Before spending too much time worrying about paint jobs, one of the tasks this evening has been to check her over and give her a trial steaming. Parked in the sun with her companion
A quick compare of cab layouts and features - definitely of the same DNA although they feel completely different in operation.
A quick lubrication of all the valve gear, then she was oiled, watered and gassed up for run this evening.
The first major difference was the aggressiveness of the gas valve, Leader requires barely any movement to get the right amount of gas in order to actually light, a fraction too much and the flame just pops out. Once settled its fine, but much louder than Ragleth as expected. I'm sure some of the noise and the lighting issue is down to the lack of air control ring on the burner - you can see the holes clearly in Leaders in the photo above, whereas almost half of them on Ragleth have been blocked off with the brass ring.
Leader has a sight glass so one fills to 3/4 of that - its best to take the enots valve off for this as it gives the air somewhere to escape and you get a more accurate reading - there is no blow down valve on the sight glass to clear it out. Ragleth has an overflow valve which is opened during firing up - as the water heats up and expands it is forced out of the overflow pipe, thus it creates its own level. As soon as steam appears the valve is shut and it raises pressure - Leader starts from the off and raised pressure much quicker than expected.
Leaders regulator is like on / off switch, as well as getting bloomin' hot - the extra length of the shaft on Ragleth really does make a difference. Clearing out the cylinders was fun, tons of horrible brown watery stuff ejected all over the bodywork and the track - goodness knows what has been caught in the pipework or how long its been there. She did clear eventually though and settled down to a reasonable pace - its definitely not run in yet, I think it could do with a good few laps on a continuous circuit.
Once fully warm, she would slow down to a good pace and she doesn't waggle much at all, I'm almost disappointed
There is a slight rock though when pushing down on the rear bogie - one wheel on the front lifts up so I need to check what goes on when there is a load on the rear coupling.
The safety valve was a bit naff - blowing off at >65psi on the gauge when the boiler certificate states 60psi as max running pressure. The safety valve cover as supplied is also a pain - it prevents any access to the valve meaning you can't check for free operation when raising pressure, thus it was removed pretty quickly. I adjusted the safety valve down as much as possible, but it doesn't seem to flow enough steam to get the pressure below 50 psi, even with a fairly conservative amount of heat - I worry that with the gas cranked up, unless she is running at speed then controlling the pressure is going to be interesting.
On balance though, I'm very happy
Lots of stuff to tinker with and its different enough in feel from what I already have to keep it interesting as well as looking different.
The stainless mesh for the first mod to the burner has arrived too. Following various bits of advice on the net I've plumped for some 40 strands to the inch mesh to wrap around the burner, I just need to find somewhere that does 15thou stainless wire in smaller quantities than a kilo to tie it into place. The mesh was £2.99 including postage so as experiments go, its not expensive - Ragleth will be getting a wrap too as I hope it will quieten them down as indicated which will make it more suitable when hidden inside a tram body.
Steve