The Home Machinist!

He’s really doing well. I’m sure you can contact him whenever.

John I have some I can give you next time I’m there. Teflon rope pieces pulled from a thick packing rope.
Phil Meade

I can recommend the Pacific Design Kit. Nice parts, very good drawings and notes. It’s been a fun build so far.

You can “hear” the temp of the tender water in a sense. The warmer it gets the injector sounds less and less sharp. The delivery rate goes down and eventually it won’t work at all. Many tourist railroads fill the tender at the end of the day then put it in the engine house for the night. During a su...

I’m using an SAE connector right now. Only need two wires for the supply as all my switches are on the cab. It’s nice as it makes it impossible to get the polarity wrong when plugging the charger in.

As others have said full size locomotives all have two devices only. That's what i'm used to and having two injectors only on my engine feels completely natural. On full size engines I never had both of them fail at the same time. Of course this is a hobby so theres nothing wrong with having more. E...

I received the gauge and it’s gorgeous! Thank you very much. I will have an engine to install it on later this year. I’ll be sure to post some pics.

Jack you could try the group that is restoring Boston & Maine 3713. They just did a lot of work on its Coffin Pump and I think they have the info.

That sounds neat Dave! I have not yet operated a Hardinge but have really liked turret lathes. Setup is not difficult and you can crank out the parts. Plus I understand a mechanical machine, I don’t do well with computers.

It’s a lot easier and more effective to set up a good water treatment program at each club. Especially as many use one water source for the whole track. Depending on the initial water conditions we could set up softeners and test the water regularly. We could even install off the shelf filters to re...

No full size boiler had 2” plates. The Big Boy’s firebox sheets were probably 1/2”-5/8” thick. The barrel may be as thick as 1.25”. They ran at 300psi and would have been hydro tested at 375psi. Our scale boilers are quite out of scale in these ways.

I would think that the steam driven water pumps (scale ones without a heater) would be the least efficient because the live steam used is exhausted to atmosphere. Injectors return most of that heat to the boiler.