Member postings for Ron Hancock

Hi Ron,

I'm about 4 hours west of Sydney. It has been one of the hottest summers anyone can remember getting up to 40deg C. Even water in tenders gets too hot for the injectors to work reliably. We didn't use ice on the Jan running day and had lots of problems. I was putting my loco back together after a major overhaul leading up to the running day and couldn't get the injectors to work until I fired it up early in the morning before the day heated up, and put fire bricks between the frames and injector bodies. Then they worked okay. I didn't bother putting water in the side tanks of my loco because it's well known that doesn't work well with injectors. I filled them with sand for weight.

During winter it goes from about -4dec C at night to 8-12deg C during the day. Maybe not as cold as the UK, but cold enough! Quite a temperature range around here.

I read a good web page someone wrote about the process he went through making and testing his own injectors, but I don't have his persistence so I'm not sure I'd make a go of it. But he had a means of testing them off the loco which seemed a good idea to eliminate the many parts on the loco which can be at fault.

As far as I can tell they work well until one of a million things upsets them and then you have the joy of cleaning them, checking the pipes, valves, taps, filters, clacks, sacrificing chooks, and who knows what else.

Hi Dave yes it does get so hot their i was very surprised it must be a nightmare keeping the water cool enough for injectors to work.

Don't you use axle pumps for times when its so hot just a thought.

my daughter is coming to visit this April from Narre Warren when we went a couple years ago most days stuck inside with air con on and cold beers think she will notice the difference now as she has been their about 6 years now.

I find it very interesting to read what its like running their fascinating.i loved going to see how my friends trains ran their.

Biggest surprise when a flipping great kangaroo jumped the fence in front of the train sure he wanted a ride too.

Colin was nearly 80 and his wife Nancy he wanted me to stay a few months and help him run his Loco's i have yet to see any so good.

Thank you for getting back to me.

Ron

The only crucial dimension when the steam cone enters the first part of the combining cone is the annular gap.

Both Eric Rowbottam in ME 1976, and in DAG (Derek) Brown's books and articles provide a fool proof method of assessing/gauging same. Eric's method has been in print for 40 plus years so there is no secret.

If you don't get the annular gap correct on the steam cone then even if everything else is spot on to drawings for the other bits, then the injector is unlikely to work.

Gordon Chiverton used a smaller steam cone nozzle than in the DAG Brown articles and his excellent book, and used a larger combining cone 'throat' size. This gives Gordon's injectors their strong lifting characteristics . Gordon's annular gap was quite a bit more than Derek's standards for any size of injector.

Martin Evans never made an injector himself. He copied the C.M. Keiller injector proportions published in ME in 1962, but had very limited experience of driving and firing miniature locos, and had no personal knowledge of how to make injectors other than which others such as Keiller had written in ME. He was completely ignorant of the details of the highly successful designs of Ted Linden. So I would tread a bit carefully with anything written by Martin Evans about injectors!

If you want my own rather long and boring comments on injectors have a look at this

**LINK**

Cheers,

Julian

Coincidence is a strange thing. I bought a box of old magazines a few weeks ago and today's breakfast read was ME 16th June 1967.

The full text of the correction is: the steam cone was shown as entering into the first part of the combining cone by 0.090 in. This should have been 0.040 in.

In another recent thread I asked advice on how to turn a handle for a rolling pin. I have yet to complete that job successfully. Looking at the cones in Martin Evan's injector drawing is slightly depressing, I see I still have an awful lot to learn.

Dave

I find them frustrating too. The problem is there is so much that can be wrong - the pipe work, water valves, clack valves, cones - positioning or gunked up, water temperature, pressure range, the list just goes on. It's a wonder the damned things ever work. During the summer months down under its even worse and sometimes if you don't put ice in your tender you're out of luck. Then of course they all have different threads for the connections! I have a pair from somewhere and even the bloke in the club who made a living building and fixing locos didn't have a tap or die they'd match.

My club really frowns upon axle pumps so we all run two injectors. I get the feeling on many locos only one of them works reliably and gets used all the time with the other one only used in emergencies when the 'good' one decides to play up. Way too much of my driving time is spent watching the injector overflow and fiddling with water and steam valves trying to keep water in the boiler.

I can't say I'd blame anyone for fitting either an axle pump or an electric pump as a way of getting water in their boiler, especially with a bypass so you could have a chance at setting it to keep a decent water level most of the time.

It might be a good project to have a testing setup of some sort with a boiler, water tank, and just enough pipe work to test the rotten things.

It seems unless you can make them yourself you'll probably fall foul of them at some point.

No excuses, they need to be ready to put things right if they sell faulty gear, just like anyone else should.

I just hadn't heard of, and couldn't find, any reference to Chinese made injectors, but if Ron has been told that some of the one he has had are imported, I'm happy to accept that.

We do benefit from many specialist suppliers who have an understanding of the hobby. Clearly while others have had no problems with injectors from multiple sources, Ron has had a string of bad ones. If he and other people who get such items don't feed back to the suppliers nothing will be done.

Ironically, injectors are the sort of precision product where CNC mass production should offer reliability and consistency. I suspect the problem is that the volumes out of China will never be large enough to justify the investment in time to get them right. Alternatively, perhaps a UK supplier with in-house CNC might wish to rise to the challenge.

Neil

Hope so would be nice if they do

Ron

Injectors always seem to generate a lot of discussion:- probably because they are a bit of an enigma, I've observed that some people seem to have no problems with them whilst others struggle.

I fitted a commercial injector to my Simplex when I completed it, and it worked fine. But I fancied a go at making my own so read up on it, and to be honest I was far from happy as to how the great and good in Model Engineering described the process, they seemed to make it sound all to easy, but from my own research and long study of drawings I didn't feel that confident to start. Then a fellow club member offered to give me some tuition on the subject, this prompted me to have a go:- I made a batch of five as I reasoned that I would get at least one of the five running, In the end I got all five working, one is fitted to my Simplex and works flawlessly all I do is clean it in white vinegar once a year I've kept one back for spare the rest I've given to fellow club members and are in regular use.

Her are a few pictures of the tooling its not the only way to make them but it worked for me.

Cheers

Stew

This is a very interesting thread. I was going to ask Julian if he could recommend any injectors but he has spared me the trouble by mentioning them above. A good injector is as reliable a a light switch. I drive my Simplex on our very busy monthly running days for 3 hours straight. I have a tank on the riding truck for cool water supply. I leave the water on constantly and use the single injector which snaps on every time. I have lightly pickled it a couple of times in several years (soft water here). In contrast, a loco I finished for someone and fitted 2 injectors and an axle pump has given constant trouble. Despite attention to water valves, clacks and pipework on a couple of occasions, the owner relies entirely on the axle pump. I'll have yet another look at it sometime but it is a big disappointment. Thinner walled 3/16 pipe might help as I suspect the easily available 20 G stuff has too small a bore.

There's nothing new under the sun. Injectors feature rather often in old copies of Model Engineer. Mostly people having trouble getting them to function, occasional discussion about design, and in the 60's a row about about how they work at all.

However, it wasn't until today that I found that a faulty full-size injector had caused a serious accident. Wikipedia's account of the Ais Gill 1913 railcrash includes this:

"While the driver was out of the cab, the fireman was having difficulty getting an injector to work and the boiler water level was dropping. When the driver returned, both men worked on the injector, and eventually restarted it. While they were distracted by the problem, their train had passed all the signals at the Mallerstang signal box, which were at danger. The crew also missed a red lantern being waved from the signal box by the Mallerstang signalman, and another being waved by the guard of the first train. Shortly after, they looked up from their distractions to see the first train stalled in front of them only a few yards away, and far too late to stop."

Well done again Ron and Julian. It could have been much worse!

Dave

Keep at it Ron, you've come too far to think of giving up. I imagine everone on here is rooting for you so, best of everything.

Brian

> as a novice could not understand why i get the feeling they come from China sold very cheaply to supliers then sold at high profit where we become the frustrated loosers.

Ron, I don't think anyone in China is exporting boiler injectors to the UK, and it isn't fair to label anything that doesn't work as Chinese.

Let's face it, it IS possible for things that fail QC to be made in the UK and they should be returned for replacement or refund BEFORE a judgement is made on the supplier in any case.

Neil

I have just given my 4CD a pre steam test steaming, I had injector problems at the back end of last season, and upon inspection yesterday I found the clack valve body full to the brim with black sludge, and the ball stuck in the middle of it. I cleaned all that out, confident I had found and solved the problem, soaked the injector in malt vinegar overnight, reassembled it all and when I tried it today no joy at all. I had an even closer look at the injector, and took it apart, and found a slug of silicone sealant in the centre hole. Once that was removed it worked fine. I note that most soak their injector in white vinegar instead of malt vinegar, I imagine there is a reason perhaps someone could tell me what it is.

Thanks, Chris Gunn

Thanks for the Tip but they look spotless inside after citric acid

Hi Mark well i used the white viniger in boiler so much muck came out very surprised as i had used citric acid before. I have even put it in tender over night trying to make sure thats as clean.

Also did the injector and gave it a good blow our hope next wed when i try to run will get afew laps in especially now i have fitted the axle pump praying that works big mistake not trying first but the pump was already fitted just needed piping up.

Well hopefully injector will work bought a new one from Reeves waiting for delivery just got the Tender pipe work to change as i had blanked of as was using two injectors but now using one plus axle pump and Hand pump.

Thank you again for advice had a lot say i should not use Vineger but it was already in and results speak for themselfs no green just clean boiler so Thank you #Ron