The Night Mail

[Florence Locomotive Works]

We have won at last.

 

 

This morning after many minutes of hard fought soldering in a dark cavern between the frames, the Mogul ran successfully under load at speed for a sustained period of time. 
 

For the benefit of the uninitiated, this is my 1957 Bassett Lowke o gauge live steam Stanier mogul, which I got as a gift two and a half years ago and have been struggling to get working ever since. It’s the greatest teacher I’ve ever known, but I’ve finally succeeded in getting it working.

 

 

 

Now I just have to keep it in running condition! 
 

(I have been working on this behind the scenes for a few weeks now after I finished Brunel)

The fix ended up being a bit hard to explain. Some may remember the main steam feed to the left cylinder leaked and this was fixed, the catcher being that it now wouldn’t go into reverse. I discovered a few days ago that the left steam feed (in reverse, exhaust in forward) was also broken. It’s an terribly difficult thing to get to being underneath the lubricator and above the regulator but somehow I managed to melt enough solder around it to seal it over. 
 

I presume the reason it wasn’t running in forward very well was atmospheric back pressure in the exhaust caused by this leak.

 

 

HH, very sorry to hear that. 
 

 

Douglas

Edited February 19, 2022 by Florence Locomotive Works

[Happy Hippo]

Douglas,

 

It might be a good idea if you have a paper trail of what went wrong with the Mogul and how you fixed it.  A little booklet you make up called 'Live Steam Notes' is a good idea.

 

Somewhere I do have an A4 size ring binder with various notes and articles relating to steamers, stored within plastic sleeves.

 

As you get older, you will become more forgetful, and what you don't want is in a few years time, to find you have a problem with another loco and you've forgotten a key part of the fault finding/fixing regime.

 

Certainly I'd suggest that when you have the time and money, you consider getting yourself a proper silver soldering set up.  It is much easier and stronger for boiler and (some) pipe work.

 

However, the Mogul would be off limits for in situ work as the majority of it is soft soldered.

 

But when you build the new high pressure boiler.....

[Florence Locomotive Works]

4 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

But when you build the new high pressure boiler...

That may be sooner rather than later. 
 

After much thinking I’m considering building a live steam LNWR Dreadnought in gauge 1 (I have drawings) Obviously it won’t be a compound and instead will have an oscillating engine driving the first driving axle and the HP valve gear on the outside will be fake. Still in the very hypothetical phase though.

[Happy Hippo]

15 minutes ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

That may be sooner rather than later. 
 

After much thinking I’m considering building a live steam LNWR Dreadnought in gauge 1 (I have drawings) Obviously it won’t be a compound and instead will have an oscillating engine driving the first driving axle and the HP valve gear on the outside will be fake. Still in the very hypothetical phase though.

If you are putting the oscillator where the HP cylinder is sited, remember you need to leave quite a bit of space to allow for the leading axle to move from side to side unless you intend using very large radii curves.  If you build it as a single cylinder, then you could build the motor in a separate cradle with  a gearwheel at the crank end, and then connect it to a larger diameter gear on the driving axle.  Use a ratio of 6:1 and you will get the correct number of exhaust strokes per revolution of the wheel as the prototype.

 

Gearing the oscillator will also reduce the top speed and make it much more controllable as well as producing more power.

 

If you use twin cylinders, then gear it 2:1.  You won't quite get the slow speed controllability, that the higher combination, but it will stop the 'rat in a gutter' run away that afflicts some live steamers.

 

The other advantage of the cradle is that  when you disconnect the reversing valve, two steam connections and the fixing bolts, then the whole unit will drop out for maintenance.

 

[Florence Locomotive Works]

49 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

If you are putting the oscillator where the HP cylinder is sited, remember you need to leave quite a bit of space to allow for the leading axle to move from side to side unless you intend using very large radii curves.  If you build it as a single cylinder, then you could build the motor in a separate cradle with  a gearwheel at the crank end, and then connect it to a larger diameter gear on the driving axle.  Use a ratio of 6:1 and you will get the correct number of exhaust strokes per revolution of the wheel as the prototype.

 

Gearing the oscillator will also reduce the top speed and make it much more controllable as well as producing more power.

 

If you use twin cylinders, then gear it 2:1.  You won't quite get the slow speed controllability, that the higher combination, but it will stop the 'rat in a gutter' run away that afflicts some live steamers.

 

The other advantage of the cradle is that  when you disconnect the reversing valve, two steam connections and the fixing bolts, then the whole unit will drop out for maintenance.

 

Do you think a Stuart S.T. Operating at 40 psi would have sufficient power for the engine? That would be the easy way out as I already have one and it would save me the time of design and making one.

[Happy Hippo]

I suspect it is too big to fit between the frames.

 

You need to make a full size accurate drawing of the frames and axles, then you need to add any cladding, other working bits such as the boiler and smokebox and any other superstructure to the drawing.

 

If you do it on a layered CAD package, you can then draw in the steam motor on a different layer or layers and snap it into place.

 

Then you can easily see all the potential snag points.

Edited February 19, 2022 by Happy Hippo

[Happy Hippo]

I stayed up last night and only went to bed after watching GB ladies win the Curling gold medal at the winter Olympics.

 

When looked at some of the on line papers this morning I was saddened to find that the result is buried in the sports pages and is not front page news.

 

It should be front page news, if only as it's so unusual for GB to win anything significant at the Winter Olympics.

 

Much more important than the Daily Mail's latest Price Harry privacy story.  Now if he and his wife could be consigned to minor articles in the 'celeb and gossip' section, the world would be a happier place.

[Gwiwer]

The problems with finding space onntge front pages today can be named as Putin, Boris and Eunice. 
 

But yes. Let ‘s celebrate sonething for a change. 

[BoD]

9 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

… Putin, Boris and Eunice.

Snowy, Flowy, Blowy….

[PhilJ W]

Found this on Youtube, a reminder of when I visited Gettysburg in 1979. The station at the start of the film was then used as the tourist advice centre for the battlefield.

 

 

Fortunately a locomotive in such a condition wouldn't be allowed on the tracks in the UK. Some of the design features (American practice) that led partially to the explosion put me in mind of the wartime S180's. This led to several boiler explosions, some of them fatal on British tracks leading to special instructions for footplatemen.

[PhilJ W]

This should be of interest to Douglas.

 

[Florence Locomotive Works]

3 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

This should be of interest to Douglas.

 

Yes I’ve seen that one before. Quite a nice design I’ve been after one for a while.

[Happy Hippo]

3 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

Found this on Youtube, a reminder of when I visited Gettysburg in 1979. The station at the start of the film was then used as the tourist advice centre for the battlefield.

 

 

Fortunately a locomotive in such a condition wouldn't be allowed on the tracks in the UK. Some of the design features (American practice) that led partially to the explosion put me in mind of the wartime S180's. This led to several boiler explosions, some of them fatal on British tracks leading to special instructions for footplatemen.

This was not a boiler explosion!

 

It was a firebox crown failure, which would have been prevented by a fusible plug.  

 

The only way a boiler can explode is the the pressure inside the boiler to build up  to such an extent that the boiler is ripped apart.

 

Invariably most boiler explosions on early locomotives can be traced back to the crew, or fitters being persuaded to screw down the safety valves to increase the boiler pressure.  Eventually they get screwed down so tight that they don't work at all, or the safety valve(s) cannot  vent the steam quicker than the boiler is making it.

Edited February 20, 2022 by Happy Hippo

[Tony_S]

I did some rail related work today and restored a clock!

When Matthew was 2 his aunt and uncle thought he should have an alarm clock for his Christmas present. I don’t think Matthew really liked it (train ok, shouty voice yelling “Wake up, Wake up” with hooter noises, not ok) . So it soon went out of sight. Anyway I found it today and removed three very leaky batteries. Seems to work. Aditi thinks we should use it on bin days. 

[PhilJ W]

15 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

This was not a boiler explosion!

 

It was a firebox crown failure, which would have been prevented by a fusible plug.  

 

The only way a boiler can explode is the the pressure inside the boiler to build up  to such an extent that the boiler is ripped apart.

 

Invariably most boiler explosions on early locomotives can be traced back to the crew, or fitters being persuaded to screw down the safety valves to increase the boiler pressure.  Eventually they get screwed down so tight that they don't work at all, or the safety valve(s) cannot  vent the steam quicker than the boiler is making it.

Indeed yes, my 2 X great grandfather was killed in a boiler explosion in 1871. He was the engineer on a steam paddle tug called the Rambler working out of Gravesend. There was a faulty pressure gauge (reading only about 20% of the actual pressure) on one of the twin boilers and the stoker was new to the job. The stoker was not aware of the faulty pressure gauge so to try to increase the pressure placed some weights on the Salter type lever on the boiler. The boiler was of wrought iron and not able to withstand the pressure and exploded. At that time boiler explosions were quite common, it was not until 1880 that marine boilers had to be tested and certified.  

[Gwiwer]

Let's try here.  

 

Ah good.  

 

I cannot get anything to work over in ERs.  But it's all working across the rest of the site so far as I can see.  I have no idea why.  Maybe a tree blew down?  

[Oldddudders]

1 hour ago, PhilJ W said:

 The stoker was not aware of the faulty pressure gauge so to try to increase the pressure placed some weights on the Salter type lever on the boiler. 

A common practice then was to hang a bucket of spanners on the Salter lever - it gave more go, of course, but at considerable risk. ISTR a boiler explosion in Streatham LBSCR in Victorian times. 

 

Why US steam locos generally avoided fusible plugs has never been obvious to me. 

[Happy Hippo]

There is something smugly satisfying about sitting in the warm, with a glass in hand and the aroma of chicken casserole filtering through from the kitchen, whilst outside the winds is whistling and howling and rain is lashing against the windows.

 

 

[Florence Locomotive Works]

53 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

A common practice then was to hang a bucket of spanners on the Salter lever - it gave more go, of course, but at considerable risk. ISTR a boiler explosion in Streatham LBSCR in Victorian times. 

 

Why US steam locos generally avoided fusible plugs has never been obvious to me. 

I think it simply depended on the road’s preference, I think all UP engines have them.

[Happy Hippo]

25 minutes ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

I think it simply depended on the road’s preference, I think all UP engines have them.

At least we don't need them with small scale boilers, although a toolmaker of my acquaintance once built a 5" gauge King Class in under 12 months when he was told it was impossible to do.  He did fit a fusible plug to it's boiler.

 

I have been thinking about your possible foray into Gauge 1 and it would probably be easier if you were to build a G1MRA 'Project' loco (The venerable ex Midland Railway 0-6-0 4F.  Yes, the wheels would be expensive, but you'd be following a well trodden route with a model that has been built many times and has a proven track record.

 

This would give you a very sound insight into the engineering required and you would certainly benefit in the long run when it came to building your experience for other locomotives you may wish to create.

 

[PhilJ W]

[Gwiwer]

2 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

There is something smugly satisfying about sitting in the warm, with a glass in hand and the aroma of chicken casserole filtering through from the kitchen, whilst outside the winds is whistling and howling and rain is lashing against the windows.

 

 

Unless, that is, you are the one cooking it all.  In our case the cluckbird has been roasted along with numerous vegetables but we haven't yet found one willing to turn the oven on then climb in willingly   

 

Glass definitely in hand.  Wind most certainly howling.  Sunday roast very much enjoyed.  

[Tony_S]

2 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

…whilst outside the winds is whistling and howling and rain is lashing against the windows.

 

 

Once we have shut the curtains we are fairly unaware of inclement weather. We used to get a woo woo sort of sound from the fire place when it was windy but the sophisticated cowl fitted last year seems to have muffled that. Also I suppose  the weather is not usually that extreme here. 

Edited February 20, 2022 by Tony_S

[New Haven Neil]

Well the wind is howling here now!  Not nice at all, probably worse than Eunice.  We had torrential rain this afternoon but it is actually dry currently.

[PhilJ W]

13 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

Unless, that is, you are the one cooking it all.  In our case the cluckbird has been roasted along with numerous vegetables but we haven't yet found one willing to turn the oven on then climb in willingly   

 

Glass definitely in hand.  Wind most certainly howling.  Sunday roast very much enjoyed.  

Perhaps you should find out who supplies The Restaurant at the end of the Universe.