Whistle for Lady Anne

C

CoggesRailway

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My Lady Anne has a Summerlands chuff pipe (brilliant!) but I would love her also to make a jolly RC "peep peep".... How would I go about it...?

PS This is purely for the benefit of my kids of course :D
 
Was the Chuffer easy to fit? We have only got thumbs and elbows here, although can wire a plug given time and a clear map in colour. Tool kit consists of a pair of scissors and sticky tape! Our Lady Anne is due to be treated to a 'Lightline' make-over shortly and a chuff-chuff would complete the transformation.
 
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
 
Very good comment Moonraker... will wait for more advice. Lord Raglan - yes very easy to fit! Follow instructions, just need care, junior hacksaw and a screwdriver. Could do it in 5minutes, so as long as you are slow and deliberate over the process, and give yourself half an hour to measure remeasure, and to read instructions carefully it's hard to see how it could go wrong.
 
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
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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:

Tag
 
Going to try and upload a piccy so this is just a test.
 
Thanks Steve. :applause:
 
I don't know how different the Lady Anne is from the Silver Lady but I had no problem fitting a DJB whistle to my Silver Lady, after a bit of extra development work by David Bailey. And a very nice sound it makes, or so I think!
Steve
 
CoggesRailway - 31/10/2009 10:47 PM

Thanks Tag, I love the little Lady Anne so she will stay... whistle or no whistle! :-)
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David Bailey is currently working on a whistle for Lady Anne!! It might interest you to know that if you contact David on david. bailey8 (at) ntlworld.com (take out spaces and add squiggle) he would like to borrow a Lady Anne to design this. If you are prepared to deliver and collect from Bracknell, then in return he will fit one free of charge! Be quick - this info has only just been posted elsewhere
 
I have two Lady Anns on loan so that I can design a custom whistle for the loco, I have managed to get a front cab fitting whistle in place with the operating lever in the doorway behind the gas tank.
This is for the current type, the early type where the back of the cab comes off is also possible with the same whistle.
Details will be on the website as soon as I have taken the pics and produced the instructions.
David Bailey
 
David BaileyK27 - 13/11/2009 1:34 PM

I have two Lady Anns on loan so that I can design a custom whistle for the loco, I have managed to get a front cab fitting whistle in place with the operating lever in the doorway behind the gas tank.
This is for the current type, the early type where the back of the cab comes off is also possible with the same whistle.
Details will be on the website as soon as I have taken the pics and produced the instructions.
David Bailey
Click to expand...


I also note from your website that there is a whistle 'specially for a Roundhouse 'Fowler' David. Also pleased to see the 'Edrig' coal fired kit back.
 
Yes Tag, we are also working on "Interface kits" for fitting our coal fired boilers to either a Roundhouse Lady Ann or Billy chassis, and using the Simply 7/8ths bodies, also there will be a larger gas firerd boiler which uses our Ceramic Flue Burner and Gas Regulator Valve, full details and prices to follow in the new year.
David Bailey www.djbengineering.co.uk
 
David BaileyK27 - 13/11/2009 4:03 PM

Yes Tag, we are also working on "Interface kits" for fitting our coal fired boilers to either a Roundhouse Lady Ann or Billy chassis, and using the Simply 7/8ths bodies, also there will be a larger gas firerd boiler which uses our Ceramic Flue Burner and Gas Regulator Valve, full details and prices to follow in the new year.
David Bailey www.djbengineering.co.uk
Click to expand...

Now that sounds really interesting – the former that is!! Maybe more interesting than Robert in fact because this would work very well for a book project...
 
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