This has been refurbished and cleaned up since winning it on ebay sometime ago.
Now at little history.
In the late 1970s a team of 4 were given the task of producing a 3 1/2" Gauge steam powered toy, which had to comply with all the toy standards, a maximum working pressure of 20 P.S.I. and no corners on any part under .020" radius. It had to be fired by butane and run for approximately 8 to 10 minutes on one filling, pull one coach, and made and running within 3 months. The Mark 1 was running within 2 months and as it had to run at 15 P.S.I. no use of 'O' rings on pistons could be used due to the amount of friction. 6 prototypes were built, but experimental boilers with cross water tubes within the main flue which were made had to be further stopped due to cost and production problems. It was also decided that people would soak the boiler insulation when filling the boiler, so that was done away with. Some 20,000 Rocket sets & 8,000 coaches were made. And it is known that the project lost money overall.
This resulted in the Hornby G100 Rocket Set, together with the G102 25ft of Track, G103 Pair of 'Y' Points and G104 4-Wheel Coach, plus other sets, etc. for the foreign market.
For those considering bidding for one of these locos please be very careful with the listings as Hornby also produced the G125 which was a static Rocket kit which would never be able to steam (no boiler, no safety valve, no working pistons, etc.). Unfortunately some sellers do not list their Rockets correctly. Spare parts are also in extremely limited quantities if at all now.
These sets are very popular on ebay and the boxed ones can command very high prices. So I settled for a unboxed collection which included Loco No.5 above, and this un-refurbished Loco No.6 (Loco No.5 was in the same condition prior to my refurbishment, but the flash photo hides the differences).
One was fitted with a replacement brass gas tank, and the other had no tank. The original plastic gas tanks were a point of weakness, which with time, pressure and chemical reaction can crack and leak, leading to a catastrophic butane fire, which will melt the mainly plastic tender (go to this website, click Projects and look at Project No.9 to see what this fire leads to http://www.mecworld.co.za/cmrp/ ). So a brass gas tank was purchased for the 2nd loco - these are now in very limited supply. One difference from the original tanks is that these replacements must be screwed in before filling, whereas the original could be unscrewed and filled up as it had a non return valve. It is possible to just remove the plastic top on the dummy water barrel on the tender and fill the brass gas tank with a nozzle adaptor.
These locos were also missing their funnels (my list of missing funnels just gets bigger and bigger!), a combination spanner and screwdriver for removing the safety valve and lubricator caps (this tool is unavailable now as far as I can see), chimney caps and the instructions. I got 2 caps from Chasteam and a copy of his Rocket instructions.
They also came with large quantity of track panels (not quite enough for 2 sets but I made up the shortfall with single pieces from Chasteam) and 2 'Y' points. This track is very ingenious, and can produce straight sections or curved sections depending on how you join them together.
And there's more. The main reason for going for this bundle is it came with 2 coaches as well. Here is one of them.
Again I was fortunate in getting the Coach Name transfers from Chasteam, but have yet to fit them.
The really amazing part of this story was the delivery of this bundle. Originally the seller was going to get his brother (who did deliveries in Scotland each week) to deliver them to me, but in the end he packed them into his car, along with his wife and the dog, drove all the way from somewhere near Preston if I recall properly, dropped them off at my house, and after the wife had taken the dog for a quick walk, they drove off again back home. They would not even stay for a cupper which I had offered. Incredible!
The only place I can run this loco is in my garage, and I did run Loco No.6 a couple of months ago but no video. However it did not run for 8 minutes, and I suspect that using standard thick steam oil, as opposed to car oil as the instructions state, might be part of the problem. However I will need to wait for better weather before leaving my car outside to run this loco again (it is icy again today here).
Sorry it is a rather long posting, but hopefully I've covered all your questions already.
Thanks for looking. I will get a video done of it in action soon hopefully.
