Southern Maid

[cabbage]

I really should blame "Dave" for this!!! He brought "02" over and since then I have gone "Ummmm....." So I had a look at my own Oracle and selected "Southern Maid: by LBSC. After some phone calls I ordered a copy of the plans from GLR . It will be some time before this is built -but has anyone any information on expected problems or pitfalls with this loco?

It seems to have two boiler designs -one for meths and one for coal. I am not sure that I could build a multiflue coal burner with the kit I have -but a water tube meths burner I would have no trouble with.

Comments, suggestions ideas and information please!!!!

regards

ralph

[454]

Ralph,

It will go around a 15 feet diameter circle of track according to LBSC.

The water tube boiler design for meths burner could be adapted to take a ceramic gas burner, which would be less smelly as a fuel than meths & easier to deal with as a screw-on adapter to a small gas canister may be carried in the tender so will avoid the hypocrisy of having to have the gas tank pressure tested, since the ones in the supermarkets aren't.

Plenty of room for radio control.

Watch out for the slip eccentric though, makes for easy manual reversing.

Read all about it here:
http://www.users.waitrose.com/~n25ga/Locos/smaid.htm


Dave
454

[cabbage]

Well having weighted down the plans on the carpet and supped a litre or two of prime brewed RR "weed killer" (black no sugar!) and having studied the plans in the book by KN Harris I have decided that "Design 14" for a water tube boiler is the one that I am going for. It is sort of a Semi Brotan. It will require some "stretching" in the longitudinal direction in the firebox end to fit cleanly into the space vacated by the coal burning boiler but I think that it should work quite well.

I am not sure (as yet) how the "cool wall" firebox is going to work and wether the the meths burner is of the "hybrid" vapour burner type or the classical lamp and wick system.

regards

ralph

[454]

Design it with a ceramic radiant burner & use the screw-on canister storage in the tender.

Smelly meths, yuck. Where can you get it nowadays?

Dave
454

[AllWight]

Dick Allan is the person to chat to he has a southern maid which was running today impeccably

Mark

[cabbage]

Dave....

You could be right! I would just need the correct oblong "cooker" to heat the water tubes with. The one thing that is  an "I wonder??" is the axle pump. Could I get away with an injector? The "Number 4" seems to deliver 1.25 pints per minute at between 50 and 100psi. This does away with the twin "clack valves" and in the reduced space I could fit a feed water heater...

By fitting a thermocouple to the boiler I could then link it back to a servo to the gas supply(?)

I cannot help being lazy!!!

regards

ralph

[454]

No Ralph, dodgy to use a temperature sensor, what is better is a pressure sensor so as the steam pressure reduces due to demand the gas wick is turned up. This is the control feedback loop.

Of course you have to keep an eye on the water gauge glass as well. Lack of water could whack the gas valve off or switch to pilot light to save the boiler as a fail safe.

Think about it, how would you correlate a temperature with a need for more gas?

Using pressure it becomes pretty obvious, lack of pressure reduction in performance. Conversely when SV blowing off  too much so then set gas to turn down to pilot when SV's open.

Injectors are probably ok for ride behind control. But axle pump & bypass valve is the solution for free runners.
Injectors tricky when feed water water gets too hot.

Boiler regs say that 2 independent methods needed to introduce water to boiler, hand pump & axle pump seem to be the solution for free runners. So you might not get away with fitting only one clack as to be safe you will need 2.

If you look at John Bagueley's experiments on setting up injectors then it seems to me a bit hit & miss cos the steam pressure has to be just right, the water temperature has to be just right. Too much steam to injector is just as bad as too little steam to injector. His squirting test is quite spectacular.

Go for the axle pump & bypass valve.

I think we might not have heard the last of this one.

Cheers
Dave

[454]

Just found this link:

http://www.clevedonsteam.co.uk/pdf/ElectronicGasRegInstructions.pdf

Could be a useful piece of kit?

Dave
454

[cabbage]

Well after a weekend covering the carpet with plans, somethings are starting to be come clear -but other things are still confusing.... I seem to have two types of steam cylinder and steam chest (?) I don't seem to know the working pressure of the boiler, and despite there being two "clack" valves there is no feedwater heater (?)

Looking at the plans is looking into the past. 

I had to smile and wipe a tear at the style of writing used. Looking at my fathers notes shows the same "olde english copperplate" hand writing. Lord knows I could do with him now! This Colonial Brat is pure Metric. I am going to have to blue pen "SI" over all the dimensions and convert from "wire numbers" to mm and the same with BA. The steam fitting will have to stay in ME threads but I think that I will have to standardise on one thread as there seems to be several in the plans.

Although I would still like an injector pump several friends from G1 to 5" have advised against it. Not that they don't work -but they require constant attention, and to quote one : "they work perfectly -but it would be an unwanted complication -stick to a brute force pump".

regards

ralph

[cabbage]

A very Saturday has left me with nothing to do except fiddle with my wagon building -and to think... The more I looked at the drawings for "Southern Maid" the less I liked it -it was just too pretty!!! What I needed was an 0-6-0 tender loco that could be produced from "Southern Maid" without too much hassle.

As I have opted to go for a water tube boiler, (despite there not being one in the plans) -the N2.5GA site says there is one somewhere -so if anyone knows anything about it could they please let me know.  The "Design No.14" from the KN Harris book fits perfectly but it is wider than the frames so will have to sit above them with a "wide firebox" of the Wooten outline to hide the gas ceramic... Now as this was going to be a water tube boiler it did (to me) make sense to examine water tube boiler locos of the Edwardian Period. So, I dug out my collection of "dirty postcards" and poured over them. Brotan water tube boilers were a speciality of the now isolated MAV after the First World War and all their loco designs were (of course) Imperial Austro Hungarian Empire Railways designs...(KKSTB)

Whenever KKSTB is mentioned there is only one person to look for -Karl Gölsdorf.

He never produced an 0-6-0, but the MAV did, and they carried on the Gölsdorf designs. So this loco will have a wide fire box, the Clench double dome steam drier, the bread oven smoke box doors  and the birdbath spark arrestor.

I expect it to look truly hideous and very MAV...

regards

ralph

[John Baguley]

Ralph,

The water tube boiler for Southern Maid is in ME Vol. 78 Issue 1918. It's a simple Smithies type with a 2-1/2" dia. by 11" long barrel and three 1/4" dia. by 20swg water tubes underneath. It was meant to be oil (paraffin) fired.

John

[454]

Ralph,

The boiler description that John B has just described is very similar to a Bassett Lowke 4472 water tube boiler.
It is Smithies 2-1/2" diameter using 16g copper tube, flanged ends, 5 x 1/4" water tubes but 16 inch long as it is a Pacific after all. But not a big issue to make it shorter for an 0-6-0.
It would sit inside a 3" diam envelope & have a wide firebox. If you want a photocopy you only have to ask.

The mods I am making to the design are a 5/32" solid stay axially positioned secured with blind nipples, also using bronze boiler bushes & a re-siting the SV's to in front of cab. I have decided to use 4 x 1/4" tubes only to not crowd the firebox area.

So there we have it, this boiler could be the one you need. Thanks John B for illustrating the design, it struck me as being very similar to the one I am working on.

Ralph you can even borrow my hardwood flange former to whack out the copper.

Dave
454

[cabbage]

Some of you might not be familiar with the "style" that Dr Karl Gölsdorf developed so I am going to give you a few pictures to ponder over. Maybe you will come to the same conclusion that I did -that it is "do-able" bespoke modification -since most of the externals will be mainly non functioning and "cosmetic". LBSC did himself state that it could be turned into "Cornish Cracker"...

What I propose is more "Southern Magyar"!!!

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Austrian_State_railways_Golsdorf_compound_0-10-0_locomotive_(Howden,_Boys'_Book_of_Locomotives,_1907).jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Gölsdorf#mediaviewer/File:Kkstb_18001.jpg

Both jpgs show the Clench steam drier and the double domes that are a "dead giveaway" for a pre WW1 Gölsdorf design... The first shot shows the typical KKSTB "birdbath" spark arrestor with the second showing the projecting piston "tails" and their protective covers complete with the "bread oven" smoke box door.

I have a loco to build  (Ixion) and various carriages and wagons to complete so it will be later this year before work starts in ernest. I have some rough CAD drawings of what I would like MEL to cut for me out of 3mm BMS and 1mm brass when the time comes. Most of the other parts are "off the shelf" from GLR Kenningtons.

regards

ralph

[cabbage]

HELP!!!

I am looking for a Lamp that goes on the front of the loco I have ONE(!) I think the casting is white metal by IMP -I seem to remember having got it from an open day at Butterly(?) I need a further two to complete the triad for my conversion



It looks like it is for something from a G scale loco (possibly a "Staintz"). But if anybody has one or knows where I can get one I would be grateful for the information. The whirring sound in the background is from Eastleigh....

regards

ralph

[cabbage]

I am going to have to face the daunting prospect of machining a pair of steam cylinders... This is something I have never done coming from a firm "sparkie" background. I have looked at a couple of Utube videos and I think that I have a rough understanding of the process involved...

I have never machined gun metal. Used it in its "original purpose" a few times -but not as a modelling material.

All my tools are Tungsten Carbide -which is great for my little C2 lathe but I was wondering about HSS tools as several people have told me that they give a better finish?

Opinions and comments please!!!

regards

ralph

PS thank you the Vienna Technical Museum for detailed photos and dimensioned drawing of a KKSTB loco lamp!!!