Garden Railway Forum

Hi all.
Yesterday I removed the saddletank and the cab on my Accucr.Leader. I have for a long time been planning some changes and alterings, but most of all placing a driver in the cab


Regarding the driving of the engine I have turned the preassure gauge the right way. I have also put some lubrication on the gasregulator to make it easier adjustable. I also tried the advise I got from Benchmark and put a small copperthread in the sightglass to minimize bubbles etc.
Having removed the cab, I also took the opportunity to paint it inside in a light colour.
And the driver (bought on Ebay-uk) the poor man, had to fit in between the gastank regulator and the opening roof , meaning that he had to to go through som serious surgery in his head. Conducted with my Dremel and a hack saw.


Everything worked out to my satisfaction and in the afternoon, I even got a first train driving session on the whole line, having scraped the last parts of snow and ice away from the tracks


The houses are one of my winterprojects, so they were just "thrown" in place for this driving. I´m going to make some leveling and groundwork on them in a while.
Regards to you all.
Michael

Looks smashing!

Looks good, I do like Leaders in any colour.
As for the gas regulator, a bit of lube should make it better. I found the best fix was to make another cranked handle like the steam reg, also gives me a visual on where it should be set.

I love it, well done.

Well, Now some month have gone, and I have taken my Leader some more steps in adding equipment:

I have bought valve chest covers and a coalbasket from Locoworks. I also added numbering on the bufferplates
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Still needs a chuffpipe and can´t descide if I shall go for Rc? I have read the discussions here on the forum, and I think like many others, that if one can manage to get a slow even driving without rc, it is most enjoyable..
But I do have some inclines to deal with...
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Regards from Michael

Looking good, I like the valve chest covers, something I've been meaning to make, It does look much better with them.

The valve chest covers where a bit expensive I think. But I can´t build them myself and I really needed them so I payed gladly. Now to my next experiment with my manual Leader:
There is a certain spot on my railway where "TYR" always stops and rices preassure.  It is a rather sharp curve and an incline beginning in the same place. It is one of the reasons I´m conserning to mount rc on the loco.. But I´m  trying another approach: What if I say that it is a holt there, with a watertower placed at the spot? Then it would loke like the loco stops for filling water... I did a test drive today, but it was more difficult than I had expected to find the accurate spot.

Michael

I don't think it matters if a train stops and then pulls away under its own steam and if you can give it a reason for doing so then all the better. I have a similar spot but is out of sight.

I'd persevere with the halt idea, maybe making the platform length reasonable to give a bit of leeway for if it doesn't stop in exactly the same place every time. If it runs without stopping at a reasonably scale speed on the rest of the circuit then why fit R/C?

laalratty: It doesn´t. But still it isn´t too bad either. One day I´m going for rc, and the other day I say to myself that I shall keep it manual, and keep on training for finding the best possible balance between gaspreassure and speedthrotle. And of course, the number of wagons it needs to slow it down..

On the topic of leaders, here is my step dads one, you may recognize it from a certain advert  :P