The Unofficial Mamod and Other Steam Forum

CCairns · Last edited by CCairns on Sun Feb 24, 2008 5:49 pm; edited 1 time in total

My fourth live steam loco is this MSS Saddle Tank.

It was purchased new on ebay a couple of years ago, and it was intended to remain on the shelf until I have a Garden Railway to run it on. However, given Chris's bad experience with this model of loco I have decided to get it run-in.

I removed the Saddle Tank to ease fault finding (a wise precaution), and took it apart where possible. The wheelset appears to be punched onto the axles OK and are very free running. The baseplates for the cylinders had a lot of metal burr, so these were removed, cleaned up and re-faced. A large blob of solder was removed from the boiler just behind the steam nut, and the soldering of the steam pipe to the boiler tube insert is very sloppy.

I have started to raise steam using solid fuel. The first attempt was a disaster as the soldering of the ring onto the safety valve had contaminated the face of safety valve so it leaked water which put out the forward part of the solid fuel. This has been corrected, and I now find that this engine suffers from severe priming making steam runs very short at present.

Anyone had similar problems trying to run-in a new MSS loco?

Chris Cairns.

Mamodman123 · Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 5:36 pm Post subject:

someone else had that problem with priming! It used to shoot water out the chimney!

The solution was to rinse the boiler out many times with hot water

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Solid Fuel tablets explode

You could get a nice flatbase for that

www.mamodsteam.tk

CCairns

Hi Mamodman,

You were exactly spot on!

The instructions tell you to wash out the boiler with hot water and some washing up liquid to remove all solder deposits, then flush the boiler out with more hot water. Obviously I had not flushed the boiler out enough and the residual washing up liquid was causing the priming.

As I do not have many of the rectangular fuel tablets I tried fitting my meths burner. However the first run ended up with a jet of red coloured water (I use food colouring to see my water levels) shooting up and soaking my cooker hood (which I had just cleaned earlier!).

I have just flushed the boiler out under the hot water tap for 10 mins, and a run on solid fuel actually still had some water left in the boiler after the tablet had burnt out.

Thanks for your help.

Chris Cairns.

Mamodman123 · Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 7:09 pm Post subject:

Great that it helped Chris

always glad to help

_________________
Solid Fuel tablets explode

You could get a nice flatbase for that

www.mamodsteam.tk

Chris · Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 7:13 pm Post subject:

Hope you get it to run well. I would have persisted with mine if I had bought it secondhand as I think they are fun looking little engines. But as I bought it new, and it wasn't well built, I just wanted my money back.
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Chris
http://www.chrisfisher-photography.co.uk