Hi all. Wondering if anyone has any experience driving the Caledonia small boilered Claughton and can give me some hints. I’ve been trying it with 8 coaches (total weight 334T) on my usual test route - Preston to Carlisle. It doesn’t seem to maintain boiler pressure, or generate much steam (between 6-8000lbs with a firemass of 770-792lbs) and any attempt to get water in sucks all the boiler pressure away. So far I’ve managed to get to Lancaster with only 119lbs left in the boiler, and 40% water level, with a max speed of just below 55 at Garstang, which then started dropping and was mid 40’s by Lancaster. Regulator I’ve kept around 50-60%, cut off’s post 20mph - 30% gives acceleration but boiler dies quickly, 22-25% speed falls of but boiler pressure maintains (doesn’t rise) unless injectors on. I run f5, and despite keeping steam generation 300lbs above usage rate boiler stays static/diminishing. I’ve also noticed that tender water level continues to fall even with the water off and injectors shut. Blower and dampers on, cylinder valves and small ejector closed, brakes set to running (32%). Lovely looking model but a frustrating driving experience so far, and not behaving anything like the originals did back in the day. Hoping it’s an operator and not model error.
I'm not sure why the water level would be decreasing if water is actually shut off I'm afraid but when I comes to the pressure decrease when adding water you can edit the steam usage multiplier in the simulation file using TSTools. I remember thinking the values were a bit high at 25 for the live injector and 15 for the exhaust, I think I changed them to something like 18 for the live and 11 or 12 for the exhaust. If you don't fancy making changes making sure you are only using one injector preferably the exhust injector when underway helps to maintain pressure, I also often check the simulation file before driving a steam loco to remind myself what the ideal fire mass is since I keep forgetting these days.
Thanks, yes, I’ve tested to find the optimum firemass and that gave the same result as the figures suggested in the manual. I think I’ll email Caledonia with the figures for steam generation and boiler pressure change and ask them to confirm whether that’s what they’d expect.
