Garden Railway Forum

The Regner steel poker burner will not work under a boiler Daan. It has to be inside a flue tube to burn at all. That is what the pot boiler burners are ceramic bed burners. And the price you pay for the Roundhouse engine, is IMHO, worth every penny. I have two from the basic series, Sammie and Bertie. I have customized my Sammie with thier Walschaert's valve gear kit to give him proper valve gear. I am not sure what I will do with Bertie, for now she stay slip eccentric. To me the Telford is just plain ugly. I give Mamod credit for the effort but the styling needs some help to make it more pleasing to the eye. The old MK1's were much more pleasing looking, if severely lacking in the running department. None of the UK brands are cheap in the USA, but my money goes to Roundhouse. Mike

Chris Cairns wrote: ↑Thu May 11, 2017 1:15 am

tom_tom_go wrote:This is the only Mamod I have seen run well

A classic example of when is a Mamod not a Mamod - this Mamodification is featured here - http://www.gardenrailwayclub.com/locos/mamodification

Chris Cairns

Must be why it ran well then (ducks for cover to avoid the abuse from the Mamod faithful!)

Well, the Regner locomotive eventually was sold off to someone else. I've seen the telford trying to haul 1 single wagon around a tight curve and it simply lacks power. The other version, the mark 3, I keep hesitating also. It has all kind of things being better engineered than a simple MSS one, but it still has a burner outside of the boiler.
Where I live we have wind allways. So i guess a potboiler is simply not efficient enough. I've reserved the money I would have spend on a mark 3 and put it in an old sock. I'll save up to buy a bertie by roundhouse because it's having everything I need, a lot of altering possibilities, internally fired boiler and it looks great even as a standard locomotive.

So thanks for all the advise, good words and ideas! If I can pick up a simple mamod on fleabay for a steal I can always tinker with it, but as everybody else says: the money spend on a mark 3 or telford is simply a bit much for something which needs tinkering and good luck to get it running fine.

But first a week of holidays in the Vosges area in France. They also have a few "chemins forrestières" open to the public with live steam, so I will get my amount of steam and maybe a lot of new ideas..

daan wrote: ↑Thu May 11, 2017 9:39 am Hi Chris,
Thanks for all the information. May be I'm needing some kind of treatment, but if I read all these articles on "mamodification" I think it's rather nice.. The process of sorting things out, trying to capture the essence of the problem and fix it, is something I like. Actually it's my job (I work as a shift engineer in a factory trying to tame the robots and sort out their "moods" of erratic behaviour)

For what I've seen, for the kind of money I'm into the race, I anyway can only buy a fixer-upper of any make. With a momad at least there are hundreds of parts available and a lot of people living the joy of capturing the spirit of pure and simple 1930's toy steam locomotives.

It starts tipping the balance a bit more, but there are some other options on the horizon, like a tired Regner Emma being in need of some serious TLC.. Anyway, may be even a cheap MSS thingy is an option, having all way's open for mamodification..

Just as you suggest - purchase a 'low cost' Mamod SL or MSS loco and do it up a bit - that's what I do. Here is one I made earlier (from a standard MSS tank engine):

Group shot of two other Mamod based WD Engines:

@Superbiker,
That is excactly what I mean. Nice little engines!