More work on my Steamlines Shay locomotive. At the weekend, I took it to the outdoor line at Brambleton model railway club, and it attracted a lot of interest. With much assistance from David Jones, we managed to get a bit of flame inside. Initially, we did this by moving the smokebox forward and pushing a lighter into the gap. We weren’t able to raise steam, but after a few minutes, lots of things on the smokebox started to bubble, and some of the detailing fell off … it seems that the chap who originally built it had used soft-solder. We also concluded that the locomotive has never been fired – it certainly hasn’t ever seen any heat.
This evening, I had another go. The flame lights, but goes out again – sometimes after a few moments, sometimes after a bit longer. (a short video here shows this in action https://youtube.com/shorts/FLPnBNLTUR8). I tried various combinations of moving the jet backwards, or forwards, restricting the air flow (with the dodgy-looking collar that I added – see pic below) but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. After half an hour and getting no pressure in the boiler, I tried something else.
Once everything had cooled down, I removed the boiler and lit the burner on its own. The picture below shows the flame in action (resting on a spare piece of steel to protect the frames – they are probably soft-soldered as well). This is normally inside the tube inside the boiler – bit it’s fascinating to see it in action.
The next step is to find out why the flame keeps going out. Watch this space.