new West Valley baby consolidation now in steam

[KyleFlanigan]

Mike, I know my dad contacted someone, just not sure who. I am really glad I found this website. I hope to post some pics of our engine soon if I can. By what I understand, most of the West Valley engines are still out west. We ran our engine for the first time about a week after the video of Eber's engine running went on youtube. I guess that video was all that was necessary to give me the encouragement for that last final push to finish ours.

[Harlock]

Mike, I know my dad contacted someone, just not sure who. I am really glad I found this website. I hope to post some pics of our engine soon if I can. By what I understand, most of the West Valley engines are still out west. We ran our engine for the first time about a week after the video of Eber's engine running went on youtube. I guess that video was all that was necessary to give me the encouragement for that last final push to finish ours.

Yup that was me. Glad you guys are having fun. And yes most of em are still in California or Nevada.

Some pictures from a meet a few weeks ago: http://mikemassee.com/gallery/v/liveste ... 013/WV280/

Two pictures include the much more widely built West Valley box cab electric.

-Mike

[KyleFlanigan]

Cool, didn't know they built a boxcab too! Would love to have one of them. I don't want to seem rude, but a lot of the west valley consolidations seem rather plain. Being plain is not a problem on ours as we are adding lots of details. Got about 150 rivets in the cab alone........ Were the Consolidations sold as ready to run or in semi kit form? Something else I noticed is that most of them seem to be propane or oil fired. Is this because of the small firebox? We ran ours on coal and it was rather easy to keep steam up. I don't want to flood you with questions so I will try to keep myself under control....

[Harlock]

Cool, didn't know they built a boxcab too! Would love to have one of them. I don't want to seem rude, but a lot of the west valley consolidations seem rather plain. Being plain is not a problem on ours as we are adding lots of details. Got about 150 rivets in the cab alone........ Were the Consolidations sold as ready to run or in semi kit form? Something else I noticed is that most of them seem to be propane or oil fired. Is this because of the small firebox? We ran ours on coal and it was rather easy to keep steam up. I don't want to flood you with questions so I will try to keep myself under control....

Eber's consolidation does not have any decorative items on it yet (sand dome, headlamp, etc.) but they are coming. It will look a lot nicer 6 months from now. Right now he's concentrating on debugging the mechanicals.

A lot of them were plain yes, as it was designed to be a dead simple beginner's locomotive, but there are a few elaborate items out there. I don't have any pictures at the moment of those. We're in fact looking for a particular one right now and you might see a post about that on here soon.

-M

[KyleFlanigan]

We are doing the same as Eber and working out all the bugs and making sure it runs correctly before continuing to detail it up. I have noticed most of the West Valley engine have their original small tenders. Ours was soldered together and was falling apart when we got it, but for how cheap we got our engine, I could care less if we had to build a new tender. You wouldn't happen to have an idea of how much a West Valley consolidation is worth would you? You wouldn't happen to have any of the pictures my dad sent you that you would be able to post on here would you? It will be awhile before I am able to post any pictures of ours as it is kinda on the backburner of our projects for now. Just finished a 60 foot modern TTX boxcar a few weeks ago and just started a PS2 3 bay hopper that is almost finished now too.

[Kevin_S]

Kyle, the engine were designed as a group project where each person was in charge of making a particular part/s for the engine. Although a couple where sold to help fund the project.
-Kevin S.

[Rich_Carlstedt]

Here are some photo's from the 1980 yearbook for the West Valley Live Steamers
The first has John Grant and Dick Thomas with the pilot version of the Consolidation Project.
I joined the club in 1981, and so missed out on that group.
They also had 27 Electric Steeple cabs built earlier.
In 1981 a group of 10 more steeple cabs were built
My friend Bob and I were the third group with 3, so the total for this club was 40 locomotives !

Sorry if the photos are faded......just age
As you can see, several consolidations were finished by 1980
Rich

[KyleFlanigan]

Great old Pictures!

Have a few questions that someone might be able to answer on here.

1. When we got our West Valley engine in 2011, the pistons had rubber O-rings instead of regular metal rings. Was this what was originally used on the locomotives when built or is it possibly something the original owner tried to use? If these are original, do they last long? Everyone I have talked to in my neck of the woods have said they probably wont last very long.

2. The sight glass that came with our engine was actually plastic. Were these the original sight glasses? When we first test fired our engine about a month ago, we had our glass start leaking. The leak wasn't that bad so we kept running. Upon further inspection that night, there was a crack running the whole length of the sight glass. It probably would have totally blew apart if it wasn't for the sight glass being tightly enclosed in its holder. We have since got a new sight glass but I am still wondering if anyone else had that problem.

3. Our throttle is nothing more than a slug of brass with a hole that covers or uncovers the dry pipe when the throttle is moved. I assume this is original. After the initial run we removed the steam dome cover to find valve oil inside the dome coating everything. My guess is that when the throttle was shut and the engine was pushed when not under steam, the cylinders produced slight back pressure, lifted the brass throttle, and allowed oil and such to enter the boiler. We have yet to fire the engine again to test it but we put a very heavy spring pushing down on the brass to keep it down. Has anyone else had this problem?

4. Were the small tanks on the running boards displacement lubricators? They were disconnected when we got the engine and that is the only explanation I could come up with for what they were. I have since repurposed them to look like air tanks.

[Kevin_S]

Kyle, yes there was O-rings in the pistons, that's what my friend Matt had in his when he got it. Also the 2" cylinders are steam hogs but they will run on very little pressure. We have since sleeved the cylinders down to 1.75" which offered a nice balance for the engine.
Hope this helps.
-Kevin S.

[KyleFlanigan]

Thanks Kevin

I did notice how our engine used steam quite quickly and was wondering if there was ways of solving that. Mind if I ask what your friend fires his engine on? We ran ours on coal and it was rather easy to get steam up but was hard to sustain that steam for a longer run

[KyleFlanigan]

One other question for tonight regarding the West Valley engines. In all the pics of them I have seen, no two have quite the same domes. Were the engines sold without domes which allowed the owner to finish it how they wanted? Our engine came with solid domes made out of lead which adds about 60 pounds to the weight of the engine

[Kevin_S]

Kyle, the engine originally ran on coal, the original owner was getting up in age and had started switching it over to propane. We kept it propane although we had to reconfigure the burner to get it just right. And yes the domes are filled with lead, which gives great traction on these little engines.
-Kevin