LGB Live Steam Frank S - Ultimate G Scale Live Steam

I hope you get a lot of pleasure out of it. I'm afraid mine has rather spoilt me for live steam as it is the most heavily used loco I have.
 
little late in seeing your post

yours runs just like mine

I agree nice locos, and, I broke down and fitted mine with RC despite liking hand on, due to grades-at first two servos, but found only one is really necessary
you may or not know this, but, it is helpful and wise to tighten every screw, even the drivers and the Phillips for the steam chests every time you run

I have one too, and after the first few times, they will tend to loosen up, and, you can actually lose the screws to the drivers as they seem to sometimes work loose

there is one other thing that I find helpful-to remove the burner itself, wrap with stainless steel mesh and secure with SS wire and replace-seems to get a better and more even fire , better pressure and more efficient use of fuel

be mindful that you don't run out of water-only bad design in this loco is more fuel capacity than boiler, and if it runs dry, I have seen some terrible results, blistered paint etc
 
dunnyrail said:
I wonder of it is worth thinking about Loctite on those screws?
JonD
Click to expand...
I was thinking that together with taking out the gas filler valve and injecting some epoxy resin or silicone into the gas tank to reduce it's capacity.
 
a greta video.. enjoyed it..
 
That's interesting - do tell more.
 
I think a read somewhere that Aster had originally designed the loco to run much better but Lehmann forced them to compromise the design to comply with steam toy regulations and to keep costs down, I suspect that it was originally intended to have a water pump in the tender as with other Aster locos hence the large gas tank.
 
Great vid. She is a lovely loco.
 
Yes you can link a picture from Photobucket or similar or use the direct 'attachment' option at the bottom of the full 'reply' page
 
Here are some details and pics of my much modified frank s. O0



The first modification was to remove the gas tank from the tender and have a new one made that fitted in the left hand side tank, the reason for this was due to poor distribution of gas to the burner, it was coming out wet, which made the burner spit and spat, one minute you would have flames out of the front, the next it would blow it self out, after loosing my eyebrows I decided some modifications were in order.



You will also notice I fitted a Roundhouse gas adapter, gas regulator, jet, and burner as these items work without any problems.




 
Now the loco was firing nicely it became apparent it was a bit of a pain to light up, this was due to the oil collector that is inside the the smoke box, this was removed as it is rather unnecessary, the exhaust that went out of the top of the oil collector was removed and put into my box of spares, the pipe on the banjo which is fixed to the underside between the cylinders was removed and reshaped to except a summer lands chuffer (I think it was a gp2 if I remember right). The chimney was also removed and a piece of pipe was placed up the inside, this would help the chuff, the chuffer acts as a condenser for the steam oil, so the loco doesn't get covered in muck.


 
Thanks for the comments. It´s good to see these still around. But I´ve never seen one with a chuffer yet. :o
 
Now the loco would fire up nicely, however it would blow off from the aster safety valve at low pressures giving really short runs, I decided to carry out further modifications and try and kill two birds with one stone, as it have fitted this huge gas tank I too had the problem of the water running out before the gas, plus the problem of the safety valve that has no adjustment blowing off under pressure, I decided to make up a brass box to fit inside the now redundant tender that would house a pump an top up water.





This is fed via a silicone tube that has a connector just like the ones you find on some of the top up bottles, I then had a new safety valve mount machined, this would have a thread to accept a roundhouse safety valve that could be adjusted.

A water fill pipe was attached to the mount which feeds into a little clack valve inside the right hand cab area, the bottom of the clack has a pipe that is mounted to the body, this runs along the floor, it has a female connection that connects to the male connection from the clear tender pipe.





 
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