I have a new Accucraft Shea (3 cyl) and the layout of the loco does not match anything on the net, or anything inthe manual. The notable difference isthe lubricator, which is of a new design. The filler and blow-off valve are obvious and familiar, but there is a new screw-type valve fitted to the side of the lubricator, which has no obvious function. If this is some kind of continuously adjustable ooiler, then how do i know if it’s correctly set? Or is it some kind of valve to prevent ingress of oil to the boiler through vacuum developing after shut-down? The loco runs fine, but there is a suspicious lack of oil fall-oout from the steam exhaust.Can anyone help? Accucraft haven’t replied - yet. - Alan Wilkes
Hi Al[#welcome] to the forum The only advice I can offer is try your local repair centre, Also if you show on your ID where you are there maybe some one close who can help
Thanks very much Two Tone, I appreciate your help. Unfortunately, I live in Ireland, and there are even fewer repair centres here than Accucraft owners! Anyway, I have always found that amateurs (like yourself? ) are much more knowlegeable, as well as much more generous with the info, than the trade. Thank you again - Al
Problem solved at www.the-nerds.org/steam-101.html Great site, very informative, recommend it toi all.- Alan
Hi Al Is the web address right tried it but can not get it to come up.
Hi Two-Tone: Obviously something wrong. here’s the website address pasted from their own site - regards, Al
While that web site is nice, and has some drawings, the descriptions and terminology is slightly in error.
My quick perusal reveals some minor mistakes.
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the valve gear drawing identifies it as a “Slip eccentric” and that is not the correct drawing for that term, or not the correct name for that drawing. The drawing is of Stevenson’s Valve Gear. A “Slip Eccentric” does not have what they named the “Quadrant” (the Quadrant is in the cab of a locomotive and is where the control lever (Johnson bar or Reverser) swings in an arc and the Quadrant has notchs in which a pawl fits to hold the bar at that position). BTW, the part should be labeled the “Link Block”. A Slip Eccentric has a slot in the that extends 1/2 way (or a bit more) around the eccentric (the offset wheel-like part on the axle) and the valve rod rides in it such that if the engine is manually pushed in one direction the rod slips in the slot so that it is pushed in such a way as to provide steam to the cylinder to keep the engine running that same direction. If the engine is pushed in the other way the rod “Slips” to the other end of the circular slot, 180-deg. away, to provide steam in such a way as to keep the engine running that other direction.
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the answer to your question, as described in the article is a bit off also. The valve is not to shut off steam so you can add more oil, it is to regulate the amount of oil that leaves the container to lubricate the engine.
It does not take much oil (Steam Oil, which is a mixture of animal fat and mineral oil) to lubricate the engine and most small models tend to put way too much oil in the steam line and it spews out (as tidy folk describe it) the stack and coats everything around. Lots of folk don’t like that to much.
The lubricators (known as Roscoe or Dead Leg lubricators) that do not have a valve, have only a small hole where steam enters and oil returns (yes, two way flow!) and the hole is quite large (to
Thank you for a most succinct explication of the operation of the Stephenson valve gear. However, the Shay has a simplified system, with just one eccentric operating each steam-valve. Reversing is performed by the Johnson bar (‘Reversing lever’ on this side of the Atlantic) which operates a sliding steam-valve, switching the steam and exhaust pipes. This also gives it a handy function as an alternative Throttle (‘Regulator’ OTSOTA), which makes radio control possible with just one channel, the regulator and butane supply being fixed in advance by the operator. The ‘displacement lubricator’ is , indeed, inside the cab, but since the Shay cylinders are on the starboard side, and not at the front end of the locomotive, there’s no risk of superheating and frying the oil en route through the boiler.
I’m grateful to you for the clear outline of how the lubricator works, and the probable reason for this modification (including the valve). However, in my experience of manufacturing practice, after many years monitoring the car trade, changes like this are most usually dictated or driven by serious problems, and not mere preferences of the customer. I may be overly suspicious, but it seems possible that a l
Yes, the Accucraft Shay has the simplified valve gear reverser that just reverses the flow of steam to the steamchest. The same method as used on the Ruby and it variants. My comments were directed at the web site’s missnaming of their diagram of valve gear. I have a friend that has an early Accucraft Shay but I have not inspected it all that much to know for sure if the steam line ran through the flue, I didn’t think it did, but as a general comment I thought the coking of the oil in the steam line was important to mention.
People do use the steam reversing valve as the throttle and it works well, but then others extrapolate that method of controlling the speed of a steam loco to a machine that has true valve gear and it doesn’t work the same. I have control of both the throttle and the valve gear on my locos because they both do what the prototypes do and “notching up” on the valve gear can sometimes speed up the engine, rather than slow it down (as it would with the simplified system)! The two reversing methods just ain’t the same animal!
The application of the valve on the lubricator is, in my opinion, a direct result of the customer finding a “fix” to a common problem. Manufacturers in our Live Steam toy nitch are responsive to customer comments but Accucraft is VERY responsive! They have updated their products many times over the years based on what the small cadre of gurus in the customer base have found to improve their products after the sale. Larger cylinders, burner anti-howl baffle over the air intake, and this valve on the lubricator are all the result of what the user community has induced in the next version of the products. The Ruby has especially been a proving ground for such improvements. And where applicable, these improvements migrate to the other Accucraft engines as new production runs are started.
The term “Mayonnaise” describes the frothy stuff quite well. I had never seen
I’m very glad to hear that Accucraft have been so responsive to customer ideas and preferences. Certainly the much complained-about howl from the gas-burner has almost disappeared. I bought the Shay following glowing recommendations from people whose views I respected (now including yours, sir). Yep, that website did get a few things wrong, but I felt they had made a brave effort to explain things. Too many times, we have people explaining things when they do not know whereof they speak! (Mainly journalists, in that category – i should know, i was one for 35 years). But these guys seemed to me to have a reasonable grasp of things.
Incidentally, you tell me that steam oil is a mixture of mineral oil and animal fat! That’s news. Not since I visited the Mennonites in Canada (Amish in the US) who told me they used goose-grease on their cart-axles, have I heard of animal-fat as a lubricant. Is it whale-oil? Surely that’s history, although the steam loco driver who could brag that he was burning w
The animal fat is usually beef tallow. The mineral oil does most of the lubricating, but since it won’t emulsify with the steam it won’t flow to the right places. The tallow does mix with the steam well and carries the oil with it to the cylinder walls and the piston rod gland, but it is easily burnt at high pressure steam temperatures. Thus either by itself does not work… Either, won’t spread or will char and become grit instead of lubrication, but together in the “right” porportions does it right. The argument now is what are the right porportions! [:S]
REAL “Steam Cylinder Oil” is the only thing you should use. Automotive motor oil contains detergents that remove the oil coating in a steam engine and other oils don’t get to the corrrect places in the cylinder. Years ago people used to use plain “medicinal” mineral oil and I guess it did okay in small very low pressure (5 -10 psi) engines (wobblers and other “toy” engines), but in the more modern replicas of Steam Locomotives with their higher pressures (30 to 60 psi) need better lubrication. Some people advocate using Marvel Mystery Oil and Chainsaw oil, but you should stay away from them. They are not designed to run in the wet enviroment of a steam engine and really do not do the correct job.
I get to see a Shay loco about once a year at the Midwest Old Settler’s and Thresher’s Reunion in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa.
See a video I made on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCp5zhabFig
Love all that action on the side!
Hi: Your movie of the Mt. Pleasant meeting was pretty good. I liked the fact that the Shay was the only one of the three locos to breast the hill without running out of steam, so to speak. Not the quickest lady maybe, but certainly the most sure-footed on a steep gradient, which is what this design was all about .
Your strictures about which SCO to use are wise, and I’ve come across a piece by a guy called Harry Wade, who would seem to agree with everything you say about steam cylinder oil. (web address below). Of course this is not the only vexed question for me. Water, the staple diet of the steamer, also poses problems. I have heard (and read) a lot about distilled water. I asked a local supplier for some and she happily agreed that she could get it. When it arrived it was marked ‘‘purified water’’. I eventually got to the guy in the laboratory whose label appeared on the item and he confessed that it was not distilled but deionised. I decided to abandon the whole idea and use either (a) defrost water from my fridge/freezer, or (b) from my dehumidifier/air conditioner, or (c) filtered rainwater. What do you think? There is no queston of my using the ordinary water supply, as this is so calcified locally that it used to turn my late wife’s hair green if she used it for shampooing!
regards, Al
Southern Steam Trains is a great site! It is aimed primarily for Aster locomotives, but the general information is applicable to all of our toys.
It is always a shock to us in the U.S.A. to hear folk from other places lament the difficulty of getting Distilled Water. I just go to the grocery store and get it by the gallon jug, for about a dollar, in the aisle where there are the other types of bottled water, We can get just plain bottled water, filtered water, flavoured water, baby formula water and a couple dozen other water “formlations”… Some are nothing more than somebody held a bottle under the tap in some city.
But Distilled Water is just one of the types on the shelf. Easy to get, cheap, almost always available. (The only time I ever saw the shelves empty was at the end of 1999 when folk were panicking about the “Millenia” computer meltdown.) I have no idea why they sell enough of it to stock so much all the time… I suppose there are people who (like me) like to cook with it because of the poor flavour of the tap water. Not that the tap water here is bad, but I just don’t like the taste of it.
If you cannot get true Distilled Water, then there are other alternatives.
Dehumidifier water is probably okay, as long as it does not contain too much dust or airborne grease and other organic and inorganic matter from the air. I’d do a simple inspection of the water to see if there is stuff in it. Fill a good clear glass with water and look at it. Maybe use a magnifying glass. I would not use water from a dehumidifier that is in or near a kitchen (grease and odors) or in a place where there is a possible problem with mold or mildew (airborne spores). If there is any particulate matter, maybe it could be filtered to remove the dust and stuff. Coffee filter? Paint filter? Maybe a good lint free cloth filter? Again, LOOK at it to see if you see stuff floating around. I am fairly cer
That’s an encyclopaedic knowledge of water for steam engines, Semper. I’m amazed that you can buy distilled over the counter . Here, in the country which invented whiskey, and gave it its name, there’s, let’s say, a certain ambiguity about distilling. For teetotallers, it was the devil’s brew; for the excise and taxmen it was heaven-sent; for those in the middle, it was useful for rubbing on a horse’s injured limb. The original stills were known as ‘’pot-stills’’, using a rather tortuous process. When the Scots got in on the act later, they invented the ‘’patent still’’ which produced much more, much more easily , and soon conferred on them world domination in the moonshine business, though seasoned drinkers say theirs is an insipid product, not to be compared to the sharper, more acquired taste, of Irish, which is, of course, why it doesn’t sell so well. Like Heinz Beanz, an unchallenging taste is more likely to succeed in the mass market.
The patent still uses a continuous fractional-distillation process, not unlike that used to make gasoline (and the mineral oil for steam locos), which is cheaper and faster.
Never mind where it comes from now ( I gather that Suntory, from Japan, is now the world’s biggest selling ‘’Scotch’’ Whiskey). Notice how the Scots
I can see where you could run into problems with regulations due to the concern of someone going beyond getting distilled water and concentrating the alcohol content from various organic “stews”. We, also, here on this side of the pond have had, and still have, problems with the “Moonshiner”, but that paranoia does not seem to have been transfered to the makers of distilled water… nor the regulation of machines to make distilled water.
Using the wallpaper stripper, or carpet steamer, or bathroom steamer/cleaner (“As Advertised on TV”!) one could get a lot of distilled water, but unless you enclosed the capture system in some way you will run the risk of contamination of the output similar to the dehumidifier, though probably less so, since it would produce more output over a shorter period of time.
Another problem is that they tend to spit water (which contains the dissolved minerals and other contaminants) so unless you took care to keep the splashing down or exclude that water from the output you don’t get pure water. My sister has one of the bathroom cleaning steamers and I see the light haze of calcium that it leaves on everything. I have read the instructions on a rental carpet steamer and it recommended using steam distilled water in it to begin with to reduce the build up of deposits in the machine itself!
This brings up the cost question… if the machine to make distilled water is more expensive than the train you are making the water for, so as to preserve the toy, then it seems to be counter-economic to do so!
Be careful if you attempt this scheme and try to direct the steam in to a set of pipes to condense the steam back into water (i.e.: the typical coil of tubing of a 'Still) in that you don’t want to risk a boiler explosion caused by sealing it up tightly (to keep out contaminants and reduce water losses because the steam drifts out of the system). There have been many a moonshiner’s 'Still explode because they are not usually
That pretty well wraps up the water topic, but i’m still fixated on the oil/tallow subject. Someone here who runs a Roundhouse loco tells me that they changed the oil they recommended for steam running their engines. Change, unless improvement is clearly indicated, often has darker implications. Sure enough, it seems that blockages were the trigger, caused by carbonised oil - the same thing you mentioned. In this case, the change followed the switch from coal or alcohol burning to butane gas. The current oil recommended is ‘Compounded Bearing Oil 220’ (220 being the weight or viscosity, though I don’t know if the USA viscosity name is the same, or if the same system is used. In cars we used to have SAE, for Society of American Engineers, but this is obvously something else). This oil, Roundhouse say, was chosen after they adopted internal gas firing and some engines were experiencing blocked super heater pipes after prolonged use. The blockages were caused by carbonised oil, though this had never been a problem with the earlier externally fired models. The key points that dictated what oil to use were as follows (Roundhouse say).
- 1/ Working on a (relatively) low steam pressure of 40psi.
- 2/ Displacement type lubricator positioned in cab, so ‘wet steam’ pickup.
- 3/ Long pipe run (again, relatively) between lubricator and cylinders.
- 4/ Small diameter of piping.
- 5/ High degree of superheating between lubricator and cylinder as superheater heated directly by gas burner and will often be glowing red during operation.
What was needed was an oil that would be picked up and carried by the (relatively) low pressure wet steam, then travel through all the small diameter piping, through the high temperature of the superheater (without being carbonised), and arrive in the correct proportion in the cylinders where it cools again before doing its job. All of this pointed to a medium weight oil so that it would pick up and pass qu
Well… Originally (1:1 real world) steam operations utilized just animal tallow for lubrication and that worked okay at the low temperatures (250 deg(F) to 274 deg (F)) of the low pressures possible (less than 15 to 30 PSIG). When metallurgy improved such that higher pressures were possible, the temperature went up accordingly and the tallow “cokes” (the dissolving volatiles boil out, leaving behind solid carbon compounds) in the heat. The solids scar the surfaces of the valve and cylinder causing wear and loss of steam pressure.
The tallow was then “compounded” with mineral oils that have higher breakdown temperatures so that problem went away… In the real world, anyway.
What follows is just my surmising as to what the state of affairs are now in our toy Live Steam world:
Many of the companies that make our toys follow practice set by the early individual designers/builders of those that modeled Live Steam. Not all of those people were “Design Engineers”. They may have been excellent machinists and modelers but they did not necessarily take into account the things that miniaturization brings to the Live Steam world.
I think it was found early on that putting the actual throttle/regulator in the cab was easier than trying to put it in the front end or in the steam dome (typical real world practices) and making the mechanical connections to a lever in the cab. This required running a pipe from the throttle in the cab to the cylinders at the other end and that pipe is necessarily small (scale) and loses heat rapidly which can actually condense all the steam back t
The crash of your Aster Mikado was stomach-churning. Horrifying to watch such a wonderful machine going over the brink, but happily it survived. Asters, in this part of the world, are reckoned to be the Rolls Royce toys, while Accucraft or Roundhouse, say, would be the Fords. Asters, of course, are made available as kits, but they are so darned expensive that many of us would be loath to risk the construction job ourselves, and sure enough, the used ones with the highest values have turned out to be those built by known and reputable kit-bashers, or supplied RTR by Aster. ‘’Built by John Doe’’ is not a high recommendation , however much Mr. Doe might have enjoyed the job and the consequent satisfaction of owning his own work.
But not all Asters are equal. Your Mikado is magnificent, while other are more hum-drum. I’ve seen their Shay, of which two versions were produced over the years, though none recently, and the simplicity of the thing seems to have defeated them; however finicky they are about detail, there simply isn’t that much you can do to a Shay without prettifying it, which is not what it was all about. They even painted the end-boards bright red, something never seen on the originals, I believe, in an attempt to tart it up. And a lot of brightly polished brass and glossy paintwork simply added to the nightclub glitter, which is completely at variance with the battered-hat Hillbilly ambience of the
I forgot to mention the reason for the incompatibilty of Hornby’s live steam with their (or other’s) other equipment; quite simply, any DC or DCC loco left on the line and not isolated when the steamer was running would have been fried by the 15 volts!. So everything else had to come off the layout. This lacked appeal for serious modellers.Below is a link showing how it should have worked. If only this rose-tinted picture had been borne out in the ramshackle reality!