Large Scale Central

Bought a live steamer

At ECLSTS. An Accucraft Ruby. It runs like a Swiss…nonstop tinkering project. It has two speeds–stalled on a mild grade and rapidly accelerating to light speed just before flying off the rails. Whoopee!

Lots of time wasting potential. I “modified” the safety valve–my wife nearby, saying “modify the safety valve? Is that a good idea?”

Now the safety valve blows at 50 psi, instead of a wimpy 20.

But now it runs much much better in reverse than in forward–wait, there’s a modification for that

I’m thinking it’s going to be sort of like sailing-tons of fun for the guy in charge, a boring ordeal for everyone else nearby

Cool…

Welcome to the burnt fingers society. I was the noob lat year, now it’s your turn :smiley:

The Ruby can be made to run nicely, so I’ve read. Takes some patience and a lot of reading - or one good friend with lots of experience. I was lucky to be given a 2 Cyl. Shay a little over a year ago by my better half. Little did I know it was just a ploy to keep me busy in the basement for hours. The Shay is a little easier to control. It doesn’t come close to light speed, in fact at full throttle on my 4% it’s sometimes hard to tell that it’s moving :o

Mine sits on a shelf after running the heck out of at Fred’s one year. But, then again, I didn’t buy it to run it but for nostalgia purposes. It’s a live steam version of the one that was in Ft Wilderness a long time ago. And if it wasn’t for the help of Doug Matheson, John Spencer, Roger Caiazza and a few others it probably wouldn’t have ever been run. But it was fun watching it zip around the track, stall, zip some more, stall, sputter, make hissing noises, zip a little more, stall, etc…

It’s never boring watching a live steam guy running and trying to catch up with his prize possession before it goes sailing off into space …:wink:

Comical indeed. Today I ran it in the late afternoon, with my daughter and her two neighbor friends and their older brothers and another kid, ages 4-8, and I’m running back and forth trying to keep the thing from flying off the curves while the older kids are dancing around with glee and my daughter and her pals are hacking at me with toy swords. Good times!

The thing ran well actually, now that I’ve ignore the dire warnings in the manual and tinkered with the safety valve. Doubling the steam pressure seems to have enabled the little rolling teakettle to make it up the grades

Increasing the steam pressure actually reduces the controllability. More sensitive on the regulator.

I would seriously consider installing the larger cylinders and pistons which will enable the steam to be raised at a lower pressure.
Much more controllable.

I’ve never figgured out why live steamers have to run at warp speed.
You see them on those raised benches just flying.
A long time ago, a member had one of those LGB Frank S’s live steamer.
He installed RC with servo’s doing the throttle and it seemed to run more realistic.
But, besides a little Mamod, that’s the only two I’ve seen running nice and slow.

My live steam stuff has never suffered what you describe as uncontrollable flat out speeds .
You may find that if the loco is not yet run in , you will need higher throttle to overcome stiction . Or make it move . Once it takes off and you by surprise ( that grammar is called a zeugma ) you MAY panic a bit , the resulting shut off making the loco kangaroo, that is why Tony knows what the problem is . (kangaroo, Tony Oz ,----never mind .)
Anyway , I ran all mine in on rolling roads . Thus no problems , even with the ones I made --you know , oval cylinders , wheels wrongly quartered or even eighthed .

Mike M , the chap with burned off finger prints

Quissenberry was selling some larger cylinders for it, he may still have some. Helps out a lot, I’ve heard.

As I’ve run it more it has run better–longer, and also dealing with grades better. Increasing the steam pressure seems to have helped give it a bit more power. I haven’t reversed the eccentrics, which everyone says makes a big difference

I’m planning to visit Quisenberry this weekend to get a goodall valve and maybe bigger cylinders, if he has them. I assume bigger cylinders mean shorter run times.

It’s a lot of fun

MIke, bigger cylinders means you run it at a lot less pressure. More like 20 pounds. This means the steam is not used up so fast ergo longer run times. Lower pressure results in less sensitive regulator control.

Tony–makes sense, thank you. I’ll ask royce if he has any. In no time at all I’ll have this thing costing a much as a small car

mike omalley said:
In no time at all I'll have this thing costing a much as a small car
:lol: Ralph