With the trucked (bogied) rail cars I use I have body mounted the couplers so that I can run the cars backwards through all kinds of stuff without derailing. I’ve added a second track to the siding and so now I’ll have more fun!

Hi Graham. I noticed the heat shield and figured Regner must have put it there by way of a small upgrade. I opened the smokebox specifically to put a heat shield, which someone online had written as a recommendation. I appreciate you having done that. Truly! Thanks. About 17 years ago I bought a wholesale lot of 1000 coffee stir sticks for cheap. In O scale they are 1x12 ish planks and at the time I was building a small On30 layout. They have gotten a LOT of use. They have been grade crossings in N and have cladded a water tower in HO. I still have about 400 left. When I was messing around with the cladding the boiler I started wondering about what backwoods crew-made doors may be like. Happily there is already the removable brass rod I could hinge them on. The soldering job is mine. It is silver solder but as we are finishing an interior home reno I can’t find my proper torch amongst the boxed stuff. I used a small butane torch, which was not quite hot enough. The solder melted and held though. The the job I would have preferred. But it works. I have even come to like the backwoods repair sort of look of the thing. Remember that the lubricator nipple blew off and Regner sent me another? I think that is lost in the mail. The tracking had it go from Germany to a sorting centre in the United States and then on the the U.S. Postal Service, where it stopped. The last inclusion in the tracking was 20 days ago. It should have gone from Germany to a sorting centre here in Canada. Regner showed me the info and they did use my correct Canadian address that you provided them. I will wait a little more to see what the USPS does with it, or see whether it miraculously turns up. In the meantime I got tired of Dorothy sitting idle. Perhaps it is lost amongst the political chaos in that country. I realized I should have gotten a whistle from you originally. I regretted that. I was making an order of parts from The Train Department related to an older Accucraft engine I have and threw the whistle in then. To be honest I felt a little guilty about that. Your service was so good I had a moment when I wished I had gotten it from you. The Train Department also provides good service though. We are lucky to have such broad and good support.

I read one fellow on a blog saying his Lumber Jack was run in after about 15 hours. Mine has maybe 5 now. I do need to run it in reverse a bunch.

How do you like your Ruby?

@@Terrys-Steam-and-CobiIt's my first live steam so I have nothing to compare too, but it run good for me. It doesn't come with pressure gauge, or adjustable safety valve so I added them. The lack of a sight glass makes it easy to run out of water, and it would run out of water before gas. I got a Goodall valve and now can add water under pressure. It was very easy to RC. I run a servo on the reverser and steam valve. Before I got it, I was reading lots of forms and lots of negative reviews on how the Accucraft Ruby runs. It took me maybe 15mins to get it to run good in forward and reverse. I never air tested it as recommended, followed the instructions and tweaked from there. It did have a long run in time it took a 4l jug of water before it felt it was 100%.

@@trevork4066 I keep hearing bad things about it too. But sometimes ideas get out there and are hard to dislodge. The original Ruby locos from years ago had cylinders that were too small and so the engine was underpowered. The idea that they are not that good seems to have stuck. But I hear from people that love them. I have never handled one. This year they are coming out with an upgraded Ruby. I am not sure what the upgrades entail. It’s good you got a Goodall valve. So useful.

@@Terrys-Steam-and-Cobi The updated ones have a stainless body, and the roof is on hinges. I been waiting for the Accucraft Mable to come out, the price is not bad and it has a sight glass, Goodall, and a check valve to add a tender. Back to my Ruby, with the Goodall valve I can get over 15 mins of run time before I have to fill up the butane tank. On my radio I have a timer that counts up when the steam valve is open, I keep track of when to add water with that. I can get 40mins of running time before I have to add oil to the oiler. Since Ruby's boiler is small, I try not have the safety valve go off as it waste steam.

Thanks. I didn’t touch the boiler other than to clad it. The boiler came that way.

@@Terrys-Steam-and-Cobi i know the boiler did how you made it to look like the fire box and made an add on with the wood platting and the horizontal engine, looks good

@@anythingvintage2952 thanks!