Fantastic photo! Sharp looking Mikado. Jealous. The air tank I have seen used for a whistle on my friend's 7.25 inch Mike, scratch built in under two years, while moving and etc! I would not have thought a horizontal tube would work very well as a displacement lubricator...I am tempted to go after the one on ebay asking $1900.00
Opinions would be appreciated! Are you running with the original R/C? Is it satisfactory? Now I put my foot in it.
Thanks for any advice and good naturered chaffing. Steve
Thanks Steve!
Using an air tank for a whistle is a genius idea. If I knew of anyone with a 7.25" MIke near me I don't think they'd be able to get rid of me. I'd be permenantly camped outside their door asking if we could run it! Scratch building it in 2 years whilst moving is phenomenal. They obviously know their way around a workshop
They don't come up that often and a nicely made with pretty long runtimes. They have a few peculiarities such as the lubricator, sound effects and the fact the safety vents under the loco (done for safety reasons I've heard, as these were Aristocrafts attempts at weaning some sparkie-runners over to live steam. Part of the approach seemed to be to make the loco seem as conventional as possible).
The fact that they are butane-powered with the tank in the tender means it needs to sit in a warm water bath to keep the gas flow. Some owners have used a steam feed from the loco to keep the bath warm as the warm water cools down quite quickly.
They also have some regulator on the tank which can cause a few issues. You may well find it has been removed or gutted by the previous owner in order to make it more reliable. Operation seems unaffected by this 'modification'
The lubricator does seem strange but it's functioning just the same as any other as JonD describes, it's just long and shallow instead of narrow and tall
I'd take up Gregs kind offer of the manual. There are some useful pointers in there and one in particualr is that the engine should be pushed forwards to prime the lubricator.
I dumped the transmitter and sound effects. I already used a 2.4GHz RC system for another engine and wanted to standardise, so I bypassed the Aristocraft receiver and spliced in a 2.4GHz one to the valve and regulator wiring. This meant I didn't need to modify the loco in any way.
If you haven't joined, I'd recommend joining the Aristocraft owners forum. There's a live steam section there with a wealth of information. It's pretty slow paced these days in terms of activity but there are still a few regular contributors
It's a great way to get a large live steam loco. Keep up posted if you decide to take the leap. We'll want pictures and videos
All the best
Darren
