The Burrell 1st Rally
Sunday 16 April - Monday 17 April 
Chatham Historic Dockyard

ModelWorks 4 inch Scale Burrell Agricultural Traction Engine 

I attended my first rally over the bank holiday weekend at Chatham Historic Dockyard. While a few problems are detailed below I was very pleased with the performance of the engine and received may admiring comments.  Each day there were two parades and on the first the engine and me struggled but by the final parade everything had settled down.

Unloading

Coal was supplied but first it has to be made to fit.

All those question.  Most popular kids question - "How fast does it go"

The Parade - At first the engine primed (Drain cocks open to let out water)

After my experiences last week I was concerned I would run out of water during the parades so I rushed out an brought a cheap garden cart.  Having fixed the water lifter I was able to drop the hose into a water carrier stowed at the front of the cart.  When I needed to top up the water in the tender I simply turned on the lifter and in it went.  One thing to watch out for is the water continuing to siphon after the water lifter is turned off.  As it turn out I easily did the 1 mile run on less than a tender of water but it was nice to know I had a reserve.

The engine was gently ticking over and it came to an abrupt halt.  When I tried to turn the engine over by hand the was a point in the stroke where it "hit something".  Looking at what was giving I could see that the problem was the pump.  Bill M had previously tipped me off of a similar problem he had and as a result I was not surprised to find a short length of copper pipe inside the pump's bore.

Prior to brazing the pump it is held together with dowels.  The pump body was fixed to the clack chamber with a short length of copper tube.  Unfortunately the braze did not reach the tube and over time it worked itself loose.  When it was sucked into the pump's bore it prevented the pump reaching the bottom of its stroke and jammed the engine.

Fortunately the engine was running very slowly and I immediately investigated.  Luckily no damage was done to the pump or motion and I was able to remove the tube and refit the pump.  Now that the same problem has happened to two engines this is something to be very wary off. 

 I was dumped when the seat broke

Towards the end of the day the seat broke and I was dumped ungraciously onto the ground.  Modelworks had welded a stud onto the metal base of the seat and this weld failed.  I have now replaced this with a bolt ready for tomorrow.  Fortunately I was only just moving off and only my pride was damaged but this is another problem to watch out for.

Monday 17:  On the second day the engine performed well I was able to relax and enjoy myself. 

One handicap I had was that the injector refused to pickup.  When I got home I removed the injector with the idea of soaking it in kettle descaler to remove any limestone that may have formed.  To my surprise the problem was immediately apparent as I could see that the inlet cone was blocked by a piece of bronze swarf.  While it did not cover the inlet hole entirely the injector has such an appetite for steam it is understandable that it did not work.  Apart from the swarf the innards of the injector looked very clean so I just refitted it.

Since the additions to this page were getting out of hand I have split it and started a new page for steamings subsequent to the rally.