Here are the latest photos from Nigel Day documenting his work to improve the rack-and-adhesion steam locomotives of the West Coast Wilderness Railway in Australia. The captions are based on a couple of short e-mails I received from Nigel; hopefully he'll chime in here with more information and corrections where necessary.

This photo shows one of the locomotives on a night time "ghost run". Nigel says this was his first chance to "play" after modifications to the oil firing pipe work. According to Nigel, this locomotive will steam to demand, just like SMR4 (Snowden Mountain Railway #4) or better.



This photo shows the fabrication of the very complex exhaust stand/kordina for one of these locomotives.



Here's the same assembly completed. Note that the exhaust handles the exhaust from two separate engines (the rack engine and the adhesion engine) on the locomotive:



This is the exhaust nozzle assembly; Nigel says this is closer to a Lemprex than a Lempor. The Lemprex is the exhaust system Porta was developing in his last few years. The nozzle assembly includes the main nozzles, blower nozzles and vacuum ejector nozzles.



This photo shows one of their boilers which has just been re-tubed but which is awaiting other work. The whistle is a replica of a UP Big Boy whistle.



Here's the entire exhaust assembled. There are 3 major fabrications plus a few other parts. Nigel notes that it is comprised of 88 pieces exclusive of bolts, nuts, etc. Nigel notes that this is exhaust is not a true Lempor but more of a Lemprex with other improvements. The exhaust pipe work is a new concept- the nozzles, blower, and vacuum ejector are all one unit, plus there is a fitting for the compression air valve (compression is used for down-hill braking on these locomotives).



This photo appears to show pinned-in-place piston rings. (Note that UK auto maker Rolls Royce used this on their engines as well as US automaker Hudson!).



This photo shows the firebox on one of the locomotives with the central oil burner and multiple angled air inlets designed to induce thorough mixing of the air and fuel for complete combustion.



This photo shows one of the locomotives being fired up just outside the shops:



Finally, this shows one of the locomotives in service:

Thank you Hugh for posting the pictures for me. I was asked the other day about my coments about moving on to let steam locomotives catch up with the world. I hope indirectly the pictures and posting here help explain. There is little doupt that Chapelon, Porta, Wardale have made masive contributions to the development of steam technology,somthing that I will never equal. They have left a lagacy which at the moment is unrealised in its potenshail. We owe it them to continue thier work not only in producing locomotives to their desighns and understanding but further atempt to develope further. It is to this end I am driven to improve on their work. WCWR has given me opitunity to do this and maintain the comercial viability of there locomotives.

Currently the major project is abt3. We and I mean we, not just me have spent many thousands of hours on this already. In adition the other 2 locos have to be kept running and are used as a test bed for some of the items which are going into abt 3. To that extent 5 was the first with the lempor but now has High wheel adhesion profile tyres, Super heated atomising steam, improved and modifed atomising pipe work, fuel valve,altered firbox ceramic, new types of gland packing, and the latest was the modified piston rings.
1 has now a hevily modified lempor which will soon be further up gradded, the gland packings, not so extensivly modified atomising pipe work and fuel valve and rail washers. It has also had all the valve gear on the adhesion re set to better levels.

Along time before I showed up fuel consuption was up to 1800 liters a round trip. By the hard work of the empoyees lead by Ben Elliot things had improved genraly. In saying this he realised that there was further gains to be had with modern steam technology.

Abt 5 was resiving its yearly inspection resently and other work and was carried out which you see in the pictures below. Firstly the piston ring where nominaly sprung agenst the cylinder wall and 11 mm wide. We have replaced them with ones which are half that width and much more flexible. Its the steam pressure which keeps them on the cylinder bore. Compresion is so good and little force on the bore that pushing the piston in by hand it came back out when not pushed by hand. Porta claimed a loss of steam up to 30 % for bad rings and from what we did here its true. This has resulted in part of the fuel saving dicussed later. Aditionaly the super heater of small bore for the atomising has been replaced with my standard size pipe bore for that burner size. The old pipe had high turbulence, kinked and flatted sections. The standard atomising pressure range has now fallen from a maximum of around 100 psi to 20psi aproximatly. The burner now dose not stuff the firebox and its much quieter. You will see from the picture the old fire pan has been retained for now with its Laidlaw drew air pipe arangement. The centraly mounted burner now has a bayonet fitting for ease of maintainance.

The next pictures shows where a major amount of my effort has gone. The development of the Kordina from the origonal consept by Kordina has been an uneven path. The swirl system used by Porta gave varing results and I have had the consept shown here ready for testing for some time now. It is know that these locos are very poor in this area so its an ideal opitunity to build somthing more advanced. On test we have shown using compressed air that we can create a good vacuum in an oposite exhuast pipe. The whole fabrication is internaly smothed and designed to reduce turbulence to an absolute minimum.

The draughting system is baised on alot of resent work including on abt 1 It is now definatly not a Lempor. The blast pipe nozzles have a twist in them like a Lemprex but in a way to optimise mixing beyond what a Lempor dose. They like all my Lempors are designed to a Maximum working pressure of 12 psi the point where a conventional nozzle would stall and even stall the loco. They will comfortably run at a normal working back pressure of 4 to 6 pounds. The de lavel nozzles are designed specificaly to increse the velocity of the exhaust steam while not creating turbulence- the biggest issue afecting draughting and ushaly found as a limiting factor in the exhaust pipe work, certainly a contributing factor in these complex locos. the whole of this new front end will go into abt 3.
The last pictures show abt 5 in its new coat of Brunswick green on a run just after the latest mods. figures around or under 900 liters for a full return trip with a good load are now not uncommon.

The last but one picture of a blue engine is the Fowler at Don with the Lempor we ran the thread on here on RyPN. It has been in steam for prelimanary tests. It steams now with out the 5 foot extention previously needed and doing well in all other respects.

~50% fuel savings with relatively modest modifications is pretty impressive!

Here are two pictures of the old and the new Lemprex type nozzles which illustrate the difrence in streamlinning and turbulence reduction. This leading to the significat reduction in back presure for an identical tip area. The co- eficents repectivly are aproxamatly .5 and .9 for the Lemprex

Here is a resent picture of ABT3. If you want to know more detail of whats happening with it the send me a personal message.

Nigel,

Great to see your latest work. Fascinating.

Regards,

TH

Latest picture, Postings are limitted due to customer requirements and arm chair critics.

Nigel -

Beautiful little engine! What track gauge may I ask?


Les

3 foot 6 inches. Today's tests very very good results.