Sunday 30 November 2008

Steaming in the cold

Not much garden railway activity lately, though I did manage to steam Cackler in the cold yesterday. She ran beautifully with the gas set low, a lovely plume of steam and the quiet 'ticking' of the motion - very nice!

Got some graphite yarn to pack the gland nuts of the MSS which seems to have helped; tried another (unsuccesful) attempt to fix the loose crank pin!!!

Thursday 20 November 2008

More Fettling

Got the MMS up on blocks again tonight, but removed the constricted chuff pipe fitted some time ago, and this seemed to make all the difference, with much free-er steaming. All that is left to sort now is the loose crank pin (which neither Epoxy or superglue has fixed so far!)

Tuesday 18 November 2008

Kew

Made it to Kew for a couple of hours, and had a good time. A couple of good layouts; the Guildford Group had a nice variety of loco's (I particularly liked the super-detailled Roundhouse Bertie, and of course the Finescale Hunslet) , and the Pudding Norton Creek layout was interesting in showing you could run an end-to-end exhibition layout with R/C live steam! I was remarkably restrained in terms of purchases! Here's a video of the best bits...


Saturday 15 November 2008

Moors Valley Railway

Not much been going on at home on the Worthies & Littleton as I've bean dealing with the cough / flu thing that's been doing the rounds (though I did watch a few episodes of The Garden Railway on DVD ;-). But off to the 7 1/4" narrow gauge Moors Valley Railway near Ringwood today to celebrate my Nephew's 3rd Birthday.


Enjoyed a nice circuit behind No. 11 2-6-2 Zeus, hauling one of the longest / heaviest passenger trains I've seen on a miniature railway - I'm amazed it got around the sharpest curves!




Nice also to see a double headed frieght train, hauled by No. 6 2-6-2T Medea and No. 17 2-4-4T Hartfield.

Hoping to get to Kew tomorrow for the model steam railway show...

Friday 7 November 2008

More MSS Fettling...

Spent yesterday evening messing around with cylinders on the MSS, trying to sort out recent poor performance. I ended up switching back to the IP Engineering cylinders tried previously, and managed to coax a bit more life out of them (by throroughly lubricating before steaming); there's more power there, but they still need fettling in. So, a bit of running on blocks yesterday evening & this evening also. Looking at the old cylinders there seems a lot of lateral 'play' in the pivot bolts, which might explain things...

Also been thinking of ways to improve her looks(!); thinking about making some new side tanks with tram skirts, and maybe a rear bunker... Might try mocking something up out of card to see how it looks...

Tuesday 4 November 2008

Vintage Cloister Film

Check out this recently posted YouTube video of Cloister (now at Kew Bridge Steam Museum), early in her preserved existence - cracking stuff!

Sunday Steam Up

Managed a steam up yesterday, in a dry spell betwwen the drizzle. Cackler ran beautifully, sporting a new Enots valve picked up at Exeter, and a cleaned check valve - no more hot water being ejected into the cab from the filler...

Still having fun & games with the MSS; having steamed on blocks to test the new 'super wick' material (also acquired at Exeter), she seemed to be steaming well, and did a few laps of the circuit under her own steam. However, problems started upon refilling the boiler. This caused a steam leak from the filler valve with nearly complete loss of pressure. After cooling, I thoroughly cleaned the water fill valve & having re-steaming this seemed to do the trick, but couldn't raise enough steam to get her to run on track, with the wheels easily stopped by touching. I'm hoping this is just a problem with the cylinders, as a) everything else seems in order, & b) I've ordered a cylinder upgrade kit from www.dream-steam.com. Sometimes it seems all the tinkering & expense hasn't led to much of an improvement from the loco as bought (best not tell my other half though ;-) Oh well, such is the lot of a mamod owner...

Saturday 1 November 2008

Garden Railway Blog - 1 year old today!

Well, here we are - 1 year and 62 posts old. Sadly, the weather has been too foul today to allow any kind of celebratory steam-up, though the forecast for tomorrow isn't so grim, so fingers crossed.

Quite a lot has happened on the garden railway front in the last year (considering that life with a young family doesn't leave much spare time for anything else!), the first phase of the garden layout is complete, we're down a Jane but up a Mortimer, and Cackler & the MSS have seen regular service too.

I'm certainly enjoying blogging, although I gather blogs are passe and we should all be tweeting away on twitter (at least according to Radio 4 the other morning...). Whilst the subject is 'selective in its appeal' I gather there are a few readers out there, so hello, and thanks for stopping by!

Here's to the next year!