3 for 3 in 2

I'm 3 for 3 and it's not a good thing. The three refers to locomotives and the two is the number of consecutive weekends I was running trains at different tracks. At the Big Creek & Southern railroad, I was given the throttle of Henry's Prairie, an old-style 2-6-2 steam engine and told to take it around the track with Henry riding. I struggled a bit with the small engine, it didn't seem to be running well under load - others thought it was only running on one cylinder at times - and towards the top of the hill at the end of the first lap I was struggling to raise steam past 50 lbs. Cresting the hill she steamed freely, but I was low on water, so I brought it in to the yard and cooled it off. When Henry's wife asked if water was supposed to be dripping from under the engine my stomach sank - the flues were leaking. We tried to tighten them, but they would not seal, and that ends his running season this year until he can repair the flues. This was Henry's second stroke of bad luck, driving down that morning the transmission in their van broke, disabling their vehicle. He had to leave his train at the track and get a ride home the next day.

The following weekend I was at the Mid-South Live Steamers track running Joel's big Pacific engine (4-6-2) after he had run for two hours hauling passengers. I had run for an hour and just loaded up at the station and begun to pull away when the locomotive slammed to a stop. I thought a car had derailed and gotton jammed in the tracks, but after inspection all the cars were on the track. Getting back on the engine I tried to pull forward but it backed up instead. That's not right. After several more unsuccessfull attempts to move, Bill came up to look things over and noticed a pin on the valve gear had come loose and shifted into the wheel. We unloaded the passengers, cut the train off the cars and backed the engine into a siding at the station. Further inspection found loose setscrews and a bent casting in the valve linkage, which is not a field repairable item. That ended any further running of that engine. We took the valve linkage off and towed it dead down to the loading area.

The bright spot was running Corey Adam's Mogul (2-6-0) engine. He has been struggling for two years to get this used engine to perform and steam like it should. He has tightened the valve linkages, converted it burn propane, added a feedwater heater, turbulators to the flues and recently a fire arch in the firebox. The arch seemed to do the trick, Corey was all smiles this weekend with the engine keeping steam and running well, just without a lot of power. He ran all weekend including at night, which is a lot of fun. Mid-South is a big layout for Corey's engine so after three laps you have to come in and fill the tender with water. As I was going through the yard after filling tender the front wheels picked a switch, derailing and dropping the front end on the ground. Breaking the pilot (cowcatcher). At least we could keep running after that.

3 for 3! Wanna let me run your engine?