Blowers / lighting the fire.

We’re do I buy a little Samson, or possibly another it is for a Rob Roy.

peter

I don't really know why your Rob Roy loco would need a Little Samson Traction engine?

Maybe better to start a new thread asking for what you actually need rather than drag up old ones.

I wonder if some of apparent tardiness is from using anthracite straight from the kindling.

Anthracite has the highest calorific values of the natural varieties of coal, but is not so easy to ignite and build up a fire as a more bituminous coal, and in some boilers at least needs a fairly good draught.

I know some engine-owners use a mixture of coals, but it might be worth trying a softer coal first to establish a good fire-bed, before using anthracite.

When a thread hasn't had a post for 9 years why don't the mods just close it?

To give a new member a chance to post again if they are nervous about stating their own thread.

I've read somewhere that a loco owner had problems with a fan blower for starting up, so fitted a compressed air connection in an inconspicuous location, plumbed into the steam blower with an isolating valve. He just hooks up an air compressor and lets the blower do it's job, seemed to work pretty well too. Once there's enough steam pressure he uncouples the air compressor and closes the valve then turns on the steam blower.

That method - air-supply to the steam blower - ought work well, and be relatively easy to arrange on a locomotive. And you don't end up with a blower-fan full of muck.

Some owners have used induced-draught arrangements in which the fan supplies air to a nozzle in a Venturi choke inside an extension chimney.

I have seen the compressed-air method used on a miniature traction, but it's not so easy to be discreet there! The particular engine was a freelance, of roughly 3"-4" scale overall size, and played fast-and-loose enough with prototypical practice for the extra little bit of pipe-work to be almost un-noticeable.

From what I've seen on the rally field, many owners of the larger-scale miniatures don't use a fan blower, but simply a high extension-chimney. This is slow but has the advantage of warming the boiler gently. On the other hand, looking at the typical smoke plumes, I wonder if it soots the tubes more than a stronger draught would, by not bringing enough extra air to burn the soot while its still above the fire.

++

The blower-in-extension way calls to mind an old book for children I saw in a second-hand shop window, some years ago now; apparently one of those compendia of boys' stories. It was the dust-jacket painting that had caught my attention. It showed a miniature locomotive being prepared on a raised-track steaming-bay, complete with electric fan and extension chimney; with an audience of two or three boys presumably of the book's target market demographic - as they say these days. The unknown artist had evidently understood the scene as he had depicted it very realistically - he may even have been a model-engineer himself, or perhaps lived next to a club track somewhere.