03-27-00
After running my Ruby in the garage and then over at a friends layout I
realized that Live Steam and R/C go hand-in-hand.
Live Steam is not a set and run kind of thing. There always
adjustments needed to keep the speed down and when it is boiling hot you don't
just grab a hold of the thing. Ok, well maybe once!
"#$^!*&$%!*@&#, boy does that thing get hot!"
Like electric engines you need to have control over what's going on.
So I picked up some supplies from the local hobby shop and set out to take
control of my locomotive.
I purchased a basic 2-channel Futaba R/C unit. The hobby shop had the
option to upgrade the servos from standard models to Micro models so I
purchased that upgrade. The standard servos are so big that I could not
even get one all the way into the cab of the Loco. The Micro servos
ended up being just the right size. In total I spent about $100 to
convert Ruby to R/C.
The
receiver and servos run off of 4 "AA" batteries. The hobby
shop only had the square holders and I wanted a flat holder so that I could
mount it on the inside roof of the cab. I found one at Radio Shack but
it did not have the small two prong connection that the R/C unit
required. The guy at Radio Shack let me look through his battery recycle
box hoping that I could find an old battery that had the right
connector. I found one that was close, cut it off the battery and
soldered it onto my battery pack.
I just stared at the cab and played with the placement of the servos for
about 20 minutes. The cab has a small lip on the back of it and I needed
the steam valve servo to protrude out the back of the cab and this lip.
This meant I needed something to raise the servo by 3/8".
I
cut a 1/4" piece of redwood to just fit into the cab floor and this made
servo placement about perfect. I did not want the placement of the wood
or servos to be permanent, in case I had to work on something, so I decided to
Hot Glue the wood to the floor of the cab. It was not till after I did
this that I realized that my wood was in the way of the reversing lever.
A short flurry of explanatory words later, I had the wood removed, trimmed and
glued back in place.
The
placement of the servos was a bit of a challenge and I probably over analyzed
it. I wanted to get the maximum movement of the servo arm and the
maximum movement of the steam valve. Simple right? Not
quite. The servo arm and the steam valve arm have several holes in
them. To get the maximum movement you need to use the servo hole
farthest from the unit and the steam arm hole closest to the valve. (The
outside hole on the servo and the inside hole on the steam valve arm.)
If you ever have to do it you'll know what I mean.
So I hot glued the servos into place on the wood. The second servo
was used to control the reversing arm. I then hot glued the on/off
switch on top of one of the servos. It turned out to be a nice clean
setup. I used some small wire to attach the servos to the controlling
arms and I was set to go. Well, almost set to go. I had to place
the batter pack and the receiver. It turns out that the inside of the
cab roof has just enough room for the battery and receiver. I had some
small, sticky back, Velcro squares that I purchased from my local ACE Hardware
and they worked great for holding everything in place on the ceiling of the
cab.
On my first run I had an o-ring blow on my oil filler and hot water ran
down, soaked the wood and popped the hot glue from the wood. It was
working great up till then. So I let the wood dry out and glued it in
place the next day. Besides, it was 1:30 in the morning!
On
Saturday, after I had everything back in place, I made a run over to a friends
house and we ran our Live Steam locos on his outside layout. Fred has a
wonderful loco, seen here, and it runs up to 40 minutes on one fill-up.
Ruby ran great right up till the end when the servos popped off the
wood. After looking over the situation we came to the conclusion that
the hot glue is just to rigid and the constant movement of the servos makes
them pop off. That evening I removed all the glue and put everything
back in place with silicone. I'll be sure to note on the web site how
well this works.
Everything worked out pretty good and anyone with the ability to run live
steam should have no problem adding R/C to their Ruby.
Take care,
Johnny F.
