Gang,
I received my Accucraft C-16 (#268 Bee) on Thursday
afternoon. I fired it up for the first time on Friday
evening. I've now run it 6 times; 3 on blocks, and 3
times on an oval on the garage floor. Each run was
about 50 minutes of actual run time, and about 15
minutes of watering, lubing, and warm-up. Sometimes
the fuel ran out to end the run, and other times I
turned it off when the water level got to the bottom
of the water glass.
Initially it ran pretty rough with a pretty good jerk
every quarter turn of the drivers. It has since
smoothed out considerably, with the jerkyness only
visible at slow speed. It appears that the timing may
be slightly off, but I'll let it break in some more
before I decide for sure.
The burner doesn't seem to be able to produce enough
heat to keep the steam pressure up. Ran with the gas
valve wide open, and could maintain a max of 20 psi
while running. The gas tank is in the tender, and
Accu recommends filling the tender with warm water if
running in cold weather. While I didn't consider the
weather cold, as the high was about 75F this weekend
(a little cooler in the garage), the gas tank was
getting very cold during the run. I'm used to my
Roundhouse loco which has the gas tank right next to
the boiler backhead (which keeps it nice and warm).
I noticed that this loco doesn't "run away" when going
down hill quite as much as my Roundhouse does. The
garage floor slopes at about the standard 1/4 inch per
foot (~2%).
It has a dead leg (displacement) lubricator which puts
plenty of steam oil into the steam flow. The
reservoir is disguised as an air tank under the
running board. There is no drain on the reservoir.
Accu supplies a syringe for this purpose, but I had to
find a piece of tubing that would fit into the fairly
small fill hole. The lubricator tubing tees into the
steam line AFTER the superheater, which is different
from my Roundhouse where the lubricator is BEFORE the
superheater.
One of the machine screws which attaches the pilot
truck was too long on delivery, and was causing it's
mounting plate to bend. This made the pilot truck
bind. I had to remove the mounting plate and grind
off the extra threads. This is a five minute job if
you have a grinder.
The couplers supplied are the brass versions of the
Accucraft couplers. I have a bunch of the plastic
versions, and they seem to work well. These seem to
be very sticky. One won't open without assistance,
and the other one won't stay closed. It's likely
because they're painted, where the plastic ones are
molded in black and so don't need paint.
I don't know the prototype 268 very well, and so
cannot say how accurate it is, but I will say that it
is BEAUTIFUL. The paint job is excellent and I very
happy that I chose the Bee version.
Paul Gieske
Mesa, AZ
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