New york style pump

[cbrew]

Hi All, I am looking for drawings for this pump,
the goal is to understand how the valving works so i can use it in a another pump

Thanks

[Fender]

On the prototype NY air pumps, the air side is compound, but the steam side is simple. The steam pistons have hollow rods, which contain a valve stem that works the valve cylinders on the bottom of the pump. The left valve feeds steam to the right steam cylinder, and vice versa.

[daves1459]

I believe I have the drawings your looking for. PM me if you want to arrange for a set of copies.

Dave

[ccvstmr]

Chris...I'm assuming your question is in regards to the steam porting. Using the photo DaveS provided (similar to the 1st photo you posted), steam enters the pump from the right...and enters the right side valve chamber. There is a steam port that runs across the face of the pump (the horizontal blister that runs from side to side) to allow steam to reach the left valve chamber.

As Fender mentioned, the left side valve controls the right side piston...and conversely, the right side valve controls the left side piston.

If you remove the valve chamber covers, you'll see (3) vertical holes in both valve chambers. You can just make out the top edge of the lower steam port inside the valve chest opening. The hole for steam to travel from right to left valve chambers is behind the opening lip.

The center hole is the exhaust hole. It runs from the right side valve chamber across the steam chest to the left side valve chamber. In the center, there's a hole drilled perpendicularly to the exhaust out the back of the steam chest.

When properly adjusted, the slide valve will always cover the center exhaust hole...and will cover either the upper or lower steam ports depending the pump cycle. This is where it starts to get ugly. If I recall correctly, the right side valve chamber upper hole crosses slightly diagonally across the steam chest and intersects with a vertical hole that drops down to the top of the left side cylinder. The right side valve chamber lower hole crosses the steam chest and intersects with a vertical hole to transmit steam down, DOWN THROUGH THE CYLINDER WALL, to the bottom of the left cylinder. The steam port orientation for the left side valve chamber is similar.

In the next photo, you'll see the (5) larger cylinder rod stay holes around the perimeter in the flange area to hold the cylinder assembly together. The 5th studs go in the middle and are side by side. The crudely drawn in "square" boxes are the cylinder head steam ports. "T" for the top side piston steam feed. "B" for the bottom side piston steam feed.

It all STARTS to make sense...after you're disassembled and reassembled the pump at least a dozen times! The best part, is when you put the pump back together and it "plugs 'n chugs" like it's supposed to. Hope this helps without a drawing? Carl B.

[cbrew]

Morning Carl B.

yes that does make sense,
last night i drew up the block porting after referencing the VanBrocklin drawings that Bill Shields published,
after reading your description, the theory is the same.
one design, the complex porting resides in the block with external driven valve and the other resides in the head with internal driven valves.
it is clear the externally driven design is the easiest to machine. but the internal design is the cleanest.

Tonight i will draw up the head with the porting.

the goal of this project is to produce a larger then scale air pump that will produce enough volume to supply my trains air brakes so i can lose the electric air compressor and large battery.

this pump would be hidden under the boiler or cab. it will be heard not seen

the steam bore and stroke is targeted at 1.375 X 1.5 with the air side 1.5 X 1.5
am i crazy? yeah most likely, but this type of thinking is how the steam booster truck came about

[Bill Shields]

Good luck with making enough air for brakes using this system. I would really like to not hear some of the electric systems rolling around the tracks - but appreciate what they accomplish.

Have you ever measured how much air your brake system uses?

Putting a timer on the electric compressor and seeing how many minutes / hour it runs will give you a good starting point for how much air you actually need...and work backwards from there to see how fast and long one of these pumps will need to run to keep up....and how large your reservoir may need to be.

I keep remembering Mr. Yoder's 3/4" loco with a working stoker that WOULD push coal into the loco...but he could either run the loco or run the stoker...he could not make enough steam to run both at the same time.

You most likely won't have this problem..but is something to think about.

on my 3/4" hudson, the BvB water pump sits under the cab like a stoker engine...and works very well...so the idea of a 'lay down' is not dark side of the moon.

also - at what MINIMUM PRESSURE can you run a compound steam anything? I seem to remember that there is a practical minimum limit but darned if I remember what it is or where to find it (somewhere in my library).

Does your boiler operating pressure go BELOW that point?

[cbrew]

Morning Bill,

Spec's
7 Car passenger train, each car is 8 foot long.
main tank pressure is 80.
train pipe pressure is 40 to 60 psi depending on RR and ratio of braked to non braked cars

First charge takes a while to fill all the car tanks
after charging the train,
the pump will run about 45 to 60 sec to recharge after a brake application.
the pump cycle to do leak down is 15 to 20 secs, yes i run small tanks.

my Brian Kiem single cylinder pump was able to supply the train when i flatted the battery at TM.
i just had to wait longer to recharge the brakes and had be careful when to use the brakes.

boiler pressure is 135.

I do have a good friend that is using a scale "cross compound" supplying his 8 car train so there is hope.

i will be into this project about 200 bucks (that is enough materials to built three power units)

also, i was told the booster truck would not work either

[Bill Shields]

well there you go.....it looks doable....

hopefully you will keep the electric as a backup...giggle....

[cbrew]

well there you go.....it looks doable....

hopefully you will keep the electric as a backup...giggle....

haha,, for a while anyways.

[LVRR2095]

Gee...when I saw “New York Style,” I thought we were talking about pizza!

Keith

[ccvstmr]

Chris...getting cross-eyed trying to follow your 3D 3D drawing. Safe bet there's holes you'll have to drill...and then plug. Even the Van Brocklin water pump shown in the photos above has a couple of those.

Something to consider (cause you didn't mention)...if you're looking to pump air, you'll need to do something about the check valves. In the Van Brocklin pump, when used for water, there are 4 check valves that allow water to be pumped without pushing back to the tender.

For your air pump, hope you've considered either: 1) stainless steel check ball on soft (O-ring?) seat, or, perhaps a better alternative (less parts) 2) a hard seat with a fluoroelastomer ball. McMaster Carr sells ground/seamless balls, in various diameters, but only 70 durometer. This can be squeezed slightly between 2 fingers. Too soft? Don't know. If you have a well stocked O-ring supplier you deal with, they might carry a larger selection of balls (nope, not going there) with other durometer hardness than McMaster.

Will add one item in case you haven't thought of this. Consider putting pipe plugs in the lower pump housing cylinder covers. If your piston valves have threaded ends beyond the piston, you can insert "push rods" and screw onto the threaded ends of the piston rods. This allows you to manually push-pull the pistons up/down to set the valves. You can check operation of the steam side of the pump before you close everything up.

Have a short movie clip, but don't know how to attach/insert that here. Looks funky watching the push rods move back and forth. This approach does one important thing for you...don't have to a needle nose pliers to reach into the center spacer to move the piston rods up/down. Surest way to eventually score the shaft and tear up the rod seals.

Carl B.

[Fender]

It appears to me that the model pump is simple (not compound) on the air side. Or, at least, the cylinders are the same size. The full-size NY pump runs simple on the steam cylinders, but compound on the air cylinders.
An interesting feature of the full-size NY pump, is that its output of air is equal to six times the volume of the smaller (high pressure) cylinder per cycle. How is this possible? Each side of the pump operates serially with the other side (right side goes up, left side goes up, right side goes down, left side goes down). Each side “waits” for the other to finish. The low-pressure cylinder is twice the diameter and volume pf the h.p. cylinder.
At the beginning of a cycle (both pistons down) air fills both right and left cylinders, with incoming air flowing through the l.p. cylinder into the h.p. side. Then, the l.p. piston goes up, pushing its air into the h.p. cylinder, which now contains a quantity of air equal to three times its volume. When the h.p. piston goes up, all this air goes out of the pump. Meanwhile, air has filled both cylinders below the pistons, which then pump a similar quantity of air when they go down.