Old Roundhouse Billy

[steveh99]

I have purchased an old Billy loco (one with a square gas tank) and I want to fit a chuff pipe. There seems to be 2 problems with this. 1. I can't remove the smoke box as the steam feed pipe to the cylinders goes through a large hole in the smokebox base and not a slot as in later models and 2. the steam exhaust pipes are very short and go into a short piece of flattened tube wrapped around them.

Has anyone got a solution to these issues?. I am happy to dismantle the loco to any extent, just cant seem to get the smokebox off> Is it a push fit onto the end of the boiler as current models?

[TonyW]

1) You'll need to take the boiler off the frames. Once that is done you can remove the smokebox, which is a push-fit on to the boiler, by passing it along the superheater pipe.

2) The flattened tube will pull off. You can specify a longer pipe length when you order the chuffer pipe to accommodate the shorter exhaust pipes.

[steveh99]

Thanks Tony, I suspected I needed to remove the boiler. No problem, as I was planning to strip the loco down anyway. Thank you for your speedy response, this forum thing is so useful.

Rgds

[TonyW]

My pleasure! If you're going that far anyway it would be worth changing the circular hole in the smokebox in to a "mouse hole", i.e. open to one edge, and modifying the fixings so it can be easily removed in the future.

[steveh99]

Are there any issues with the old square gas tank? Any idea how old this is or when Roundhouse changed to using the round ones? Should I consider replacing it with the current round type?