Garden Railway Forum

Hello all,

As you may have seen on my railway thread, last night I steamed my RH Russell, which confirmed some issues I've known about for a while. I had thought I might send it away to one of the professional engine-fixers for attention, but I'm a little short of hobby cash at the moment so would like to do it myself if I can, despite my very limited engineering skills and knowledge...

The first issue is the safety valve. I think it's either become worn ( I don't know how old the loco is, I got it second hand) or is in need of a good clean up, because it starts to lift when there's barely anything on the pressure gauge and continues to do so throughout the run. I don't recall the pressure at which it blew off properly, but not as high as it should be I suspect. A new safety valve isn't hideously expensive (c£25) and seems to be the route recommended by some (presumably for safety reasons), but I don't know what other things I could try?

The second is the R/C. I think something somewhere is worn or badly adjusted, because closing the regulator's no longer enough to stop the engine - if it's not in "neutral" it will head off down the line. That seems to have been getting worse, although it wasn't helped yesterday by the fact that the batteries ran out so i lost control altogether after awhile! Is there something I can adjust, or is it more complex than that? It's old 40MHz kit (it's got "Roundhouse Russell" written on the transmitter - IN DYMO TAPE!!!) but I've got nothing against that if I can get it to work properly...

Thanks in advance,

Andrew.

Andrew, Roundhouse will exchange the safety valve FOC.

Pull out that crap old 40MHz system and fit Deltang.

Again, happy to help you with all this and the Slomo!

The safety valve is fixable for considerably less than the cost of a new one, should you not be able to exchange it. They contain an O-ring which gets old and hard and then fails to seal.

I agree with Tom about ditching the 40MHz r/c. It is absolutely unusable around here in rural North Wales due to interference.

The Brandbright Cricket I got second hand was originally fitted with 40MHz R/C and I had to stand next to the loco for it to work!

Thanks or the advice!

I'll contact RH and see what they say. And i'll definitely have to rtry to get down to Kent Tom, thank you.

Tony, if it all goes pear-shaped (as it did with my attempts to fettle my Bertie) then you'll get the chance to try my RC in North Wales for yourself, because i dare say it'll end up in your workshop!

All the best,

Andrew.

Regarding R/C there may be a trim switch on the regulator lever. Roundouse recommend adjusting this to compensate for the regulator not closing fully. But they do say that in the end the adjustment is not enough and the arm on the regulator shaft should be adjusted to get the regulator to fully close.

You can download the manual for your loco from the Roundhouse website to adjust the regulator but I cannot stress enough that you will gain so much more running pleasure from a 2.4GHz R/C system.

Hi Andrew,
The safety valves are easy to clean if you find the O-ring replacements are not enough of a fix. Roundhouse sell a tool to reset the safety valve (or you could make your own from a big flat-head). We've had several older locomotives that occasionally require a reset because of general wear causing the safety valve to lift before 40psi.
As for the radio, probably a good idea to replace it! My Wrightscale Baldwin had 27MHz and it was "interesting" to drive. Thankfully a hole in the superheater blew the burner out so it wasn't a disaster!