Accucraft Ragleth duration

[Chris Bird]

Hi folks
Since I made some Ragleth videos, a few folk have asked me about duration of run, so I put it to the test this afternoon between showers.
Ragleth, now in Swift Sixteen "Owain' form, was refulled with butane (the cheap stuff) when it reached 30 psi and was then coupled up to two Swift coaches, each weighing about a kilo. My track is only relatively level, but with the reverser and the regulator cracked open I got a nice, steady pace and switched off the transmitter (RadioLink). I had to adjust the gas a couple of times to maintain a steady (and quiet) 30 psi. Thirty three minutes later it ran out of gas with water to spare. Pretty good I thought - but you may know better.......
Cheers
Chris
PS I had a photo but after six failed upload attemps, I gave up!

 

[FatController]

I usually get 25 to 30 mins at 30psi with a rake of four coaches and thats with a couple of gradients on the line.

Steve

 

[Chris Bird]

Right - well I am very happy with Raglet's run of 31 minutes and it seems that this is about right. My problem was that my Edrig (the tender one), with the same gas tank and burner would only run for 20 minutes. The difference appeared to be that the Ragleth has an air control ring covering half the air holes, so I tried this on Edrig....and nearly choked on the fumes from incomplete combustion!

Mmmm...to much gas and not enough air, I thought, and phoned Ian Pearse to ask if the new burners had a smaller jet. He has no information on the jet size as they are not marked. So I extracted the two jets and examined them with a jeweller's loupe. It was easy to see that Ragleth's jet was about half the size of Edrig's, so I ordered a replacement jet holder and Primus No 6 jet from Mike Darby at Chuffed2Bits. Great service and received within 24 hours!

This afternoon I compared the jets and found the No 6 to be much closer to Ragleth's. I removed the gauze from the burner, to compare like with like, installed the new jet with a whisp of PTFE tape and set the air control ring (made from brass tube) to cover half the holes. No whiff of incomplete combustion this time and after re-gassing at 30 psi, Edrig ran for 30.5 minutes. It was also quieter than before, though it was nearer to 20 psi for most of the run. But then this loco is a little more worn and wastes a bit of steam.

So that was a result I reckon.

Cheers
Chris