Test Steaming

Well, after another year, finally "Pearl", my Maxitrak loco, had a fire in her firebox. A change of job and other distractions sadly relegated Pearl to the back burner. Also I had to build a couple of riding cars and a rolling test stand, and these were squeezed into a busy life somehow.

The riding car frames were built to a design published in Modeltec in the February 1994 issue page 8. I used the frame design but as I had already purchased wheel sets from Maxitrak, which included self aligning bearings, I had to alter the design of the bearings. I used the supplied self aligning bearing mounts and bolted them to a 6" long 1" x 1/8" steel plate. This plate is located by two long bolts that go from the bottom of the fram to the top, and they are able to slide up and down, being held firm by discarded engine valve springs. This is a close view of the bearing .

Two frames were built. One for a passenger riding car , the other for the driving car , which has a 5 gall drum for water that feeds the injector on the locomotive.

At last there was a clear Saturday when I could set up Pearl on the test stand . This was a plank of 2 x 12 with rollers for each of the driving wheels made from 1 1/2" steel angle and ball bearings. Pearl was placed on the stand, each driver on two bearings, and brackets in the couplers were used to prevent any fore or aft movement.

The boiler was filled from the saddle tank using the hand pump. This took a little time, but I did not fancy taking off the dome and removing a safety valve to fill the boiler that way. Some of the fittings wept a bit on initital filling of the boiler, but most succumbed to a 1/4 turn on the nuts etc. and as steam was raised the rest dried up.

The major difficulty was getting a good fire with the coal I have. Norman Brand, an FLS member gave me a 40lb bag of anthracite. He uses it in his Mogul and I have driven his engine many times. It's a fantastic steamer on this coal, as long as you stir the fire to prevent the grates clogging and fire little and often. This coal burns with very little flame, no smoke to speak of and just glows yellow/white in the firebox. But it does need to be above a critical temperature and mass to keep alight. Pearl's firebox is considerably smaller than the Mogul's and I found it difficult to get it to light and then even harder to keep going.

Hardwood soaked in kerosene topped with similarly treated charcole got things going. The heading picture shows the fan on the stack creating a draft, and the smoke from the wood and charcole. Then the coal was sprinkled on top in small amounts until I did eventually get a good fire.

While steam was building I oiled all round and filled the mechanical lubricator. Soon I was getting enough steam to blow a wet wobbly whistle, and blow down the water gauge, but not hint of a movement on the pressure gauge. I finally decided to try the blower and got a good draft so I knew I had at least 10 to 15 lbs, but still little indication. When I got the fire good and hot it finally moved off the peg and hovered around 35lb, and then registered 60lb as the first safety started to sizzle.

Cylinder drains open, reversing gear in full forward I cracked the throttle while raising steam to warm the cylinders. I reversed the gear after a while to warm the other ends of the cylinders. When I had got the safety's to lift and was sure they worked I put it in forward and opened up. Nothing... which didn't supprise me as the motion was extremely stiff. After helping it around a few times with a stick it started to run, a little lumpy but it ran. It soon smoothed out and I was able to keep it ticking over with very little throttle. Full throttle it really raced, but I was worried about it coming of it's rollers so I cut down. Believe it or not this picture was taken with Pearl running, but the shutter froze the motion and the coal produces very little smoke.

The blower worked fine, and the drafting is OK but that coal was a Problem, and as I was very occupied checing everything I let the fire get too thin so I decided to let it go out and check around for loose bolts etc. Everything was fine, but the mechanical lubricator was still full after the run! I had to take it down and replace a ball valve. It worked after that.

I had tested the crosshead pump during the run and it worked OK, and I also tested the injector. It actually picked up on a very little steam, too much and it blew steam from the overflow.

The beat was definately a little out. I had noticed that one valve was slightly shorter than the other when setting the valves. Maxitrak offered to replace it, but I didn't take them up on it as I didn't think it would make that much difference, and as it was the engine ran well considering it is still stiff and needs running in properly.

All in all, not a bad day. I was exhausted as I did all this with the loco on the ground, not having a steaming bay at home. I felt like an 80 yr old arthritic and it took me five minutes to straighten up! But my face was black, my hands and clothes smelt of coal smoke, I was happy!

FINAL CHAPTER

As the dates on this stage shows, things slowed down quite a lot over the last two years. The main reason for this was a change of job and other circumstances that took a lot of my time and also cut down my visits to the FLS track from about 6 a year to none. So it became apparent to me that having a 7.5" gauge loco was not going to be very practical for me any more. There are no tracks here in Jamaica and I do not have suitable land space to build one. If I keep it at the Tradewinds track I would get to run it once per year if that.

So the decision has been made to sell Pearl and the riding cars and concentrate on the smaller gauges, gauge 1 up to 3.5" gauge. They are better suited to my workshop, land space and budget, and I can handle them without help, as there are no other livesteamers in Jamaica. Building Pearl has been a fun experience. In retrospect, I should probably have chosen to build one of Maxitrak's 5" gauge locos, as I may have found it easier to find a place for a track that size. But at the time I was a regular visitor to the FLS track and I wanted to have an engine to run there.

The building experience has been great and very rewarding. For those that have been following the progress I hope you enjoyed it too and maybe found some of the information useful. I can now get back to those two deserted gauge 1 engines, Dot and Diana".

THE END