tac , thanks for the comprehensive write-up .
The blow down valve you mention sounds essential as opposed to “that’d be nice” , I shall pursue the idea of refitting all four similarly Roundhouse equipped missile launchers .
The scouring of the boiler sounds worth doing , I was not aware of the drawbacks of not cleaning thoroughly . I wonder , if I did the same with the kitchen kettle , would my tea taste better ?
Mike
You don’t clean tea kettles or Cast Iron skillets!
Don’t ask!
Here in yUK they are called tea pots. A kettle is what you boil water in prior to pouring it into the teapot.
Mike, depending on where you live, depends the quality of the water and what is in it to make it potable. Where we live, we go through a Brita water filter cartridge per week. Where my brother-in-law lives, in Gogledd Cymru, the water needs nothing in it to soften it. Our water exits the faucet in lumps of calcarious gravel. Even the rain water contains as much sand and dust as it it had no water in it t all.
If you have a ‘furry kettle’ then you need to do something about it. You would probably find that you tea was actually a plesant shade of amber brown, rather than grey with crunchy lumps in it, as our would be here without extensive use of water filtration.
Needless to say, neither water from the faucet nor sky goes anywhere near MY steam locomotives. I have six-litre table-top distiller to prepare the boiler water.
tac
Ottawa Valley GRS
Mike, Your Fowler has a blowdown, the oil drain has a drilled passage so all you have to do is unscrew by maybe 2 turns not removing the screw on the oiler and open the throttle. It will blowdown the oiler and the boiler for you.
Enjoy running, Roundhouse locos are a pleasure to run.
I agree with Mr Kovacs about Roundhouse locos being a real pleasure, having watched my BIL running his last Sunday at his mumble-mumble birthday party.
But surely by now, and for the ever-increasing cost of models whose prices have been emeliorated by the sheer numbers sold, there should be something rather better than that, more like the proper scale-looking valve offered by AccuCraft and soon to be standard fit.
tac
Ottawa Valley GRS
Jason , I did not notice that .
Another hole to squirt steam out of !!!
I must make a tool to slacken it without eviscerating myself with a steam knife .
Mike
tac ,
you are right , and more to the point , who else makes a Fowler , one of the classic colonial style locos ?
Mike -------still typing very gently to avoid pressure on burned parts of fingers
Mike don’t they make gloves to handle them kinda things with?
David , ermm , errr , my welding gauntlets are a bit too big .
Mike
tac Foley said:
Here in yUK they are called tea pots. A kettle is what you boil water in prior to pouring it into the teapot.
Mike, depending on where you live, depends the quality of the water and what is in it to make it potable. Where we live, we go through a Brita water filter cartridge per week. Where my brother-in-law lives, in Gogledd Cymru, the water needs nothing in it to soften it. Our water exits the faucet in lumps of calcarious gravel. Even the rain water contains as much sand and dust as it it had no water in it t all.
If you have a ‘furry kettle’ then you need to do something about it. You would probably find that you tea was actually a plesant shade of amber brown, rather than grey with crunchy lumps in it, as our would be here without extensive use of water filtration.
Needless to say, neither water from the faucet nor sky goes anywhere near MY steam locomotives. I have six-litre table-top distiller to prepare the boiler water.
tac
Ottawa Valley GRS
I entered the water from my well in the county fair. It won the blue ribbon in the chunk style division. 
Mike I thought I saw a set of silicone gloves on a TV commercial that were supposed to protect the wearer from heat. I just thought yunz guys who boil water for propulsion used some kind of gloves like that. Lest you end up burning your fingers.
Steve, years ago I spend a large part of a weekend replacing copper pipe at a friends house. Fortunately he had an unfinished basement ranch style house, so I had access to most of the pipes without having to put holes into his walls. It seams that his well water had somehow softened his copper pipes over the decades. Much of the copper pipe was easily removable, without the use of a tubing cutter nor hacksaw. From that day onward, I would not drink water, coffee nor tea at his house, out of concern of what his water may do to my plumbing.
David , I was not aware that such gloves were available . I use some that are marginally thicker than a condom to protect my hands when using air brushes and rattle cans , the next thickness up tend to blank off any feeling at all , and may lead to pinging the screw across the room .
I shall watch out for such prophylaxis , but in the meantime I shall resort to long nosed pliers followed by a snug fitting rubber tube over the screw a la lettre francais . Ma fois , ze english homme spik in ze frrrench .
I was extremely amused when , on my first detachment to France , they made ze jokes Non? about ze “lettres anglais” , mais when we told zem we call them “lettre francais” zey did not sink it so funny , zey saiz things like "ma fois " and “Quelle Horreur” and "voulez vous une biere " . Oh , maybe not the last one . Quel fou .
Meek , le anglais qui marche tous a travers du monde . Or some such .
Pleze Mike. Even though I took 2 years of French in school, I dont talk it so best.
Just as getting a bolt of lightning is the occupational hazard of kite-flyers, so too are singed fingers for live-steamers. Also in that category are -
Semi-permanent eyebrows.
Transisitional facial hair.
And rare, but not unheard of - the famous and spectacualr ‘flaming halo/Gabriel’s hair-cut’ head-hair.
There are two categories of those us little love-steamers. They are -
those to whom any or all of these things have happened.
liars.
tac
Ottawa Valley GRS
So true Tac, And very funny:)
Mike Morgan said:
Interesting , my Fowler has a similar blow-down valve ; the problem is , it is a removable screw , and I dismissed the idea of loosening it because I was afraid of losing more than fingerprints such as other still functioning parts of my person and the screw cap itself , which I pictured hurtling across the room making a noise like some wayward bullet in a western .
I did remove it after things cooled down , and noted that all the oil had gone . That made me wonder about refilling it during operation of the beast ; if I shut the throttle it would (presumably) not offer me a squirt of scalding steam .
If I have not burned more of my fingers away , I shall let you know after next firing (bad word to use in the circumstances) .
Mike (alias Mickey da Fingers)
I hate to get all technical, but that screw in the lubricator base is a drain, not a boiler blow-down. If you open it and crack the throttle, it will blow out all your residual oil, as well as the condensed water from the run and the steam in the boiler.
Which is not to say you can’t use it for that purpose, as Jason suggests, especially if you have no other option. However, most of my locos do not use all the oil every run, so when cool, I open the drain, let the water drip out until there is signs of oil, and then close it and refill the lubricator. Seems a waste to blow it all out.
Tac, the nice handle valve that Accucraft supplies is more useful if you have a proper blowdown. My locos both have a banjo fitting screwed in to the backhead leading to an underfloor drain valve.
o.
I have only the 3-C Shay currently fitted, but have an Edrig that does not have one, but will.
An Earl/Countess that does not have one, but will, and a Garratt that already has a screw-operated ‘blow-down’ and no room for anything else under the cab/frame. My other live-steamers are Gauge 1 and are Aster, Maerklin or AccuCraft and have no means of fitting one of these devices. Let’s not beat about the bush - many Roundhouse models, in particular those like the Fowler and its ilk, were designed in the late 1980’s, and have been showing their age for many years, excellent runners though they all are. Slot-head screws on the pilot beam, bent metal drive rods and a lack of any proper blow-down facility are just three areas where there is need for improvement - not that it will ever happen, of course.
My beef is not with the fact that there isn’t any kind of a ‘blowdown’ valve, but that the Roundhouse item does not actually look like one, and the AccuCraft one does. Here in yUK, David Bailey makes a nifty little handwheel and pipe extension that goes on the backhead of the simple AccuCraft Edrig/Ragleth - these locos have no sight glass - which enables you to fill up the boiler, light up, and when the hot water dripping out of the below-the-footplate pipe turns to steam, close it up. It has the benefit of looking zackly like a proper backhead fitting, too.
tac
Ottawa Valley GRS
Pete Thornton said
“I hate to get all technical, but that screw in the lubricator base is a drain,”
Do you not recognise satire ? tac and I were partly messing about , as we usually do .
Mike
Pete, thanks for clarifying that. I do not run live steamers, I loose my fingerprints in other ways, but I thought that a proper blow down valve was fitted low in the boiler to eject boiler sediment. On the full sized models, the blow down valve allows the crud accumulated in the mud ring to be ejected, if I remember steam locomotive design properly.
Also as the water in the boiler cools, a partial vacuum will be produced inside the boiler. Having the throttle open, with the steam line going through the oilier, sounds, to me, like a good (bad) way to draw oil into the boiler. Isn’t there a better way to let air into the boiler as it cools?
Just asking, like I said I don’t run live steam so I do not really know.
David - you are completely correct in your comment. A ‘real’ blow-down valve performs exactly as you have described.
However, in modelling live steam in smaller scales -that is to say, lesser scales than the ride-on or ride-behind, certain liberties in discriptive terminology are taken.
As you know, the real BDV is used to blow out the crud that accumulates in the boiler. Since, hopefully, there is no such crud in our teeny little boilers, we use the nolongerneeded steam in the boiler to blow THROUGH the lubricator, taking with it not only the nolongerneeded steam, but the remains of the emulsified steam oil in the lubricator.
We ALL know, I hope, that we are not using a blow-down valve per se, but rather a blow-THROUGH valve, in the same way as most of us do not have really working injectors on our little steamers, but use Mr Goodall’s excellent invention instead - that does exactly what an injector does.
Only when we are playing with our alcohol-fired live-steamers or for those billionaires here, coal-fired live-steamers, do we actually have need of, and use, a blower. and we call it a blower, just like the full-size item is called a blower.
As for letting air into the boiler after ceasing operations, well, be my guest. Most boiler filler valves are intimately integrated into the fabric of the boiler, and are, uh, hot. Plus, there is the little matter of residual steam pressure. Ever seen a truck tire burst? and that’s cold, too.
One fine steaming day a while back, I caught the tail-end of the after-effects as a recent convert to steam, who nevertheless knew all there was to know, used a set of fine-nosed pliers to remove the filler valve on his beautiful live-steamer, on which the pressure gauge still indicated around 60 psi. Having done so with some degree of difficulty, he watched in amazement as the filler valve hit the 10,000 ft level in less than a very short time, followed by the most unbelievable volumes of steam at high temperature. Most of which he was near enough to absorb with his face and hand.
Point is, we don’t remove filler caps/valves until the boiler is empty of steam under pressure. ANY amount of pressure over that of the normal atmosphere.
Back to the serious bit - please allow us a few small liberties, eh? After all, it’s meant to be fun, not a head-scratching, teeth-sucking, chin-stroking exercise in rhetoric and logic.
tac
Ottawa Valley GRS, and wishing he was there.