Live steam

[Cooped]

Ok, I did it. bought the Hornby Live Steam Mallard set. I was going to get the Flying Scotsman, but the price was too high for me right now.

See video below

[Jim Banner]

Looks good sitting there on the kitchen table.  I assume you won't be running it there though.    Is is H0 or 0 scale?  Have you run it yet?  Enquiring minds want to know.

Jim

[Cooped]

Jim

I did have it running on the dining room table there for a while. Click on the picture it will take you to the video on photobucket.

It's OO scale, HO gauge, made by Hornby. Takes a little practice to run, requires a special controller which would destroy a normal 12V locomotive. It's great fun!

Dan

[Cooped]

Addition, make sure you have your sound up for best effect.

Dan

[strickland]

Im new to this and recently found a Bachmann over 100 piece American Eagle train set but cant seem to find any information about it on the internet.  Does anyone have any info on the American Eagle set???

[Jim Banner]

Wonderful!!  What are the coloured lights in the cab that are seen reflected off the tender?  I am guessing red is for power applied and green is for pressure is up.

Have you tried pulling any cars with it?

Jim

[Cooped]

The lights are basically valve position indicators. The train is controlled by a single valve which you put either in forward, stop or reverse. The red light is on when the valve is in the closed position, the green light is on when the valve is in an open position (forward or reverse). You can vary the speed by adjusting how far the valve is open, but there is no indicator showing this, you just see open or closed. Sufficient pressure is indicated by the pressure relief valve on top 'blowing' periodically, which you can see/hear on the video.

It takes some practice to control, and that along with the loco needing to be run in when new resulted in the answer to your next question Jim, no I haven't had it pull any cars yet! That's because while I was still learning how to run it, and before the reversing mechanism had loosened up I managed to get it to shoot off in reverse at warp speed resulting in a bit of a canyon dive. Fortunately the only casualty was the coupler on the back of the tender which I can fix.

It may be a while before I can fix it though as I haven't found a US supplier carrying the couplers, I may have to get them sent from the UK.

Dan

[jbsmith]

now that is one SERIOUS water tower ya got there!

Sorry to hear about the "canyon dive", that sucks!
Murphys Law strikes again! That law gets all of us at sometime.
Hindsight being 20/20,next time I would just set the track up on the floor, that way if the Loco goes loco and tries to get airborne the results are not as bad.
But untill new couplers arrive,,that is plenty of time to practice and learn how to controll it,get it broken in[no pun intended]and maybe that is not such a bad thing afterall.

That is an interesting and different locomotive there, what kind of run time
on a single load of water does it get? I thought i saw 20 minute runtime
someplace, can't recall if it was the same scale.

[Cooped]

Yeah, hindsight is 20/20! I had run in a couple of times on a lower table, thought I'd got the hang of it, moved it up to this one so the in-laws could see it (mother in law can't get down the basement steps) and wahey! Off we went. D'oh.

Yes, the Hornby website states you can get in excess of 20 minutes run time out of one filling and it's true. I think I had it just run around in circles for close to half an hour on one run. Not bad for ~ 25ml of water. The loco is a model of the British class A4 pacific 'Mallard'. Holder of the world speed record for a steam train of 126mph.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Class_A4_4468_Mallard

Dan