Moonraker - 31/10/2009 1:41 AM
The Bangham whistle from David Bailey is excellent and fairly easy to fit.
However, you need to be careful here. The Lady Anne is designed to run out of gas before it runs out of water so that you can never melt the boiler. My understanding is that fitting a whistle upsets that balance. Whistles use lots of steam and can leave you short of water. If you are going to fit a whistle then you need to also fit a gauge glass and water filling device.
I am no expert on steam so may be one of the gurus can confirm or correct my comment.
Peter
Well you know you really have to go some to kn*cker a boiler. All of my gas fired locomotives have been fitted with whistles and in many cases, draincocks as well. Most don't have water gauges and, in any case, without a blowdown valve (most gas fired locos fitted with water gauges don't have these) they can provide a sense of false security. You can buy, very cheaply, water top up systems that use the garden spray type bottle and it is fairly easy to keep things topped up with this. As a rule of thumb, the loco will become a little more sprightly as the water level drops within the boiler and so a top up would be required. The most important thing to remember is that if your locomotive stops for no obvious reason – just switch the gas off and DO NOT attempt to fill the boiler until the loco has cooled down. The boiler won't melt if drastically overheated but if cold water is added to a dry boiler the firetube will flatten with the subsequent flash steam.
Lady Anne, unfortunately, is not the best model nowadays, to add steam extras to. The Accucraft locos have special kits from DJB to easily add whistle and this is true for the more sophisticated Roundhouse models (Taliesin for a start) but if I remember the modern LA boiler has no spare steamways on the backhead and even the pressure gauge pipework is silver soldered into the boiler so one cannot even use a longer banjo bolt to provide a takeoff for the whistle. I think it is a case of 'if you want to go to there I wouldn't start from here' unfortunately. It IS possible certainly – but pre-supposes a level of skill or experience with little steam engines.
The only thing you could do is to sell on and buy something that is more easily modified :thumbdown:
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