Office of Steam Forum for Model & Toy Steam Gas & Hot Air Engines

Recently received from Dave (jerseysteam) this smallest of all Accucraft F or G scale locomotives which is actually quite a handful. It has a number of operational issues that possibly prompted it to be sold away from its Eastern trackage, to now make its appearance in the High Desert. However that may be, it is most certainly a cute little non-prototypical spud, and seems to have a fair amount of fun potential built in, in spite of its problems.

I should add that although it is an Accucraft "Dora", it has been renamed by a former owner and now in fact goes by the name of "Carmela" with nice signage to that effect already installed. So if Dora wants me to call her Carmela .... I'm all good with that. Actually knew a Carmela growing up, and though I would never have thought to name anything after her, well, there it is anyway!   ;c)

So ... here she is:












Apologies for the really crude video and bad sound, but I rarely do much better. Perhaps a text description here will go some ways toward clarifying what was mumbled on the video.

Starting at the little box culvert trestle, she ran up a 2 1/2% grade on a dozen feet of straight track, then went into a 1 1/2 to 2% curve for 18 feet, and onto a nearly level straight backstretch for another dozen feet and into a very steeply descending curve of up to 6% for another 18 feet to complete the 60 foot oval.

She is now typically capable of 16 to 20 laps in about ten to twelve minutes with the best run having just made 22 laps which is an actual 1/4 mile. Because of the grades, she has to be run fairly fast, but I'm sure she'd do much better if the test track was much more level. Being able to close the throttle some on the downgrades would help a whole lot as well, as all that is doing is pumping a bunch of unnecessary steam out of the boiler really quickly.

Anyhow ... there she is, and I must say that I'm getting a real education in dealing with the finer nuances of a finicky fem fatale ..... or so I think anyway ?!?!

THANKS Dave!!!

I'm glad that she went to a good home! Carmela is named for the cutie shown below, who has been with us just about a year. She'll be 2 in October.

Thanks for posting Daniel.

 A great addition to your fleet. 🤠

Sorry Bruce, what little I could make out from the video commentary really didn't sound much like me. Think perhaps a finger was partially over the camera's microphone holes, while I was chasing that little sprat around the loop!

Well, there are actually a number of minor hurdles still to be gotten over, like building a minimum of half a dozen turnouts. While I do have the main assembly fixture built, I still have a number of small adjustable jigs for tapering and notching rail at various precise angles to design and build, and then make use of, not to mention the adjustable soldering jig for assembling the frogs. Once the designs for those are finalized, then I can make them and try them out and see if they are actually functional, and if so .... then build turnouts. Once I get past those hurdles that have been hanging me up for an inordinate amount of time, I suspect it will only take me a day to actually lay the track on the well aged roadbed that I graded long ago.

Full steam ahead sounds good, but it seems I've been at anchor with cold boilers for a very long time now, so I'll need to get a fire lite under "them" (read that as, under "me") sometime soon. Life seems to be conspiring to get in the way on an almost daily basis .... today it is mouse dropping under the sink!