The Home Machinist's 3/4" Scale Locomotive Roster

[GregE]

Thanks for the reminder John!
I painted my A3a over the winter, and just finished up the lettering this week. Yesterday I fired it up for the first time- up on blocks. Looking forward to taking it out to the club track next weekend.
All done by gregeaster, on Flickr

[SilverSanJuan]

Simply beautiful, Greg. That's one of the finest A3's I've seen.

Todd

[daveb]

Hi Greg, that certainly is a beauty. I just purchased an A3 from Caribou Doug in Ohio.(pictures) He purchased it from someone in Tennessee who said the engine is about ten years old and was build by someone in the northeast. If anyone recognizes the engine and knows who built it I would like to know. The engines new home is at Waushakum. So far no one there recognized it.

The second set of pics are of a Kozo new shay. I have been building for 6 years and I can see the lite at the end of the tunnel. The shay is running on air!! I'm hoping to have it ready by the end of the summer.

[GregE]

Thanks guys!
Nice to see your locomotives Dave. Fun to see a familiar face in the A3, and a nice piece of work like the shay.
I'd enjoy hearing about your experiences running at Waushakum.

[daveb]

Hi Greg
Steamed the A3 2 weeks ago on a track that was on the ground so I only steamed it for a couple hundred feet. It ran very well. That was the first time I had ever steamed a coal fired engine. Sunday, went to Waushakum. They have a beautiful dual gauge hyline about 3000 feet long. Was really looking forward to running it there. Anyway couldn't get it to steam because of an internal blower problem. Using an external blower it would lift the safies, but as soon as we switched to the internal blower we would lose the fire. The blower would start and then die. I had a lot of help trying to figure out what the problem was to no avail. It was strange because the week before there wasn't a problem with the blower. When I got home I looked at the blower design in Kozo's book and found that the blower valve was in the blower pipe bushing instead of the valve bushing at the top of the boiler. I'm hoping that this is the problem. I have switched the valve and the plug and will be trying again soon. Keeping my fingers crossed

[Dave Bortz]

You could try the blower on 40-50 lbs of compressed air in the boiler ? (Fill slowly...) Take the smokebox door off and see if something is plugged with a chunk of solder or construction material debris...(Happens alot...your not alone)

Nice job on the loco... it looks first class....

[daveb]

Thanks Dave, good idea. I'll try tomorrow.

[daveb]

Hi all
Just switched the valve and the plug an tested with 40# of air. Worked great. Will steam make a difference??

[LVRR2095]

Hi all
Just switched the valve and the plug an tested with 40# of air. Worked great. Will steam make a difference??

There is one way to find out....take it to the track and have some fun!

Keith
P.S. Dave...did you find some coal?

[Glenn Brooks]

Hi all
Just switched the valve and the plug an tested with 40# of air. Worked great. Will steam make a difference??

Not unless the heat in the steam is expanding some close tolerance and causing a part in the blower to expand and jam up the works.

[daveb]

Hi Keith
Will run at WLS a week from Sunday. Yes I did get coal. Also used WLS coal that seemed to burn very well.

[James Powell]

Get steam up on the bench/desk/ect at home first. Even if all you burn is some charcoal, that will tell you if you have fixed the blower problem.

In the old days, we used 'baccky tins for holding the engine off the ground. Not quite sure about the wisdom of that, given it was a Hudson (& heavy even for one of them...). Best of luck finding metal tobacco tins now anyway, last I got were plastic. (and quite a few years ago, duty free's @ sea).

Tonight's fun for me was playing with a pair of Locoparts propane burners in the small steam wagon. It's the same sort of testing process, except that I really cannot see what is going on without getting on the ground. I had a propane leak on the burner: manifold connection, that got tightened up & some of my fire retention problems went away. (as in, keeping the fire IN the firebox, not up my nostrils...). One advantage of road steam is you don't need a track. Mind, for a Pensy A3, you probably could lay out something as small as 15' radius curves on cut plywood sheets and get away with it.

James