Vertical Injectors from America

Along with a friend we've been experimenting with vertical injectors with mixed success, we can get them to work but the problem is they are a bit bulky we want to get to a neater design..

There is a company in America that markets vertical injectors called eccentric engineering this is a different company than the UK company of the same name. From a sectioned photograph of one of these injectors you can see that they have sliding washer around the combination cone that closes when the vacuum starts. Full size injector use a similar system

My question is has anyone got any experience of using these injectors on 5" or 71/4" G locomotives in the UK

Stew

Details of these American injectors are on "www.eccentricengineer.com/injectors/small-scales-injector" but are very expensive. They appear to be based on the Penberthy lifting type. In the 1990s similar model vertical lifting injectors were supplied in this country by Terry Baxter of Double B Designs. They were apparently highly regarded. I believe the injector side of the business was sold to Bruce Rice of R.A. Barker whose website now only mentions a 3 pint injector in production but no further details.

I am proposing to put a "dummy" Penberthy injector on the tank top of a scale 7 1/4" gauge locomotive under construction. I then want to hide a working normal vertical injector in an adjacent coal bunker. It would be very convenient to take the overflow pipe up from the latter through the dummy Penberthy above.

Essentially then, two questions. Does an injector overflow outlet have to be below the level of the injector? Will a vertical (or horizontal for that matter) injector work if permanently flooded with water from the supply so that only the steam feed valve needs to be opened to start operation? This would mimic the prototype original Penberthy.

Carrying out a little further research into Penberthy type injectors I now realise that the EccentricEngineer ones appear to be quite similar to those made by the American Emery Ohlenkamp before his death in 1999.

However, considering Stewart Hart's ambition to make a neater design I wondered if he had considered the design I enquired about in Smoke Rings (ME No.4644 page 188)? The two valves shown in this had only one outlet, there was no soldering apart from the pipe stubs in/out of the unit and construction was reduced to a minimum (apart from the difficult bit, the cones, of course!).

Both the overflow and outlet pipes can be rotated to any orientation with respect to the water and steam feeds which must also be a great advantage.

Perhaps Stewart might consider it worthwhile giving this design a try to reduce the bulk of his?

Hi John

Thanks for the post I'll see if I can dig out that ME magazine I've not done any work on the injectors for quite a few months this might rekindle my interest.

Stew