Hello John,

The best advice I ever got concerning steaming small locomotives came from
the late Carl Purinton, the founder of the Brotherhood of Live Steamers,
here in North America. He saw me struggling with a small ¾” scale loco, and
asked if I needed help. I said yes!!! I could use all the help I could get.
We dropped the dead fire in my locomotive, and cleaned out the firebox,
starting from scratch. We “seemed” to be doing everything just as I had
done, on my prior unsuccessful attempt. Soon the steam was up and the safety
valve lifted and I went to head out onto the mainline. Carl stopped me and
said….”not yet! This is why you ran out of steam before! You must wait until
the entire locomotive is HOT. The cold metal of the frame, drivers and so
forth are all pulling heat from the fire. So long as you are sitting still
in the steaming bay…you can make steam as you are supplying heat at about
the rate the cold metal is taking it. If you add to that the amount of heat
lost to using steam in the cylinders, you are losing heat faster than you
can replace it!” We then waited until every bit of the loco was HOT, the
cylinders, the driver centers….everything was noticeably warm to the touch.
I then headed out onto the mainline and the loco was like a new engine! It
was making steam so well that as I crested the grade at the New Jersey Live
Steamers club track, the safety was lifting and I had the bypass closed
pumping water into the boiler. I had never had such a good run with that
locomotive before. Now I know you have to get the loco to reach thermal
equilibrium before you try using heat energy to make steam for running.

Keith Taylor Jefferson, Maine USA



_____

From: halfinchlivesteamforum@...
[mailto:halfinchlivesteamforum@...] On Behalf Of John Baguley
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2007 2:57 PM
To: halfinchlivesteamforum@...
Subject: [Half inch live steam forum] Re: Bad steaming



Having now run Helen a few times I find I have to adopt the 'fill the
firebox' method of firing as well. So long as the fire is up to the
firehole she steams like a witch and blows off all the time. Let the
fire drop too much and it's off the track to start again!
Keeping a 2½" boiler in steam continuously is a real test of the
drivers ability and is something I haven't quite mastered yet. They
say if you can drive and steam a 2½" loco you can drive anything!
I agree that most locos can be improved by redesigning the draughting.
I based Helen's on the ME articles by Harold Barton and the only thing
I needed to change was to reduce the diameter of the blast nozzle
slightly to increase the blast a bit.

John





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