but that will have to wait. Frustration is a better description than panic.

As a suggestion . Get a short length of stiffish wire ( like piano wire)
and wrap one end with double sided sticky tape ( or coat wire with glue and wrap duck tape round the wire sticky side out).

Use the modded wire to fish around and 'grab' the missing hose. when you get it near the hole try pushing another length of wire down the inside of the hose. Stiff wire can be bent to reach all parts of the boiler interior.

I'm sorry, but why worry if you can't get it out?

On a 16mm boiler @ 50 psi its not going to block the steam outlet, its too big, and the are no other steam ancillaries.
If it does, then at least you know where it is!
If you have a piece of similar tube, put it in the oven at 150 deg C and see what happens to it - allow a domestic oven to stabilise first.
If it melts, then you know what'll happen to it inside a boiler.
If it were a larger boiler or higher pressure 5" gauge or whatever - then I'd be more concerned.
I would certainly not take the boiler apart and expect reassembly to be satisfactory, especially if the boiler has been steamed - unless you're experienced at such things.

Fish with a piece of wire - yes, scrap the boiler no, unless of course you're made of money.

Alternatively, try using very soft, thin flexible wire- as used to feed power to indoor layouts- ideally multistrand. Double up and feed it through to create a "snare" loop and try and capture the errant hose.

Wobbly Wheel:95723 wrote:I'm sorry, but why worry if you can't get it out?

On a 16mm boiler @ 50 psi its not going to block the steam outlet, its too big, and the are no other steam ancillaries.
If it does, then at least you know where it is!
If you have a piece of similar tube, put it in the oven at 150 deg C and see what happens to it - allow a domestic oven to stabilise first.
If it melts, then you know what'll happen to it inside a boiler.
If it were a larger boiler or higher pressure 5" gauge or whatever - then I'd be more concerned.
I would certainly not take the boiler apart and expect reassembly to be satisfactory, especially if the boiler has been steamed - unless you're experienced at such things.

Fish with a piece of wire - yes, scrap the boiler no, unless of course you're made of money.

Issue with leaving it in there is the steam ways are very small. If the pipe melts and dissolves then yes it would steam. However, once you have completed your run and the loco cools the plastic will set once again. Only now it's blocking the steam ways, coating the steam ports and cylinders and blocked the regulator.

On a larger gauge loco I wouldn't steam it as the same happens but the cost is even greater!

Fishing is the cheapest way to fix the problem. Just ensure anything you put into the boiler to fish with you can get back out!

Have we ascertained if the plastic tube will float yet?

If the hose is only quite short, surely you must be able to hear it rattle around to some extent if you shake the loco gently?

As for getting it out, I think it's a case of peoples previous ideas, time, and patience!

Next time, use a bit of hose thats long enough so if it falls off you wont lose it inside!

I see you're in Norway but even so for complete piece of mind, why not send the boiler back to Roundhouse? Surely they would sort it and more importantly test the boiler for you?

Applying some logic to this....

1, If the plastic tube does not float then the worst that can happen is it sinks to the bottom of the boiler and possibly melts to the flue while in steam.
No big deal, it's only plastic and won't cause any localised warming issues to the flue.

2, If the plastic floats (most likely), then it will bob around in the water while in steam. The laws of physics will apply here and the water will only reach 100 degree centigrade. It can't get any hotter than that water boils at 100 DC, that's why fusible lead plugs in fireboxes don't melt!!!
No big deal, the plastic might become soft at that temp but it won't melt and block any steam pipes.
You might even see it one day when filling your boiler and be able to retrieve it with some tweezers?

So my advise would be to carry on as usual and just keep your eyes open when filling the boiler. You never know, it might even have some weird beneficial effect of stopping limescale buildup...

We might all be adding plastic beads to our boilers in two years time???

Water boils at a much higher temperature than 100 degrees when it's in a vessel under pressure. At 40 psi it's about 130 degrees C.