Winson 14xx loco

Hi all.

Im a 7/14 steam man but recently a local neighbour approached me about a Winson 14xx kit he had aquired which was performing very badly. It was unable to start by itself and when it did there was no power in the pistons. There are no adjustments on the eccentric lead and lag so that was fixed, Following a suggested strip down of the cylinder blocks and the steam chest it was found that the slide valves were A to big and B to far away from the cylinder block face. This in the case of A wasnt allowing the steam to get into the port slots to drive the pistons and in the case of B as the valves sit verticle theywere allowing the steam to escape past the face of them as there was a 1/16 of an inch gap between the valve base and the cylinder face.

To save any problems with the original slide valves a new set was made 1/16th of an inch narrower on both sides and the face was made 1/32 thicker facing the cylinder face .

THis ment that as soom as steam was applied the valve flipped against the cylinder face and also allowed far more steam to enter the ports

The result was a total change in the performance giving instant starting and full power.

Hope this helps anybody.

cheers

Roy

A good outcome!

As well as the size problem, the original valves might not have been "floating" on their spindles, either. Your modifications seem to have corrected that fault along with the dimension faults.

'

A sad saga. Winsons could have been as successful as other major kit-makers have shown possible, but seemed unable to correct inherent design faults and to impose reasonable quality-control, on each engine before going on to introduce a new product to the range. I think it eventually passed to new owners who did address these matters.

(I have encountered a Winson kit overtype steam wagon which would go but not stop. The regulator proved to be a slide-valve identical to the engine valves. Fine, if mated to a properly-designed control, but it used a coarse thread tapped directly into the casting, for a spindle that looked as if hand-threaded on a bad Friday afternoon. With no free vertical travel available to the valve, the eccentric thread merely lifted it from the face. 

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 21/05/2021 21:37:59